Ray's 'Rasslin' Rankings - As of June 18th 2011

The following article was originally published at 1Wrestling.com. You can view the original piece by clicking here.

Each week 1Wrestling.com’s resident rankings expert, Ray Mullan, will be scouting the major North American wrestling promotions in order to bring you an in-depth rankings report for the top championships in Pro Wrestling. Find out where your favourite wrestlers ranked this week...

The Top 10 and Tag-Team rankings are based on television and Pay-Per View win-loss records over the course of the month, quality of opposition, and inherent skill of each wrestler or team. All other rankings are based on the official current positions of challengers to the Top Title in each category (I.E. Should a wrestler win a number 1 contenders match, he will automatically be afforded that ranking regardless of current win-loss record).

The number in parentheses indicates a wrestler’s position in that category in the previous rankings report; (-) indicates that the wrestler was not rated in that category in the last report. (C) indicates the wrestler was champion in that category last report.

Ray’s ‘Rasslin’ Rankings – Period Ending June 18th 2011:

WWE can try and distance themselves from the word all they want, but on Monday Night RAW I saw a "WRESTLING” Match! CM Punk and John Cena put on a great display in a good old fashioned wrestling match that fans just ate up. I just hope this match was a foreshadowing to a post-Capitol Punishment program between these two. Punk pinning the WWE Champion propels him to the number two spot in the RAW rankings.

Well, Christian went out and proved a point this week. If you recall I stated last week that Christian was the number 1 contender to Randy Orton’s World Heavyweight title, only as a result of his impending title shot at Capitol Punishment. I felt Sheamus (who actually defeated Randy Orton in non-title action a week ago.) was the real number one contender on merit. However Christian’s victory over Sheamus on Friday Night Smackdown cements his position as Number 1 Contender and removes any doubt people may have to the credibility of his shot on Sunday Night.

Kane jumps Wade Barrett in the Smackdown rankings this week following two clear victories over. Admittedly neither match actually took place on Smackdown, but rather the special edition RAW and Superstars. I still feel WWE need to either stick to enforcing brand separation up to Wrestlemania and then have the respective champions face off in title v title matches or alternatively simply scrap the brand extension altogether.

There has been a lot of movement in the IMPACT Wrestling rankings this week. The man to watch is definitely Gunner. The North Carolina native (though billed from Atlanta, GA) has pinned then World Champion Sting and current World Champion Mr. Anderson in consecutive weeks. Gunner, an Iraq War veteran, has a tremendous backstory and is in the prime of his career at only 30 years old. Gunner has great intensity and all the tools necessary to be a World Champion, it’s only a matter of time.

As a result of Gunner’s victories and Rob Van Dam’s recent win streak, TNA’s undefeated phenom Crimson actually drops two places in the rankings! IMPACT Wrestling’s roster is just choc-full of talent at the moment and this proves a single win or loss and can make a huge difference.

Dropping out of the rankings this week is Jeff Jarrett. Crushing defeats at the hands of Kurt Angle and a promise on Thursday that if he lost (which he did) he would leave the country for Mexico mean Jarrett won’t be seeing a shot at the gold anytime soon. However we’ve been down this road before and everyone knows nothing is over with the “King of the Mountain” until he says so, It won’t be long before Double J will be back on our screens with the latest dastardly plan to take down Kurt Angle.

I was pleased to see IMPACT Wrestling’s announcement of the “Bound For Glory” Series. Twelve Wrestlers (Rob Van Dam, AJ Styles, Gunner, Bully Ray, Crimson, James Storm, Matt Morgan, Devon, Scott Steiner, “The Pope” D’Angelo Dinero, Bobby Roode & Samoa Joe) will be participating in the ongoing competition culminating at Bound For Glory in October where the wrestler with the highest points tally will receive a World Heavyweight Title shot. As the tournament progresses I will incorporate the Bound For Glory Series Rankings into this report aswell.

Well folks, that’s all for now. Enjoy WWE Capitol Punishment tomorrow night and remember if you have any comments or questions pertaining to the rankings, feel free to drop me a line at raymullan@gmail.com or tweet me at @raymullan. Thanks for reading, see you next week!