Tommy Dreamer may not have been the best wrestler in ECW, but he was its soul.  There from the beginning to the end, Dreamer won the hearts of the harsh ECW fan base with his resilience and was rewarded with the “He’s Hardcore” chant that may not seem like much of a compliment, but was symbolic in ways that words cannot describe without writing bible length prose.   In Extreme Championship Wrestling the pretty boy with the green suspenders became the Innovator of Violence, and a man who next to Paul Heyman may have been the most important man in the company.

From North Carolina, Shane Helms was a top flyer in southern independents.  When the Hardy Boys broke through in the WWF, WCW countered by signing Helms and his friend, Shannon Moore, and placing them with Evan Karagias, and the three became 3 Count, a parody of boy bands.  Helms would later be the breakout star of the trio, winning the Cruiserweight Title on the promotions last PPV.

Helms’s contract was one of the few that the WWE picked up immediately when they bought the company, and while he lost his title in his debut match, he was able to show personality, and morphed into the Hurricane, a super hero wrestler in the vein of the Green Lantern.  The Hurricane was entertaining as a low to mid-card face, and he a good wrestler to boot.  An ill-advised heel turn in 2005 did not do much for his career, and he fizzled out before departing the company shortly after.

Helms would have a food career afterwards in the independents, and he eventually returned to the WWE as an agent.

Had the Great Sasuke signed with the WWF (and not TAKA Michinoku) in the summer of 1997, how much higher up the rankings would he be? The WWF was planning to build a division around him, but even though his WWF legacy is two matches (both wins over TAKA), he leaves behind an exciting body of work in Japan that made tape traders in the 1990’s drool. That probably isn’t worth that much here though.

When he was first seen on national television, Paul Wight was billed as The Giant, or specifically the son of Andre the Giant.  The seven-foot plus wrestler's first high profile match was against Hulk Hogan in WCW, ad he would later become their World Champion in little time.  Staying at or near the top of the card for the bulk of his WCW run, Wight would join the WWE and had a scattered career in the world’s biggest wrestling promotion.