For the first time in his career, Cody Rhodes topped the illustrious PWI 500 as the No. 1 wrestler in the world for 2024.

Pro Wrestling Illustrated announced Tuesday that the undisputed WWE champion secured the top spot in the annual rankings based on his performance during the evaluation period of Aug. 1, 2023 through July 31, 2024:

All Elite Wrestling stars Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay followed Rhodes in the rankings.

Here is a look at the entire top 10, courtesy of PWI:

1. Cody Rhodes (WWE)
2. Swerve Strickland (AEW)
3. Will Ospreay (AEW)
4. Seth Rollins (WWE)
5. Tetsuya Naito (NJPW)
6. Damian Priest (WWE)
7. MJF (AEW)
8. Jon Moxley (AEW)
9. Gunther (WWE)
10. Místico (CMLL)

After AEW's Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega were No. 1 in the PWI in 2020 and 2021, respectively, WWE is now on a three-year run of its wrestlers earning the top spot with Rhodes following Roman Reigns in 2022 and Seth Rollins in 2023.

WWE and AEW also had an equal number of representatives in the top 10 of the 2024 PWI with four each. They are joined by one wrestler from New Japan Pro-Wrestling and one from Mexican promotion CMLL.

Over the past four years, Rhodes made it inside the PWI 500 top 10 on three occasions, finishing seventh in 2020, sixth in 2022 and 10th in 2023.

However, it was always going to be difficult to leave Rhodes out of the top spot in 2024 after he beat Reigns in the main event of WrestleMania 40 to become undisputed WWE champion and end The Tribal Chief's historic title run at 1,316 days.

Strickland also held his promotion's top title during the evaluation period, beating Samoa Joe for the AEW World Championship at Dynasty in April before dropping it to Bryan Danielson last month at All In.

Meanwhile, Ospreay is the reigning international champion in AEW, and he had countless highly regarded matches during the evaluation period against the likes of Strickland, Danielson, MJF and Konosuke Takeshita.

As for the 2023 No. 1 in Rollins, a sizable portion of his successful World Heavyweight Championship reign occurred during the evaluation period, but he also missed multiple months with a knee injury, which likely prevented him from being higher than fourth.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the top 10 was the fact that Gunther only placed ninth despite his continued dominance in WWE.

While The Ring General did not win the World Heavyweight Championship from Damian Priest until after the evaluation period ended, he held the intercontinental title for much of it, putting the finishing touches on his record 666-day reign.

He also won the King of the Ring tournament, which is what earned him the opportunity to challenge for the world title.

Although Gunther's placement was somewhat disappointing given his dominance and the quality of his matches, he has a strong chance to ascend to the No. 1 spot next year if his world title reign resembles what he did with the IC title.

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