Although multiple wrestlers would don the “Tiger Mask”, nobody embodied the character better than the original, played by Satoru Sayama.  He was a lightning quick combatant who was the precursor to many of the high flying lighter Japanese wrestlers who followed.  It may have taken a colorful mask for him to draw the attention of the fans (especially the younger ones) but when they did, they found a wrestler who was not just quick, but was technically proficient.  His matches with the Dynamite Kid remain classics as were his series with Kuniaki Kobayashi.  Tiger Mask does have an early history with the WWE as he was their WWF Junior Heavyweight Champion in the early 1980’s, but he walked away from the industry in his prime and though he did come back his overall body of work is much less than it should have been.

We could have ranked Billy Gunn on his own.  As one half of the Smoking Gunns, the Billy & Chuck tandem, and an up and down solo career post DX, he could have garnered a top 200 spot.  We also could have ranked the Road Dogg as a single as he had a lengthy career without Gunn.  Clearly we chose to pair them up as the duo of the “Road Dogg, Jesse James and the Bad Ass, Billy Gunn, The New Age Outlaws” were hands down the high water mark for both their careers.

As you may have deduced, we are not in the practice of ranking wrestlers from TNA.  It is not that we don’t respect them, but realistically as long as they are competing for the only viable National wrestling alternative, they will never be inducted while they are actively performing there.  We are not sure if we are making an exception with Tazz, who due to injury will never perform again, but is the current color commentator with Impact Wrestling.

After years of portraying various pompous characters, Scott Levy found gold when he created the persona of Raven.  Raven was a dark brooding character that was very much a reflection of society around him.  Quickly, he became one of the centerpiece’s of Paul Heyman’s ECW and was delivering brilliant matches and compelling promos.  As Raven, he would capture the ECW Championship twice and headlined the first ECW Pay Per View.