As a sort of companion piece to my article Is the AEW Continental Championship Really Necessary?, I’d like to just go through a few different types of rankings/orderings that I’ll be using as we go forward, both here and elsewhere. I’m unfortunately a sucker for these kinds of setting-the-table posts so you’ll have to get used to it. At the very least, it’ll prevent me from having to delve deep into this every time I want to reference these concepts.
Star Ratings
This is a copy-paste job from Review: AEW Dynamite 11/27/2024 where I first laid this out.
Also, since I’m here, I suppose I’ll explain how I’m currently viewing the star ratings. This might change as I keep going, especially as I understand more about how other people are making their decisions; these types of things always have an influence. I’ll also give them a score range out of 100 as that might help clarify more; this isn’t a real point scale, it’s just to help visualize what I think of as the quality ranges.
☆☆☆☆☆ — 0 stars, 0–10 out of 100: dud/terrible
★☆☆☆☆ — 1 star, 10–20 out of 100: awful
★★☆☆☆ — 2 stars, 20–40 out of 100: bad
★★★☆☆ — 3 stars, 40–60 out of 100: decent
★★★★☆ — 4 stars, 60–90 out of 100: good!
★★★★★ — 5 stars., 90–100 out of 100: amazing!
🛇 — Not rated. Usually means I skipped/skimmed it.
In general, my ratings might give out more 4’s than others and possibly even more 5s. I will try not to use fraction ratings much (though I do it here), and if I do, it’s likely to be less “this is the precise place I think it deserves” than it will be “I couldn’t decide between 3 or 4 stars”.
Title Designations
This is something that I referenced in the Continental Championship article: the link between a title’s name (designation) and level of perceived importance. This is an admittedly silly thing to think about, but as silly as it is, I do think these aesthetics matter a little bit. That said, I acknowledge that the main thing determining how important a title is perceived as being is how the title is used and promoted, not its name. Anyway, you’re reading this article, aren’t you? In for a penny, in for a pound.
- World: The world championship is the most prestigious type of championship because the implication is, obviously, that the holder is the best wrestler in the whole world. As far as we humans are aware, “the world” encompasses everyone who can properly understand pro wrestling rules and engage in a contest. That’s why it was chosen to designate the wrestler who thought they were the best of all wrestlers everywhere.
- Universal: Universal is the highest designation of the alternatives to the world designation. I don’t just say that this is an included version because the reasons that universal gets used make it a weaker claim than simply claiming to be a world title. Despite the fact that universal technically refers to a larger area than world, like I said, we don’t know of anyone outside the world who can wrestle (unless you’re talking about the angel who leglocked David, and that’s a big claim). Using universal always comes off as tryhard, and it implies that those using it didn’t want to say world for whatever reason. The thing is, it doesn’t matter what the reason is, that reason is never good enough to make universal feel cool.
- Global: This is much like universal in that it’s used to mean world while avoiding saying world, except global doesn’t even have the advantage of meaning more than world does. Currently, NJPW does have a World Heavyweight and Global Heavyweight title running concurrently, but the title was conceived as the United States Championship so, at the very least, the initial idea was not to imply there were two world titles. It’s probably better to classify that belt as a kind of international title.
- Company: This includes “unnamed” championships like the WWE Championship. Of all the ways to claim to be a world title, this is the weakest. And yes, we can assume that unnamed titles are meant to be world titles because no matter what other titles exist in a promotion, a title with no designation (other than the promotion name and possibly weight class) always outranks designated titles.
- International: We generally assume every person in the world lives in a nation of some kind, so this is almost like claiming that one is the champion of the world. Of course, international does leave out people who live in remote settlements with limited contact to the connected world, and possible intelligent dolphins etc. That isn’t why international is second to world, though; most world champions don’t make it a point to defend the title in North Sentinel Island (nor should they start). The main reason is that international titles have a history of existing alongside world titles, the most famous example being the NWA International Heavyweight Championship introduced by Lou Thesz. This puts the international name solidly below the world-level designations.
- Intercontinental: Most notable to modern fans from the WWF/E Intercontinental Championship, and possibly to some extent from NJPW’s IWGP Intercontinental Championship (now defunct). In the WW*’s case, the continents were North America and South America. I’m not sure if New Japan ever clarified what theirs meant. It may have meant Asia (Japan’s continent) and North America (where the title was established), or it may have meant every continent, or it may have meant something else.
- Empire: We don’t really live in times of big empires anymore, but within recorded history, there have been British Commonwealth titles, British Empire titles, and other “imperial” titles.
- Continental: As a title designation, continental is actually pretty rare; honestly, the AEW Continental Championship seems mainly named that because they’d already used international and didn’t want to use intercontinental. Obviously, AEW’s use here breaks my “rule” (as they have an international and a continental title, both in the same tier) but I don’t think continental fits anywhere else. It’s too rare to be its own level, that’s for sure.
- World Television: I’ve always wondered why the ROH TV title was referred to as the world television championship. This is a shot in the dark, but perhaps the idea was to imply it was meant to be higher than a typical TV title? Currently, I think it is safe to say that the modern ROH Pure title is outranked by the ROH TV title, but that doesn’t really suggest anything solid.
- National: National titles are the bread-and-butter secondary championship. Typically, national refers to the home nation of the promotion; a title representing a different nation is a kind of regional title. This is a very credible designation, which is to say it’s often believable that a promotion of whichever size would be able to justify having a champion of the nation (whereas the likelihood of one of their wrestlers being the real best in the world is much lower). “United States” championships can be considered national or international, both because of the U.S.’s size & population and because of the country’s intense patriotism; it’s rare for anyone but the U.S. to claim their national sports champs are actually “world champions”, for instance.
- Television: The designation of television titles has gained a currency among fans as television became the main way that most people watched pro wrestling. A title’s designation refers to its purported reach, and this is not only about where the wrestlers come from, it’s also (and even mainly) about where the audience comes from. Because “television” isn’t a territory – no one is a citizen or resident of “television” – its potential importance seems to be limited, but it’s gained cachet as a lower-level title in national and larger promotions which have television.
- Regional: When I say “region”, I mean an area which is smaller than a nation but larger than a city or district. These are less common nowadays, but back in the 80s and before, the U.S. had many regional belts: Southern titles, Pacific Northwest titles, Eastern titles, etc. When regional titles were strong, they often outranked television titles (especially if the regional title was the top title in a promotion), but I think that currently television titles are more common in higher-profile places.
- Internet: While internet and similar designations (such as the TNA Digital Media Championship) could be lumped in with television, I put them separately because I think that internet titles have not really caught on. The most high-profile internet championship is still Zack Ryder’s joke WWE Internet Championship and that has been defunct for at least a decade. I think this designation may become more important if the internet ever becomes the main way that wrestling fans watch wrestling, but it hasn’t happened yet.
- Local: These are certainly the lowest title designations possible. Local titles rarely get much fanfare at all, even in the promotions that utilize them. Even small promotions usually do not choose to recognize champs just of their own city.
This list does not include specialty or style titles, like the ROH Pure Championship or the TNA X-Division Championship; these can really only be judged by how hard they’re pushed. The ratings are broken into tiers based on exclusivity (in my opinion). What I mean by this is that I think it is likely unusual for a single company to have multiple titles in the same tier. If a company has a international title, it is not likely to also have a intercontinental title, in other words. Also, within a promotion, titles will almost always be ranked in the listed order. This doesn’t line up with card position, it’s just to say that a national champion is always counted as being higher than a regional champion and so on within one promotion, even if a national title in one promotion is less important than a regional title in another.
Card Position
I think that booking games, specifically the Extreme Warfare series, have had a far larger effect on how we look at and break down how wrestlers appear on the card than we’d like to think. I’m going to largely abandon the EWR-inspired order (main event, upper midcard, midcard, lower midcard, opener, jobber) for a simpler four-tier system.
- Main Eventers: The main eventers are basically as expected: the top of the card, the names on the marquee, the reason that people tune in, etc. and so on. This corresponds to EWR main eventers.
- Semi-Main Eventers: This group closely mirrors those that you’d call “upper midcarders” in the EWR scheme. The reason that I didn’t stuff this group in with the midcard is that I think that this group serves an important functional role. You need your main eventers to really draw your houses, but your semi-mains are people who can be put in with a main eventer and draw respectably without being able to draw at that level themselves. This group is key because a respectable group of semi-mains lets you stretch out your main eventer appearances without blowing off your true money matches, i.e. matches between two main eventers. Semi-mains are as credible as main eventers wrestling-wise and could even be given the top title, but they are not crowd favorites in the sense of having the highest fan interest.
- Midcarders: If we’re equating this to EWR terms, this groups together both midcarders and lower midcarders into a single group. In general, there isn’t much functional reason to separate midcarders and lower midcarders; it’s really just a way to better order a larger roster. If you wanted to, you could split all of these groups into upper- and lower-half sets. Functionally, though, the midcard’s purpose is to act as compelling filler. They’re not the main acts but they are supposed to be interesting enough to keep people’s attention if they come out as part of the show.
- Rookies: I’m jamming this group in here last, because it really stuck out to me as a necessary function. If we’re putting this in EWR terms, maybe rookies are equivalent to openers, or maybe to lower midcarders, or maybe the top half of the first plus the bottom half of the second. That’s not really important. Rookies are wrestlers who seem in a lot of ways to be on the level of jobbers, losing to everyone higher up, except for one detail: rookies are expecting a push. While jobbers can obviously move up the card, they aren’t expected to do so. Rookies are wrestlers who are brought in new but are earmarked to progress. Because of this, rookies should still be kept strong within matches, even if they lose; this is a key difference from jobbers, whose main purpose is to look worse than their opponents. Also, rookies can lose to jobbers, but this should be rare; rookies should almost always defeat jobbers.
- Jobbers: As semi-mains are to main eventers, so jobbers are to midcarders. As far as EWR card positions go, this probably encompasses both openers and jobbers. What differentiates jobbers and midcarders is level of credibility, i.e. level of assumed skill or power in the ring. Having jobbers with some level of credibility is good because it makes everyone else look even more credible. However, jobbers are the least credible wrestlers out of everyone in the roster. They are clearly less credible than midcarders, such that a midcarder should almost always beat a jobber. A jobber victory would be much more rare than a semi-main beating a main eventer, however.
Working Weight Classes
I’m calling these weight classes “working weight classes” because the reason I’m laying them out is not for the purposes of creating belts, I’m doing it to help give a shorthand to guide people’s work. Essentially, the idea here is to prevent Shane Hollister from getting a job. No, I’m joking (well, half-joking). I really hate it when small guys wrestle like big guys just because “it’s pro wrestling” so the bigger guy just sells. My hope is that instead of just going with that, people will be able to say “no, I’m a heavyweight and you’re a middleweight, we have to work this differently”.
These weight classes are largely in the order common to boxing & MMA, with one major difference: cruiserweight is ranked as lighter than light heavyweight here. The reason I chose to do this is because of wrestling history, namely the WCW Cruiserweight Championship. In the U.S. especially, “cruiserweight” means “lightweight wrestler”. Therefore, I switched the places of cruiserweight and light heavyweight so that cruiserweight would be the lightest of the heavier weight group, which seems to match the typical usage: we expect cruiserweights in national companies to be bigger than average people, weighing in high 190s or low 200s, but smaller than heavyweight wrestlers.
| Typical Weight (lbs) | Heavyweight Class |
| 400+ | Unlimited/Giantweight (+3) |
| 300–400 | Super heavyweight (+2) |
| 265–300 | Heavyweight |
| 225–265 | Light heavyweight |
| 215–225 | Cruiserweight |
| Typical Weight (lbs) | Lightweight Class |
| 200–215 | Middleweight |
| 185–200 | Lightweight |
| 170–185 | Featherweight |
| 140–170 | Flyweight |
| 110–140 | Strawweight |
| 80–110 | Miniweight |
| 80▾ | Underweight |
In general, I would say that heavyweight classes are the top 5 (unlimited through cruiserweight) and lightweight classes are the bottom 7 (middleweight through underweight).
This will mostly be important in informing whether a lighter wrestler can move an opponent. These exact steps etc. would need to be labbed out, of course, but my initial suggestion would look something like this:
| # Weight Classes Defender Has Over Attacker | Lift Difficulty | Easy Throw/Takedown |
| -2▾ | trivial | powerbomb |
| -1 | easy | overhead belly-to-belly suplex |
| 0 | normal | spinebuster or back suplex |
| 1 | tough | side belly-to-belly suplex |
| 2 | heavy | hip throw |
| 3 | strenuous | fireman’s carry |
| 4 | monumental | snap mare |
| 5+ | impossible | ankle pick |
Obviously, strength and other attributes would change things a bit, and I would tell people to err on the side of leniency with this stuff. When I say that a throw or takedown is “easy” I don’t really mean that it’s easy to do, what I mean is that it someone of a typical strength could do this move to an opponent of the listed weight class difference. Also, in the weight class list above, super heavyweight is listed at +2 and unlimited at +3. This is related to the steps chart. Essentially, each weight class is 1 step above the class just below it. In the case of super heavyweight, though, it is 2 steps above heavyweight, and unlimited is 3 steps above super heavyweight. It may be better to split those top weights into separate 1-step weight classes but that’s something to determine in the lab (i.e. gym). Also, to be clear, only 1 step separates middleweight and cruiserweight.
Training Ranks (Grades)
This is the most important ranking set I’m going to talk about, though it may seem to be the most trivial. You might have gotten a hint already, but I’ll come right out and say it: I think training is by far the most important thing to focus on if you are trying to run a promotion with longevity. Do you want to have a style? Do you want to have consistent quality? Do you want big spots to be practiced in a safe environment? You want to have a training school with good trainers.
For what I would want to do, having a curriculum would also be incredibly important. It would have to be clear, of course, that the ones who are really going to succeed are those who add their own spin and flair to what is taught; that’s what grabs an audience. But I think the level of fundamentals etc. need not only focus across more wrestlers, all wrestlers need a deeper base, especially for what I have in mind. To pick on a very successful wrestler here: a guy with the skillset of Adam Cole would not get far in my promotion. He is not a bad pro wrestler in the modern style but the ways he makes wrestling exciting often involve him “wrestling big” without the size to do it, and he’s never really shown an ability to wrestle effectively without throwing suplexes etc.
I’m not going to lay out a curriculum here; in large part, that’s the goal of the entire Pro-Wres Lab series. What I’m going to do is lay out the training ranks or grades, and what I think they should entail. I did not go deep into sources here, but I did look at two examples. The first was the UK’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, which is primarily a higher education program, but it’s geared towards giving people acting skills and then pushing them into the real world rather than dedicating ages to simply training. They offer a 1 year foundational course as well as a 3 year degree (which doesn’t seem to require the foundational course), with testing included. The second is the IBJJF belt schedule, which is geared toward teaching and practicing skills over an extended period. There are 5 adult belts and about 1 to 2 years is spent on each, with testing. The highest belt, the black belt, also has a number of longevity grades; these can go on forever.
I wanted to combine these ethoses because I think both sides are valuable for wrestling. Pro wrestlers learn best, especially in the performance aspect, by being in front of crowds in actual wrestling contests. However, a pro wrestler who does not train in the gym won’t gain new tools as quickly or as effectively as one who does. Therefore, the grade system I will lay out is also going to have my suggestions about how wrestlers of each grade should be positioned.
Progressing out of each grade would require three things: training time, waiting period, and testing. The testing portion is simple: each grade would have a test and passing the test is the only way to move forward. The waiting period is the minimum amount of time that one has to have the grade (and be a working wrestler) before they can be considered for advancement. The training time is basically the number of certified training sessions a person must complete before being eligible to advance. This is will be referenced as “years of training”, where 1 year of training is 100 sessions: 2 1-hour sessions per week for 50 weeks (out of a 52 week year, assuming 2 weeks off). There is no set pace of training sessions, so they can be completed at any rate, but they must be completed. Also, a wrestler can count the training session if they are a trainee or the trainer/teacher/coach.
- No grade: New wrestlers begin training with no grade; a wrestler with no grade is considered to be an untrained wrestler. To progress past having no grade, a trainee must go through a waiting period of 1 year and must have 1 year of training, and pass the grade D test. No grade wrestlers should not appear on shows at all.
- Grade D: Wrestlers of grade D are considered fully trained in terms of being able to work on shows. However, grade D is still considered a low level of skill; such wrestlers shouldn’t be used as more than jobbers/rookies. To progress, a grade D wrestler must go through a waiting period of 2 years and have 1 year of training as a grade D wrestler, as well as passing the grade C test.
- Grade C: For a grade C wrestler to move forward, they must go through a waiting period of 2 years, have 1 year of training as a grade C wrestler, and pass the grade B test. This grade is who I would feel comfortable having as midcarders. An exceptionally charismatic or gifted grade C wrestler might move further up the card, but this would be pretty rare.
- Grade B: For a grade B wrestler to move forward, they must go through a waiting period of 2 years, have 2 years of training as a grade B wrestler, and pass the grade A test. Grade B wrestlers can work as trainers to wrestlers of lower grades. Despite the waiting period, a working grade B wrestler would probably take significantly longer than 2 years to become eligible to move forward. Possibly we could do something like allowing a grade B wrestler to trade 1 of their training years for an equivalent number of verified public matches.
- Grade A: When a wrestler reaches grade A, there is nowhere further for them to go; we won’t have higher levels of grade A because the point is to mark skill acquisition to a certain point, not for wrestlers to compare themselves to one another. However, a grade A wrestler can lose their grade. A grade A wrestler must wrestle at least 10 verified public matches per year (this is not “1 year of matches”, to be clear) or they must lead at least 20 training sessions; if they fail to do this, they become a former A. In most cases, current grade As should be treated more highly than former As. Grade A wrestlers are considered to have the skill to compete at a world class level just by virtue of their training (rather than taking into account specific talent).
One of the reasons I did not want this progression to take too long is that I think the age of pro wrestlers needs to come down. I’m getting to be an old guy (I’m not that old) so I get some of the appeal of older wrestlers still being at the top of the card, but let’s be honest: this doesn’t make sense. In an athletic field, youth is almost always going to win out. Now, I will grant you that wrestling does require experience and expertise to really do well. That said, I didn’t want this training regime to cap out with people at age 40 reaching the black belt.
As the system is set up now, an extremely hard worker could get this done in 7 years, though probably 9–10 is more realistic. Furthermore, I think that grade B wrestlers would be more than good enough to serve as main eventers if they had the tools; if that’s the case, we’re looking at 5–6 years, which means that some wrestlers might be ready for the big stage at 23 or 24 if they start at 18. That kind of pace mirrors other major sports where some of the best performers are those coming right out of college.
So that’s it! I could have thought of some kind of conclusion to wrap this up but I don’t feel like doing that. This post has already gotten out of hand so I think I better just close it up.
Til next time!