Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s annual PWI 500 list was released earlier this month, and topping the 2026 list was none other former AEW World Champion MJF. It was the first time Maxwell Jacob Friedman has ever topped the PWI 500, but in the eyes of the man himself, it should have happened a long time ago.
“I’ll be honest, my first thought was ‘What took so long?'” MJF said in an interview with Pro Wrestling Illustrated. “My second thought was ‘Some people are slow learners.’ But we got there, we got where we needed to be, we got MJF the number one spot. Is there an argument it should have happened a long time ago? Sure, people are talking about it but that’s fine. We got there.”
The evaluation period for the list spanned from August 1, 2025 to July 31, 2026, in which time MJF once again solidified himself as one of the most important names in All Elite Wrestling. He headlined four AEW pay-per-views, all of which had the AEW World Championship on the line, and MJF won every one of those bouts. He had two reigns with the AEW World Championship for combined total of 154 days, racking up nine successful title defenses across the two reigns. MJF didn’t just have success in AEW as he would win the CMLL World Light Heavyweight Championship on August 1, 2025, and held the title until mid-September where he was defeated by Mistico in one of CMLL’s most critically acclaimed matches of 2025.
Having finished sixth in 2023 and seventh in 2024, MJF knocked his former mentor Cody Rhodes off the top spot, with Rhodes settling for second place after topping the list in the previous two years. MJF’s former rivals CM Punk and Mistico took third and fourth respectively, while Konosuke Takeshita finished in fifth. Another one of MJF’s biggest rivals of the past year, Hangman Page, place in sixth, while Yota Tsuji would finish in seventh. Rounding out the top ten was Trick Williams in eighth, Oba Femi in ninth, and GUNTHER in tenth.
Please credit “Pro Wrestling Illustrated” when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
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