Despite the major respect we have for Lou Thesz, we were not initially planning to put him in our list. The bulk of Thesz’ career took place before the dawn of the WWE and even then he barely had any dealings with the North Eastern promotion. Still, the induction of Gorgeous George has opened up the idea of looking at an older era of Professional Wrestling and if you are looking at the most flamboyant wrestler of the first era of televised wrestling, you have to look at the best of its time.

There has been a lot of negativity surrounding the Ultimate Warrior, and honestly a lot of it is justified. His detractors point to his lack of wrestling ability and incoherent interviews. They are right, as the vast majority of his matches were not wrestling clinics and more often than not, you really didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. With all of that said, there was a huge population of wrestling fans that made the Ultimate Warrior one of the most popular wrestlers of the late 80’s and early 90’s.

When The Rock called himself the most electrifying man in sports entertainment he wasn’t kidding. There has been no wrestler before or after who was could captivate an audience like he could. The amount of wrestlers who have tried to segue over into Hollywood is long but only Dwayne Johnson became a megastar in that medium. Vince McMahon has often been quoted that he was not in the wrestling business but that he was in the entertainment business. It seems that no past employee of Vince ever personified that statement better than the Rock.

When Bob Backlund first hit the Northeast he had the credentials to be a wrestling star; he was a legitimate amateur champion, he had the boyish good looks and the humble demeanor that made him the perfect face. This equated to him holding the WWF World Heavyweight Championship for over five years.