10 Most Improved Wrestlers On The Planet Today
"And guess what, Canyon Ceman? I'm doing my damndest to make myself a star."
In WWE, there are far more performers who have regressed more so than they have improved - a sad byproduct of a stifling product in which repetition fosters familiarity and all that familiarity fosters.
Much like the Creative Writers homogenise the performers they are paid to present as unique "larger than life!" entities, the fleet of redundant road agents do nothing except copy and paste. The in-ring action is so often much of a muchness. In an ultra-regulated landscape in which creativity is discouraged - those agents paid their dues, you understand, in an era that has comprehensively passed them by - it's little wonder that the so-called promised land is simply a place to make money, not legacies. This over-produced structure manifests as a sea of rest holds - so many bloody rest holds it borders on parody - and signatures deployed with a soulless, mathematical precision to elicit increasingly mild pops on flagship broadcasts indicted by their silence.
The discourse has changed irrevocably: we don't wish to see the starlets of the Independent shine on the WWE stage, because the WWE stage isn't a showcase. It is, transparently, a lure with which to drown stars in moneyed mediocrity.
But even within the doors of Titan Towers, sheer talent - sheer commitment - shines through the creative darkness...
10. Shayna Baszler
Shayna Baszler is such a crucial part of the TakeOver fabric in this, the best era of its illustrious history.
She arrives. She menaces. She systematically hones in on the arms of her opponents, batters them with a sociopathic zeal, feigns a level of inexperience to allow her opponents a brief flurry of hope, and then contorts their arms to disgusting angles. She leaves, her satisfaction manifested as a sickly, dead-eyed grin, her badass aura heightened. This all takes around ten minutes. In a sickening way, this delights but does not exhaust the audience. Baszler, in minimalist masterclasses that do not outstay their welcome, just makes us hungry for more punishment.
This is all in stark contrast to her initial forays in the Mae Young Classic, in which there was a tentative and somewhat messy quality to bouts that were 50/50 in structure (and are somewhat irreconcilable in retrospect). The new Baszler, surging in confidence, patrols her matches with the nous of an old pro despite having only wrestled on a full-time basis for just over a year.
The rate at which she has improved is as frightening as the aura she projects.