Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s annual PWI 500 list was released earlier this month, and the list for 2026 was topped by none other than former AEW World Champion MJF. It was the first time Maxwell Jacob Friedman had ever topped the PWI 500, but in the man’s eyes, it should have happened a long time ago.
“I’ll be honest, my first thought was, ‘What took so long?'” MJF said in the interview. 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 a dispute that this should have happened a long time ago? Sure, people talk about it, but that’s okay. We got there.”
The roster’s evaluation period ran from August 1, 2025 to July 31, 2026, during 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 featured the AEW World Championship, and MJF won each of those bouts. He had two AEW World Championship reigns for a total of 154 days, making 9 successful title defenses during the two reigns. MJF didn’t just find success in AEW because he would win CMLL World Lightweight Championship on August 1, 2025 and held the title until mid-September, where he lost to Mistico in one of CMLL’s most critically acclaimed matches of 2025.
Finishing sixth in 2023 and seventh in 2024, MJF knocked his former mentor Cody Rhodes off the top spot, with Rhodes finishing second after topping the list. the previous two years. Former MJF rivals CM Punk and Mistico finished third and fourth respectively, while Konosuke Takeshita finished fifth. Another of last year’s biggest MJF contenders, Hangman Page, finished sixth and Yota Tsuji would finish seventh. Rounding out the top ten were 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 H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.