9 Reasons Roman Reigns Topped PWI's Top 500 Wrestlers 2016
5. He Fits The Precedence

While it’s interesting to hear who has won the PWI Wrestler of the Year award, most often they’re people who may not have been the favorite of hardcore fans. Generally the winner is whoever was the most commercially successful wrestler that year.
While CM Punk and Daniel Bryan have both topped the list in past few years, Triple H, John Cena, Diesel, Batista and Hulk Hogan have as well. And none of them were close to being the best in-ring performer in the industry the years they won. Basically, the way PWI looks at it is how WWE pushes their top stars as larger-than-life talent, like Hogan and Cena and Reigns.
When you look at every name on there, Roman's name really doesn’t make him stick out that badly. In fact, the name that seems to be out of place on the PWI 500 would be Dean Malenko in 1997.