10 Best Wrestlers Under 30 In The World Today
Several of these talents are better than their older peers. The future is bright...
There are several honourable mentions.
Bron Breakker is awesome in the strictest definition, and his spear is almost prime Goldberg-tier - but WWE being WWE lays out his matches like 2003 Goldberg. They're better in execution, but watching Breakker sell for prolonged periods isn't flattering nor particularly engaging.
Dante Martin is an aerial revolutionary, and the existing standard is already massively exciting, but he hasn't put everything together. He hasn't yet learned the dark arts of connective narrative tissue. Lee Moriarty is disgustingly skilled for his age, but there is one peer better at his chosen discipline. Ricky Starks is just 28, and he's a superb all-rounder drenched in charismatic showmanship, but he only narrowly misses out because his library of work in AEW is slight and uneven. His match with Jay Lethal was exceptional, but his effort with Matt Sydal at Battle of the Belts was mostly just there.
There are several excellent Young Lions within the various NJPW dojo systems who were tough to exclude, but by the definition of their roles, they aren't permitted to showcase their true potential.
So that leaves...
10. HOOK
If it feels premature to list HOOK here, given his relative lack of reps, his more experienced peers could work for another 20 years and never learn what he has.
HOOK has an intangible presence. He is cool, magnetic, enigmatic. The push is a masterstroke, but if you step back and analyse what AEW is doing, it really shouldn't work. It is very ambitious. Tony Khan has essentially written a list of every badass trope in wrestling - fight trunks, licensed music, head drop suplexes, piledriver no-sell, nope spot - and used it to book him.
It shouldn't work. Pulling off one of these tropes is something only a select few wrestlers can do without looking like they're trying much too hard.
HOOK pulls all of them off.
He's a level above most of his peers on a pure athletic level. His body control is incredible; he's able to land square on his feet following a hip toss attempt and drop step behind his opponents before they've even realised that they're no longer in control.
HOOK still needs work - his rope running and selling looks odd at times, but that's likely because he's not playing a traditional pro wrestler on the back foot - but this sort of thing actually can be learned.