10 Most Underrated Wrestlers Of 2023
These wrestlers brought their A-game in 2023, but you MIGHT have missed some of their best bits...
It's incredibly difficult to be underrated in modern wrestling.
Gain a tiny bit of buzz on the indies and there's a good chance one of the majors will take a chance and bring you in. It's not just a talent arms race at play between WWE and AEW either, but a quest to look more in front of the other when it comes to identifying wrestling's future.
The problem comes in the follow-through though - NXT and/or the Performance Center will seek to mould, but has been known to bend and break bodies and spirits alike before talents have time to shine. AEW has the opposite problem, where the magic is exposed too quickly and an expedited run leaves cult favourites left on the scrap heap within weeks of making their television debuts.
In the content super service era, almost nobody gets to fly under the radar, to the extent that being underrated means not getting the fair amount of critical acclaim you deserve.
Which, for a generation of wrestlers as much a part of the discourse as they are the action, creates another paradox. There are subsequently far more than ten that fit this list, but these chosen few continue to fit the bill more than most...
10. Dominik Mysterio
At the start of 2023, it seemed likely the nicest thing anybody would have to say about Rey Mysterio's fairly feckless son was that he was just about able to hold his own against his legendary Father in a bells-and-whistles WrestleMania match.
But Dominik Mysterio has, remarkably, gone from strength to strength.
Once charming because of how obviously useless he was between the ropes, 'Dirty Dom's advancement to "competent" over the last 12 hasn't just increased his value to the main roster or The Judgment Day, but also to WWE's developmental system.
As the rat with no right to hold NXT's broadly prestigious North American Championship, Mysterio has found a niche that has nothing to do with his "deadbeat Dad", and it's been vital to his trajectory. Having worked and/or watched countless tag team matches on the main roster, it's on Tuesday nights where he's been a draw for viewers and a key figure in the lives of Wes Lee, Trick Williams, Dragon Lee and others. He's a three-brand star during the most successfully synergistic period in NXT's history - and the experiment shows no signs of slowing down.