The Case For CM Punk: Wrestler Of The Year 2022
CM Punk wrestled just 14 times in 2022, but don't be fooled by what at first may look like a shockingly low return. The industry has quietly changed for the better in recent years, in a manner almost impressive enough that more promoters should be barking louder about it. 14 is neither too much nor too little a tally in the modern wrestling landscape to determine what makes a Wrestler Of The Year.
In 2022, we are at long last at the platonic ideal of schedule versus exposure in a way that stands to preserve talent health and aura. It's with some bitter cruelty that Punk ends the year injured and out of wrestling completely when she showed what could be done under the new rules.
As one of the company's key performers and willing workhorses this year, Will Ospreay is as good an example of a current New Japan Pro Wrestling road warrior as anybody. He worked 54 matches as of December 5th, inclusive of an entire G1 Climax. WWE's typically brutal road schedule never went back to the bad old days after the pandemic. The house show loop is several shows shorter a month, and rarely will every single key performer lace the boots every single week on television. In All Elite Wrestling - where Punk worked exclusively this year - even if a wrestler worked every single taping and pay-per-view date available, that'd not pass double figures, which makes for much less than the 186 he worked in 2011 or the 178 he worked in his full year as WWE Champion in 2012. New World Heavyweight Champion MJF has made not wrestling his unique selling point. This is the new way of the new world and thank goodness that world has changed.
Quality has always trumped quantity anyway - Hulk Hogan's work in Japan was celebrated because he hit a little harder, not because he time travelled and worked 400 nights a year brother - and all of Punk's 2022 offerings are all individually worthy of analysis, deeper investigation and at a bare minimum some pause for thought. Not least because they're basically the second part of a two-act play that kicked off the prior year.
CM Punk was the wrestler of the year in 2022 because he had laid the groundwork for the position in 2021.
CONT'D...