To celebrate Ring of Honor’s 15th anniversary, Place to Be Nation and Voices of Wrestling teamed up to present The Honor Roll: ROH’s 50 Greatest Wrestlers Ever and an offshoot poll ROH’s 10 Greatest Non-Wrestlers.
The nomination process back in June 2016, with discussion carrying through into the open voting period of this past February. In full, we received 111 ballots for the ROH’s 50 Greatest Ever poll and 42 ballots for the Non-Wrestler offshoot.
Criteria for the Top 50
There were no set criteria for the Non-Wrestler balloting. Our nomination list included managers, referees, announcers, authority figures and even former owners! In the end, 37 different non-wrestler performers received votes.
As part of the polling we asked voters to share when they started following the product. Here are the results for the Top 50 poll:
- Early years (2002-2003): 42
- Golden years (2004-2008): 45
- HDNet era (2009-2010): 8
- SBG era (2011-present): 16
The scoring here had the top 10 weighted, with the remaining 40 working backwards as such: 50th place = 1 point, 49th place = 2, etc. The top 10 weighting was as follows:
- 1st – 65 points
- 2nd – 60 points
- 3rd – 57 points
- 4th – 54 points
- 5th – 51 points
- 6th – 49 points
- 7th – 47 points
- 8th – 45 points
- 9th – 43 points
- 10th – 41 points
- (11 = 40, etc, etc)
In the results you’ll see the total number of points, the high vote, plus the number of ballots the performer appeared on.
For Part one of our reveal, we’ve cut down our list from 166 to 101. A note to voters: if you’re #50 is missing, it could be a case of using one of your slots for a tag team (Young Bucks for example, although there were other teams that got votes). Those members were broken out next to each other on the ballots. The ties here were wrestlers that had identical ballots.
Tie breakers used were # of ballots, and then if still tied, whomever had the highest vote.
Today, we finish off the project with the top 25! Find more from The Honor Roll project: Part 3 (50-26), Part 2 (100-51), Part 1 (166-101), Top Ten Non-Wrestlers.
25 Eddie Edwards
Total points: 2688
Number of ballots: 103
Top 10 votes: 1
Top 5 votes: 0
High vote: 9
24 Kyle O’Reilly
Total points: 2734
Number of ballots: 102
Top 10 votes: 2
Top 5 votes: 1
High vote: 5
23 Takeshi Morishima
Total points: 2868
Number of ballots: 98
Top 10 votes: 11
Top 5 votes: 3
High vote: 4
22 Jimmy Jacobs
Total points: 2905
Number of ballots: 108
Top 10 votes: 10
Top 5 votes: 4
High vote: 3
21 Adam Cole
Total points: 2962
Number of ballots: 100
Top 10 votes: 19
Top 5 votes: 4
High vote: 3
20 Davey Richards
Total points: 3075
Number of ballots: 98
Top 10 votes: 17
Top 5 votes: 1
High vote: 4
19 Tyler Black
Total points: 3152
Number of ballots: 104
Top 10 votes: 10
Top 5 votes: 0
High vote: 6
18 KENTA
Total points: 3187
Number of ballots: 97
Top 10 votes: 18
Top 5 votes: 4
High vote: 2
17 Claudio Castagnoli
Total points: 3293
Number of ballots: 107
Top 10 votes: 9
Top 5 votes: 2
High vote: 2
16 Chris Hero
Total points: 3405
Number of ballots: 108
Top 10 votes: 10
Top 5 votes: 4
High vote: 1 (1 1st place vote)
15 Jay Lethal
Total points: 3498
Number of ballots: 105
Top 10 votes: 24
Top 5 votes: 11
High vote: 1 (2 1st place votes)
14 Mark Briscoe
Total points: 3537
Number of ballots: 106
Top 10 votes: 23
Top 5 votes: 3
High vote: 2
13 Homicide
Total points: 4025
Number of ballots: 108
Top 10 votes: 41
Top 5 votes: 15
High vote: 2
12 AJ Styles
Total points: 4110
Number of ballots: 108
Top 10 votes: 34
Top 5 votes: 12
High vote: 2
11 Low Ki
Total points: 4117
Number of ballots: 106
Top 10 votes: 48
Top 5 votes: 16
High vote: 1 (1 1st place vote)
10 El Generico
Total points: 4126
Number of ballots: 105
Top 10 votes: 38
Top 5 votes: 8
High vote: 3
9 Christopher Daniels
Total points: 4155
Number of ballots: 109
Top 10 votes: 38
Top 5 votes: 14
High vote: 2
8 Roderick Strong
Total points: 4634
Number of ballots: 111
Top 10 votes: 65
Top 5 votes: 19
High vote: 3
7 Kevin Steen
Total points: 4964
Number of ballots: 109
Top 10 votes: 90
Top 5 votes: 35
High vote: 2
6 Jay Briscoe
Total points: 5053
Number of ballots: 109
Top 10 votes: 83
Top 5 votes: 39
High vote: 1 (3 1st place votes)
5 Austin Aries
Total points: 5073
Number of ballots: 110
Top 10 votes: 82
Top 5 votes: 41
High vote: 1 (1 1st place vote)
4 Nigel McGuinness
Total points: 5284
Number of ballots: 110
Top 10 votes: 87
Top 5 votes: 52
High vote: 2
3 CM Punk
Total points: 5357
Number of ballots: 111
Top 10 votes: 87
Top 5 votes: 49
High vote: 1 (5 1st place votes)
2 Samoa Joe
Total points: 6485
Number of ballots: 110
Top 10 votes: 109
Top 5 votes: 102
High vote: 1 (25 1st place votes)
1 Bryan Danielson
Total points: 6923
Number of ballots: 111
Top 10 votes: 111
Top 5 votes: 109
High vote: 1 (73 1st place votes)
To talk about the results and the project in general, you can sign-up for the Voices of Wrestling forum here. The Honor Roll sub-forum is located here. Follow us on Twitter at @voiceswrestling and @Place2BeNation.
