For a year’s worth of Sundays, Cageside Seats asked you to tell us about your favorite performances in pro wrestling. It’s all been building to this, awarding what we now call the Cageside Cup.
We don’t know why we love this year’s Cup winner…
… okay, we do know why we love her.
More on Timeless Toni Storm and the rest of our 2025-2026 Top Performers below. But first, here’s a rundown of everyone who placed in our one of weekly Wrestling Rankings from the Raw After WrestleMania 41 to WrestleMania 42 — a “year” that determined who got the Cup as Performer of the Year:
Here’s how community members’ weekly ballots are tabulated to create the Rankings, if you’re interested. Wish I had time to do some fancy graphs like I used to back in the early days of this thing — if anyone wants to take a stab at analysis, let me know and I can share the full spreadsheet I use to keep track of it week-to-week.
Even without those, here are some quick thoughts as we close the book on our 14th year…
- For the second straight year, the number of performers who placed in a weekly Top Ten and earned a spot on the annual Rankings dropped. After years of that number increasing, there are 15 fewer names in our 25-26 Rankings than there were in the previous.
- There are always random ties in the Rankings that pop or intrigue me. There actually weren’t too many that stood out this time (not counting the 12 person logjams farther down the list that always put together a random assortment of names), but I get a kick out of Randy Orton and Thekla at 39th. There’s a Mixed Match Challenge duo I’d tune in for.
- Every year, there’s someone who has an early run which keeps them in the top ten most of the year, but whose push fades and they end up not getting a lot of votes later. I still think of it as “the Damien Sandow Award”, because I’m old and the guy now mostly known as Aron Stevens was the first to do it during his days as Miz’s double. Anyway, there were A LOT of candidates this year, as much of the Top Ten picked up most of their total in the first half of the year. It has to go to R-Truth/Ron Killings though, who shot to the top early around re-signing and working with Heel Cena and ended up outside the Top 20.
11 — Naomi10 — Dominik Mysterio
Throwing the new mom in here, because she didn’t miss the Top Ten by much. And because I have a similar thought about the woman who vacated the WWE Women’s World title with a cackle and El Sucio de los Sucios. How much higher up this list would Naomi and the AAA Mega champ be if they had been around all year?
We always have time for our 22-23 Cup winner, and a late Intercontinental title win and a compelling WrestleMania program gave him the boost he needed to make the cut.
8 — Seth Rollins7 —CM Punk
Two men who’ve won the Cup four times between them just couldn’t get any momentum going this year. Rollins missed time for real and worked injuries, but the reaction to his “ruse” seemed to start his decline even before he really got hurt. Punk’s a bit of a conundrum. I’m not sure if the excitement from his return finally ran out, or if WWE overexposed him this year, or what, but week-in week-out votes were hard to come by for the Best in the World over the past 12 months — even with a World title and a WrestleMania main event program.
The Anxious Millennial Cowboy’s booking and Rankings pattern is set at this point. He gets hot chasing a title, then cools while holding it. Worth noting the two-time Men’s World champ is one of only two AEW representatives in the Top Ten (although an AEW wrestler will hoist the Cup for the third time in history).
Another later riser, The Ruler seems like a smart choice for our 15th winner (or one of them, along with a Very Nice, Very Evil little demon dude). Provided we don’t get fickle.
3 (t) — Stephanie Vaquer
From her post-’Mania call-up to winning the vacant Women’s World title at Wrestlepalooze, we had La Primera fever. But for most of Vaquer’s lengthy, just-ended reign, WWE didn’t do much to build on that excitement, and support for her dwindled in the closing months of our year.
His final year was as bizarre as his career, which I still find perfect. Could a more cohesive run have landed him on top, even only being active for 2/3 of the year? We’ll never know…
The Career Killer ended three during the year and spent the first several months of it with a World title. But he disappears for weeks at a time when not holding a title or retiring a legend, so he never made a serious run at…
1 — Timeless Toni Storm
She spent the first several months of the year as champion, and won big All In Texas showdown with then-TBS champion and our 20-21 Cup winner Mercedes Moné. A shocking title loss at All Out slowed her pace, but it didn’t stop the votes from coming in. If she was on our screens, she picked up a few points that week. And she was on our screens every week until she was mysteriously written off after Revolution last month.
Hell’s Favorite Harlot becomes out 11th, and third-ever female, Cup winner:
2025 – 2026: Toni Storm
2024-2025: CM Punk
2023-2024: Orange Cassidy
2022-2023: Sami Zayn
2021-2022: CM Punk
2020-2021: Sasha Banks
2019-2020: Becky Lynch
2018-2019: Becky Lynch
2017-2018: Roman Reigns
2016-2017: AJ Styles
2015-2016: Kevin Owens
2014-2015: Seth Rollins
2013-2014: Daniel Bryan
2012-2013: CM Punk
Join us back here tomorrow for the start of our 15th annual chase for the Cageside Cup!