Viewing Thread:
"Wrestler Comments"

After posting my thoughts on the Ultimate Warrior yesterday in the “Warrior Goes Nuts” thread I thought I’d comment on a few legends as reading through the WWE forum I’ve noticed quite a few people have different thoughts on different wrestlers both past and present. For now I’m just going to comment on “legends” but hopefully in the not too distant future I’ll have time to do other legends and then other current wrestlers who have the potential to become legends.

You may not agree that the wrestlers I comment on below are legends for whatever reason as different people will have different views on what a “legend” is, but the first few I’m commenting on below all have one thing in common – they’ve all been in the business for years and if you ask someone to name say 5 wrestlers past or present, at least 2-3 of their choices will come from the list below.

Hulk Hogan

Hogan is probably the most famous wrestler of all time, not because he’s the best wrestler of all time but because of superb marketing by Vince McMahon in the mid 80’s onwards. No other wrestler has had the marketing exposure he’s had, from replica models and replica shirts to his own TV cartoon show. If you ask anyone, young or old to name 5 wrestlers his name is guaranteed to come up.

In terms of wrestling ability he was ok, he’s not the best wrestler by a long way but to be able to wrestle in all the huge matches he’s done over the years you’ve got to have something about you. In quite a few of his matches, especially the more recent ones his opponents have carried him and he has taken the credit for the match when his opponent should have been recognised for their contribution. Shawn Michaels at Summerslam 2005 is an example as well as the Rock at Wrestlemania.

As far as Terry Bollea the person is concerned I don’t like him. He’s selfish and always has to get his own way and has Vince McMahon wrapped around his little finger – if Hogan wants it, in the end he’ll get it.

A classic example of this is from Wrestlemania 9. Hogan was due to tag with Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake to take on Money Inc, The Million $ Man Ted DiBiase and IRS for the tag team titles. The main event on the card was Bret Hart vs Yokozuna for the Heavyweight title which Bret was supposed to win. On the day of the show Hogan said that if he didn’t walk out of Wrestlemania 9 with the Heavyweight title he wouldn’t show up for his tag match, therefore Hart had to lose to Yokozuna after Mr Fuji threw salt in his eyes where upon Hogan would run to the ring to protest, Yokozuna would challenge Hogan to a match and drop the belt to him. Yokozuna still hold the record for the shortest Heavyweight title reign of 128 seconds.

You can’t deny though that Hogan has played a huge part in making wrestling what it is today and fully deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. I just hope that he will retire for good in the not to distant future as he’s really struggling through matches now and I’d prefer to remember him as he was back in the 90’s.

Bret “The Hitman” Hart

As you probably know I consider Bret Hart to be the best wrestler of all time. For pure wrestling ability the only other wrestlers I consider come anywhere close to his pure wrestling skill are Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit and Owen Hart. He’s known as “The Excellence of Execution” and with very good reason.

A lot of the best matches of all time involve him, Bret vs Shawn Michaels in an Ironman match at Wrestlemania, Bret vs Benoit at the Kansas Arena in a tribute match to Owen Hart, Bret vs Owen at Wrestlemania 10, Bret vs Steve Austin at Wrestlemania and Bret vs The British Bulldog at Summerslam 92, a match I was extremely fortunate to witness live and in my opinion this is the greatest wrestling match of all time. How many other PPV’s have had an Intercontinental Title match as the main event?

Bret Hart’s first major match in the WWE was at Wrestlemania 2 in 1986 when he competed in the Battle Royal that involved not only WWF superstars but American Football stars as well such as William “The Refrigerator” Perry. Hart and Andre The Giant were the last 2 in at the end and, unsurprisingly, Andre gorilla pressed Hart over the top rope onto Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart for the win. He teamed up with Neidhart as the “Hart Foundation”, capturing the tag team titles before embarking on a solo career sometime in late 1991 – early 1992.

At Wrestlemania 8 he won his first singles title, beating Rowdy Roddy Piper for the Intercontinental title in yet another classic match before dropping it to The Mountie. This was however to set him up to become the WWF Champion, and later on in 1992 he beat Ric Flair in Saskhataewn (sp) in Canada for his first title run. Hart had a 5 year run at being one of the top superstars in the WWF, battling with Owen Hart, Shawn Michaels and Steve Austin until the famous screw job at Survivor Series 1997 which was his last match for the WWF.

He left for WCW where he had further singles success until a match with Goldberg where he was kicked on the back of the head and suffered brain damage which ended his wrestling career. A few years later he fell off his bike and hit his head, suffering a stroke which took him a year to recover from. Now back to health, he still does personal appearances and may even appear at the next Wrestlemania where he is due to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Quite simply, Bret Hart is the best wrestler of all time.

Andre The Giant

Andre Rouissmof was the first wrestling superstar of the modern age and is, in my opinion, the reason wrestling is around like it is today. OK Hogan played a part but in the early 80’s Andre was wrestling itself and people watched it simply because of him. Standing 7’4 and weighing around 500 lbs, he was undefeated in something like 15 years before Hogan defeated him in the mid 80’s.

He battled with Hogan in the mid 80’s and his finest hour came at Wrestlemania 3 when in front of over 93,000 fans he fought Hogan for the WWF title. This whole event was hyped up on this one match and it was a huge success. Andre lost but this has to be one of the best matches of all time and what you have to realise is Andre was very ill at this time.

In the year before Wrestlemania 3 Andre’s body was literally collapsing in on itself from his sheer size and he had to have back surgery to stop his spine from breaking. Bear in mind at Wrestlemania 3 Hogan slammed him into the mat before the legdrop and the pin and this move itself could have paralysed or even killed him.

After Wrestlemania 3 Andre and Hogan had a rematch and Andre won the title, however he then sold it to The Million $ Man Ted DiBiase and the title was vacated leading to the WWF Title tournament at Wrestlemania 4. His last appearance at a major event was at Wrestlemania 7 when he interfered in the Big Boss Man vs Mr Perfect match.

In 1993 Andre went to France for his fathers funeral and went to sleep in a hotel room that night. He never woke up. His body could cope no longer and he died of heart failure in his sleep aged just 46.

Andre the Giant was not the best wrestler by far. His sheer size meant many moves were off limits to him but that didn’t stop him becoming one of the best superstars of all time in my opinion, and if it were not for him the WWE today would probably just be another small independent organisation.

HHH

OK guys/gals you know he has to be in here! Personally I hate the person, both the HHH character and Paul Levesque but he is one hell of an athlete. Marrying the bosses daughter has boosted his career and I believe that if he hadn’t he wouldn’t be a 10 times Champion but I still believe he would have been a multiple Champion none the less.

He started wrestling under the name Terry Ryzing (terrorising – get it!) before being known as Jean-Paul Levesque and then Hunter Hearst Helmsley before coming to be known as HHH. In his early WWF days he battled Owen Hart for the European title before getting a push which he then completely wrecked by being involved in the infamous Madison Square Garden incident, where he broke character and hugged Diesel and Shawn Michaels in the middle of the ring and was held back for a year.

Since then he’s not looked back, winning title after title and there haven’t been too many periods when he’s not held a title or even two at the same time! As a wrestler I thing he’s a good solid all round performer and plays the crowd as good as anyone can whether a heel or face but he’s especially good as a heel. He doesn’t think twice about sacrificing his body for the sport and you can tell he lives and breathes wrestling and always has 100% commitment to his matches.

A few examples of this are when he ripped his thigh muscle clean away from the bone in a tag match with Steve Austin as his partner. He laid at ringside nearly in tears at the pain he was in but still got back in the ring and allowed Chris Jericho to put the Walls of Jericho on him. That injury could have ended his career and as it was he was out for 8 months before returning.

Also in the very first Elimination chamber match RVD jumped from the top rope and hit him in the throat with his knee, partly crushing his windpipe. If you watch the match you can see him rolling round clutching his throat and even passing in and out of consciousness with the referee trying to get him to leave the match and go to the back. He refused and completed the match and was then rushed to hospital where he spent 3 days recovering before going home to fully recover. It was that bad it was comparable to an asthma attack or someone having an allergic reaction to peanuts or a wasp/bee sting and he still carried on to finish the match.

He’s also regularly involved in matches where he’s busted wide open, not from a true blow but where he’s cut himself with a razor blade hidden in the wrapping around his wrists to give the effect of a nasty blow to add to the overall effect of the match. That’s commitment. People like Jericho are too vain to do this, claiming that it’ll spoil their looks, ok HHH isn’t the best looking of people but how many other people as part of their job will go to such lengths to try and strive for perfection?

If he’s to be believed he will retire in 2-3 years and then more than likely will take over from Vince as the boss of WWE. If I were Shane I’d be livid. Like him or not he’s going to be around for a long time to come.

In conclusion I think HHH is one of the best superstars of all time but the methods he’s used to get there are very questionable. I believe he’s had too much influence over his character, a bit like Hulk Hogan, and if he wasn’t the boss’s son in law he wouldn’t have hogged the limelight for so long which has damaged other superstars opportunities.

The Rock

If ya smelllllllllllllll what the Rock……is…..cooking. Quite simply the best microphone skills ever. No-one comes close, Hogan, Michaels, Austin all trail in his wake. The boring 20 minute promos you get at the start of RAW and Smackdown make me cry when I think of how good the Rock used to be. I never missed one, never.

Now I tend to turn RAW or Smackdown on about 15 minutes into the programme as I know it’s unlikely there’ll be any wrestling, just the same wrestlers spouting out the same rubbish week in week out trying to hype up their next match, which was the same opponent as last time, which was the same opponent as last time………….

There are too many great Rock mic moments to recall. The one that comes off the top of my head was when The Coach interviewed him in Charleston and the Rock made him dance like a complete idiot. Then the Rock made a comment about how he liked to sleep with animals to which The Coach whispered to him “Come on Rocky, it was only once” to which the Rock replied “I was only joking you damn freak!” Absolute classic!

Dwaine Johnson started out as Rocky Maivia and was a member of the Nation of Domination which included wrestlers such as Faarooq, and his first taste of gold was beating HHH for the Intercontinental Title after only a short period of time since his debut, leading to the famous “Rocky sucks” chants.

They didn’t last long as he became one of the most popular superstars of all time. He did try to turn heel but it failed miserably, he’s just one of those wrestlers who can only play a face, rather like HHH can only play a heel to be any good.

As a wrestler he’s a good solid performer who can hide any technical weaknesses with charisma by the bucket load and fancy showboating moves like the People’s Elbow, which let’s face it is a simple elbow drop made legendary by his build up to it. Very few wrestlers can do that.

This is probably going to be a controversial comment but I feel that the Rock is not a better wrestling superstar overall than any of the other wrestlers I’ve commented on here. He lacks commitment. OK Hollywood came calling and he’s doing a great job there but he’s sold out the business that’s given him a break to stardom, turned his back on the fans and turns up when he feels like it, usually when it involves a big pay off.

If it were left to me unless he commits himself to wrestling regularly again for the WWE I’d never have him mentioned again let alone wrestle or even appear at a WWE event, televised or not. He’s simply an ungrateful traitor.

Stone Cold Steve Austin

Interesting fact (or not!). “Stone Cold” comes from his first wife who was English. She’d made him a cup of tea one day and he didn’t drink it so she told him to drink it up quickly before it became stone cold.

Another great mic performer and the inventor of some great catchphrases. “And that’s the bottom line, cause Stone Cold says so!” is probably the most famous.

Steve Williams was part of the “Hollywood Blondes” in WCW (look at him back then with long blonde hair, can you believe it’s him?!) and later Steve Austin. He didn’t like the name as it’s the same as the $6 million mans but he stuck with it. After suffering an injury to his neck he was fired by Eric Bischoff as he was going to be out for a while. Very harsh.

He went to the WWF under the name “The Ringmaster” managed by Ted DiBiase and used his Million $ Dream finisher to start off with. DiBiase became disillusioned by the WWF and therefore to write him out of the organisation, Austin competed in a match where if he lost DiBiase was fired from the WWF. Austin of course lost and DiBiase left, leaving Austin on his own and with a change of name and change of finisher the rest, as they say, is history.

His first major feud was with Bret Hart, culminating in an absolute classic series of matches the best of which has to be at Wrestlemania 13 which on one wrestling poll was voted the best Wrestlemania match of all time. He then feuded with Shawn Michaels, again in a series of classic matches which even involved Mike Tyson at one Wrestlemania match.

He then feuded with Vince and Shane, getting screwed out of the “ownership” of the company in a ladder match with a briefcase hanging over the ring against Vince. He’s held virtually every title there is to offer on multiple occasions and his in your face personality created the WWF’s “Attitude” period when they reinvented themselves to be pitched at more adult audiences.

In a match with Owen Hart Owen botched a reverse piledriver and all of Owen’s and Austin’s weight, some 480lbs, crashed down on Austin’s neck, breaking it. This serious injury has put a major dampener on his career since then, no-one can do any sort of move to his head in case it causes further damage and possibly paralysis.

Over the past few years he’s been in and out of trouble both with the police and the WWE. He was given a break from the WWE as his drinking was out of control and he beat up his wife, former WWE superstar Deborah getting a 1 year suspended sentence along with community service for his actions. Whether he will wrestle again is yet to be seen. It’s rumoured one of the main events for next year’s Wrestlemania is Austin vs Hogan but who knows? He’s due to appear at the RAW Homecoming next week so hopefully that will reignite his passion for wrestling and he’ll be back full time in the near future.

In conclusion Austin was a good wrestler but his main strength was his mic work and attitude. These combined made him one of the most popular superstars, both as a heel and as a face, and in my opinion he’s the best superstar there’s ever been who can pull off being both a face and a heel.

Undertaker

Mark Calloway was wrestling as “Mean” Mark Callous on the independent circuit in early 1990 when he was snapped up by the WWF. At Survivor Series 1990 he made his debut as the Undertaker in part of Ted DiBiase’s team and hasn’t looked back since. Just 1 year later he beat Hulk Hogan for the WWF title after tombstoning him on a chair at Survivor Series 1991 that Paul Bearer, his manager, had thrown into the ring.

15 years later he’s still a huge force in the WWE after having battled with virtually every superstar there’s been, Giant Gonzales, Psycho Sid, Steve Austin, Yokozuna and Kane to name just a few that spring to mind. Over the years he’s had to take a break from wrestling for 6 months or so as his hips are not good and will soon force him to retire.

His popularity over the years has been massive. When he first came into the WWE he was a heel, but over the next couple of years or so he became a face and although there was a heel turn a few years back for the vast majority of his career he’s been a face.

I think the reason why he became so popular and has stayed the course is peoples fascination with death. Bringing urns and coffins to the ring, as well as a raven I think it was at Wrestlemania 9 kept peoples interest in him and made his popularity grow. A few years back he came back from yet another break as “The American Badass”, riding around the ring on a motorbike which I only ever saw him crash into the ring barriers once! Soon however people were calling for the old Undertaker back and he became the dead man once again.

As far as the character of the Undertaker is concerned I think it’s one of the best inventions the WWF ever came up with, however I’m not so sure about Mark Calloway the person. He holds a lot of backstage influence and like Hogan and HHH usually gets his way in the end and has things the way he wants them.

A great example of this is when the WCW Invasion angle was going on after Vince had bought WCW. The Undertaker was involved in a stalker angle where someone was stalking Sara, his (very sexy!) wife. In the end it was revealed as Diamond Dallas Page and unsurprisingly the two had a feud. Which Mark Calloway clearly didn’t want. He completely no sold all of DDP’s moves and generally made a mockery out of wrestling as a whole.

DDP was doing moves which should have been sold with at least a grimaced face along with a clutching of the part of the body that the hold was done on. Not Calloway. He just got up as though the move hadn’t hurt him, which let’s face it it didn’t but he wasn’t even playing the old Undertaker where he was seemingly invincible and didn’t feel pain.

In conclusion I feel the Undertaker is a great character invention and Mark Calloway plays him perfectly for most of the time, however there are a few occasions where he pushes things a little too far and because of his backstage influence gets away with it at the cost of other wrestlers who don’t deserve it. DDP for example left the WWF soon after the stalker angle was over.

However I feel that the Undertaker is the best character gimmick of all time, although Mark Calloway could do with being a little less arrogant at times and be fair and help his opponents a little more although he does deserve huge credit and a future hall of fame induction for his outstanding contribution to wrestling.

Mick Foley

Simply put in my opinion the best hardcore wrestler ever. The things he’s done to his body, purely for the wrestling fans entertainment is mind blowing. He truly is a legend no question.

I watched his biography on the Biography Channel a while back (in fact I’ve watched it 3 or 4 times) and it’s fascinating. There’s a home video of him jumping off the top of a shed roof onto a mattress practising his wrestling moves which is pure madness but a sure sign of the great stunts he was to perform professionally.

Some of the best (or worst however you view it) are as follows. Facing the Undertaker in a cage match has to be one of the most brutal matches ever. When he was thrown off the top of the cage through the announcers table I was nearly sick, thinking it was an accident rather than a real stunt. It was only half properly executed though as he was supposed to go through on his back but ended up going through on his side and was lucky not to break his arm or shoulder or both.

When he got onto the top of the cage and the Undertaker chokeslamed him, the cage gave way and he plummeted to the ring below. That was definitely not a stunt but the result of shoddy workmanship by the riggers who hadn’t put the cell together properly and it was falling to bits around them. If you watch the match look closely at his nose after he’s hit the ring – the white thing is one of his teeth that was knocked out on impact and ended up going through the roof of his mouth and down his nose. However he still carried on and finished the match.

This match is the only one I’ve seen where Vince and other backstage staff came to the ring not as part of a storyline or run in but out of genuine concern that Mick Foley was going to be killed and wanted the match to be stopped. He refused because of the commitment he has to wrestling and the fans who watch it which makes him one of the best of all time.

The other classic match that sticks out in my head is at the Royal Rumble 2000 when he faced HHH in a street fight for the WWF title in what was another brutal match which HHH won in the end. Mick Foley allowed himself to be back dropped onto a load of tacks (although you can clearly see the padding he’s got on his back to cushion them) and then pedigreed onto them as well which finished him off. When he rolls over you can see them sticking right into his face and arms so he really was pushed right into them and didn’t cushion his fall. Total commitment.

In conclusion Mick Foley is the best hardcore wrestler there has ever been and most probably ever will be. Another certain inductee into the hall of fame and rightly so.

The British Bulldog

Interesting Fact #2 – His real name was David Boy Smith, when his father went to fill in his birth certificate he put his gender in his middle name box!

The British Bulldog was one half of The British Bulldogs along with the Dynamite Kid and had huge tag team success in the 80’s before falling out and splitting up. The official line was that the Dynamite Kid was seriously injured and had to quit wrestling as a result but as far as I’m aware he carried on wrestling on the independent circuit and may still be doing so to this day.

After they split Davey Boy Smith turned to singles wrestling and had good success over the years that followed. His finest hour came at Summerslam 92 when he beat his brother in law Bret Hart at Wembley stadium in front of over 83,000 fans for the Intercontinental Championship, a match which I was fortunate to see live and in my opinion is one of the best of all time.

Over the following few years he had further successes, becoming the first European Champion and gaining a world title shot against Diesel which he unfortunately lost. Than it all went downhill. He got in trouble with the police on the domestic front and became addicted to drugs. All credit to Vince he paid for him to go into rehab and stood by him but it was almost as if the Bulldog didn’t want help and went to rehab to keep his job with the WWF.

In about 1995 I saw him at my local sports centre when he was doing some smaller shows and stood next to him and thought that there is no way he can be as big as he is without steroids. 5”10 and 280 lbs of pure muscle must be impossible to achieve. Unfortunately I was right. About 3 years ago he was playing with his girlfriends kids in Canada when his heart literally exploded from steroid abuse. He was just 39 years old.

The Bulldog had about 20 years as a wrestler and is certainly the best British wrestler there has ever been. If his personal life hadn’t been as turbulent as it was who knows what he could have achieved? He married into the best and most famous wrestling family there has ever been and the possibilities were endless for him. He just didn’t take them.

Asides from these facts the Bulldog was one hell of a wrestler with power moves to make anyone envious. Superplex where he had his opponent vertical for a good 15-20 seconds along with great technical skills, no doubt honed in the Hart family dungeon made him one of the best wrestlers of all time, even if his mic skills and overall personality and charisma didn’t shine through enough. His wrestling ability did all the talking that needed to be done.

The Legion of Doom

Mike Hegstrand and Joe Laurentis made up, in my opinion, the best tag team there has ever been. The first (and as far as I’m aware the only) tag team to hold the tag titles in every major wrestling organisation had millions of followers around the world.

As soon as the music hit “Oooooooooooooooh what a rush” people were up from their seats cheering the arrival of Hawk and Animal with their shoulder accessories and face paint, anticipating yet another great match.

There was something about Hawk and Animal that just clicked, they knew what moves the other was going to do before they even did and flowed effortlessly like any great tag team should.

Their partnership ended in the 90’s but they did make a return to the WWF as The Road Warriors managed by Sunny for a brief period of time before splitting again. The partnership was ended for good in 2003, when Mike Hegstrand moved house with his wife and after a busy day shifting his stuff he went for a lie down to rest for an hour or so. He never woke up. He was killed by a massive heart attack in his sleep aged just 46.

With the state of tag team wrestling in the WWE nowadays I’m often confused as to how it managed to get like it has. Legion of Doom had some great feuds with the likes of The Hart Foundation and Demolition but the tag team division nowadays is usually two singles wrestlers thrown together for a few months before being split up. Legion of Doom lasted decades and were as popular as they’d ever been when they last tagged together.

The partnership of Animal and Heidenreich is a disgrace. When Hawk died LOD should have died as well as they were the one and only Legion of Doom. The reason they’ve been paired is to get Joe Laurentis some exposure ready for when his book comes out in a few months and it stinks. It’s all disrespectful to the memory of Mike Hegstrand.

This aside, LOD were as close to the perfect tag team as you could get and with the state of the tag team division nowadays I very much doubt if any other tag team will come close.

Summary

I hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings on only a handful of who I consider to be the best wrestlers ever. Hopefully in the not too distant future I’ll have the time to post my opinions on many more wrestlers and then I plan to write about current wrestlers who I feel could join this list in the future.

You’ve probably noticed only wrestlers who have been in the WWF/WWE and/or WCW are mentioned here, that is simply because these are the 2 organisations I’ve watched regularly for the past 20 years and feel that I am qualified to comment on.

Only recently, really only for the past 2 months or so have I begun to watch other federations on TWC, for example TNA and therefore don’t feel I’m in a position to be able to pass judgement on their wrestlers for at least another year or so yet, however anyone who does want to make comments on wrestlers from other organisations please feel free to do so.

I hope you’ll add your own comments to mine so we can have a healthy debate as to the good and bad points of established or up and coming wrestlers and how we feel they can become great, or continue to be great superstars in the future.

Thanks for reading

Richard aka Smedlos.

Kawada wrote:
> The Rock
>
> Now this is the thing i'm really going to rip on, Dwayne Johnson
> doesn't have a responsibility to you, me or anyone else in the world
> except his family and it's exactly because of them he turned to
> movies. He gets paid a ton more, has to work less and doesn't need to
> put his body on the line nearly as much. If someone offered you the
> manager's job at a prestigious company and you had to quit your job
> at McDonald's you aren't going to be thinking *oh wow i can't be
> letting my customers down i better turn down this bucketful of money
> and stay here* You're going to take the job with the most money
> offered so don't bad mouth Johnson for doing exactly the same thing.
> He doesn't owe you anything, he did his job properly he got himself
> over, gave you a good 6 or 7 years of entertainment, made a bit of
> money and then when Hollywood came calling he smartly chose that
> option and i for one can't blame him because i know me and 99% of the
> population (which includes people like you going waaaaaaaa Rocky sold
> out, he should stay loyal to us fans) would do the same damn thing
>

I'm gonna have to agree on that. The Rock was a great wrestler when he was wrestling, and he will be missed but nobody can have a go at him for doing whats in his best interests. As Kawada says you are a lot more likely to get injured wrestling than you are in the movies. Plus in the movies you sometimes get to make out with hot women :p (although the rock played a gay dude in Be Cool)
Also i believe that the Rock is no longer under WWE Contract which means he has no obligation to turn up anymore. It would be nice to see him turn up for maybe more than a one off promo and actually work a storyline for a little while. I think the Rock could well get a better reception than Hogan if he returned, but he has no duty to do so.
I read that the Rock and the WWE may work out a short term deal at some point which i would like to see.

Thanks for the comments I appreciate you all taking the time to read my post. Please feel free to correct any more factual errors as there are bound to be a few more as the writing came from memory and I didn't double check the ones where I wasn't 100% sure. I never knew Mark Calloway was in WCW though that must have slipped my memory, you learn something new every day!

Looking back on the post I admit I was a bit hard on the Rock but my view still stands - an appearance say every few months between movies wouldn't go amiss to let the fans know that the very people who made him a superstar both in and out of the ring in the first place still matter to him.

With regards to the money aspect I admit I don't have a clue how much he earns per movie but I don't think it will be ever so much more than he was earning in the WWE which was around $7 million per year when you count his salary, personal arrearances, cut of merchandising etc.

With regards to him going for the job that pays the most in past interviews he's said he really misses the live audience of the WWE compared the camera in acting and he's more than set up for life financially so you'd have thought he'd do the thing he likes doing the most which from past interviews does seem to be wrestling - it seems strange then that he's doing movie afer movie so Kawada I believe you're right when you say he'd go for the money and I believe that comments he made in these past interviews may not have been totally truthful.

I've read that Jericho will not cut himself deliberately but if that's not true, which is likely then that's fair enough. HHH will however and I give him credit for that as it does add effect to the match, a classic example was a match I've already commented on, Royal Rumble 2000 vs Mankind which is one of the best matches ever.

I still think Bulldog is better than Regal and the Dynamite Kid as a wrestler, however the same cannot be said of his personal life which quite frankly was a disgrace.

I've started to write about a few more "legends" and will post my comments as soon as I've finished.

Very_Metal - what I did with this post is write it in Word and then cut and paste it into a new message box as I've had the same problem you've had with long posts and it's very annoying!

Decent read but wouldn't be me if i didn't disagree on a couple of things

Smedlos wrote:
> HHH
> He laid at ringside nearly in tears at the pain he was in but still got
> back in the ring and allowed Chris Jericho to put the Walls of Jericho
> on him. That injury could have ended his career

And it's a damn shame for the wrestling industry that it didn't


> He’s also regularly involved in matches where he’s busted wide open,
> not from a true blow but where he’s cut himself with a razor blade
> hidden in the wrapping around his wrists to give the effect of a
> nasty blow to add to the overall effect of the match. That’s
> commitment.

No that's a way to try and disguise a poor main event because he doesn't have enough skill to be able to put on at least a *** match despite how much he believes himself to be the reincarnation of Flair.


> If he’s to be believed he will retire in 2-3 years and then more than
> likely will take over from Vince as the boss of WWE. If I were Shane
> I’d be livid. Like him or not he’s going to be around for a long time
> to come.

Good job the WWE won't be then :-D



> The Rock
. OK
> Hollywood came calling and he’s doing a great job there but he’s sold
> out the business that’s given him a break to stardom, turned his back
> on the fans and turns up when he feels like it, usually when it
> involves a big pay off.
>
> If it were left to me unless he commits himself to wrestling
> regularly again for the WWE I’d never have him mentioned again let
> alone wrestle or even appear at a WWE event, televised or not. He’s
> simply an ungrateful traitor.



Now this is the thing i'm really going to rip on, Dwayne Johnson doesn't have a responsibility to you, me or anyone else in the world except his family and it's exactly because of them he turned to movies. He gets paid a ton more, has to work less and doesn't need to put his body on the line nearly as much. If someone offered you the manager's job at a prestigious company and you had to quit your job at McDonald's you aren't going to be thinking *oh wow i can't be letting my customers down i better turn down this bucketful of money and stay here* You're going to take the job with the most money offered so don't bad mouth Johnson for doing exactly the same thing.
He doesn't owe you anything, he did his job properly he got himself over, gave you a good 6 or 7 years of entertainment, made a bit of money and then when Hollywood came calling he smartly chose that option and i for one can't blame him because i know me and 99% of the population (which includes people like you going waaaaaaaa Rocky sold out, he should stay loyal to us fans) would do the same damn thing

> The Bulldog had about 20 years as a wrestler and is certainly the best
> British wrestler there has ever been.

Different opinions and all that but personally i'd put Regal and Dynamite ahead of him.
Dynamite has also been confined to a wheelchair thanks to the bumps he took during his career

see, now THIS is the way to get your word count up... even if some of it may be rubbish ("jericho is too vain to bleed"... no), at least it's original.
usually when i spend ages typing a post my pc will do that thing where it starts loading the page, then stops. DOH! :D

Yup he had his Mean Mark Callous gimmick in WCW and he faced Luger at the Great American Bash in 1990

> Undertaker
>
> Mark Calloway was wrestling as “Mean” Mark Callous on the independent
> circuit in early 1990 when he was snapped up by the WWF. At Survivor
> Series 1990 he made his debut as the Undertaker in part of Ted
> DiBiase’s team and hasn’t looked back since. Just 1 year later he
> beat Hulk Hogan for the WWF title after tombstoning him on a chair at
> Survivor Series 1991 that Paul Bearer, his manager, had thrown into
> the ring.

Smed I don't like to pick holes in what is a very lengthy (and readable) post but Calloway was a WCW wrestler at one stage (during the late 80's) before becoming The Undertaker.

Who his character was or how long he stayed for I don't know, but he definitely had history in WCW I remember reading about it somewhere.

...that aside, great post :D

My simpler version

Mr Kennedy

Brilliance. Love the entrance. Love the finisher.

The Wardy wrote:
> You do all that yourself?
>
> How long did that take?

Yes I did indeed write the whole thing myself. The missis went shopping down Derby about 12-30 and I'd not got anything to do really until the Liverpool vs Chelsea match at 4-00 so I decided to start writing about 12-45 and finally finished about 4-15 so a good 3 3/4 hours it took me.

I really don't know where the time went, had a few beers (well 6 cans of John Smiths) along the way and I didn't really think about what I was writing it just came out. As I don't have Broadband yet (I sent off for it yesterday so hopefully i'll have it in the next fortnight) I wrote it on Microsoft Word and pasted it onto a new topic measage when I'd finished - it fitted perfectly thankfully!

Just felt that with all the opinions about various wrestlers on the WWE forum (it should really be called the wrestling forum now) we could do with a thread where we could praise or slate wrestlers nowadays for what they do, or don't do either personally or in the professional lives.

As I said I'm hoping to write my opinion about other wrestlers in the coming weeks, but if you have any comments to add please feel free to do so.

You do all that yourself?

How long did that take?

After posting my thoughts on the Ultimate Warrior yesterday in the “Warrior Goes Nuts” thread I thought I’d comment on a few legends as reading through the WWE forum I’ve noticed quite a few people have different thoughts on different wrestlers both past and present. For now I’m just going to comment on “legends” but hopefully in the not too distant future I’ll have time to do other legends and then other current wrestlers who have the potential to become legends.

You may not agree that the wrestlers I comment on below are legends for whatever reason as different people will have different views on what a “legend” is, but the first few I’m commenting on below all have one thing in common – they’ve all been in the business for years and if you ask someone to name say 5 wrestlers past or present, at least 2-3 of their choices will come from the list below.

Hulk Hogan

Hogan is probably the most famous wrestler of all time, not because he’s the best wrestler of all time but because of superb marketing by Vince McMahon in the mid 80’s onwards. No other wrestler has had the marketing exposure he’s had, from replica models and replica shirts to his own TV cartoon show. If you ask anyone, young or old to name 5 wrestlers his name is guaranteed to come up.

In terms of wrestling ability he was ok, he’s not the best wrestler by a long way but to be able to wrestle in all the huge matches he’s done over the years you’ve got to have something about you. In quite a few of his matches, especially the more recent ones his opponents have carried him and he has taken the credit for the match when his opponent should have been recognised for their contribution. Shawn Michaels at Summerslam 2005 is an example as well as the Rock at Wrestlemania.

As far as Terry Bollea the person is concerned I don’t like him. He’s selfish and always has to get his own way and has Vince McMahon wrapped around his little finger – if Hogan wants it, in the end he’ll get it.

A classic example of this is from Wrestlemania 9. Hogan was due to tag with Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake to take on Money Inc, The Million $ Man Ted DiBiase and IRS for the tag team titles. The main event on the card was Bret Hart vs Yokozuna for the Heavyweight title which Bret was supposed to win. On the day of the show Hogan said that if he didn’t walk out of Wrestlemania 9 with the Heavyweight title he wouldn’t show up for his tag match, therefore Hart had to lose to Yokozuna after Mr Fuji threw salt in his eyes where upon Hogan would run to the ring to protest, Yokozuna would challenge Hogan to a match and drop the belt to him. Yokozuna still hold the record for the shortest Heavyweight title reign of 128 seconds.

You can’t deny though that Hogan has played a huge part in making wrestling what it is today and fully deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. I just hope that he will retire for good in the not to distant future as he’s really struggling through matches now and I’d prefer to remember him as he was back in the 90’s.

Bret “The Hitman” Hart

As you probably know I consider Bret Hart to be the best wrestler of all time. For pure wrestling ability the only other wrestlers I consider come anywhere close to his pure wrestling skill are Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit and Owen Hart. He’s known as “The Excellence of Execution” and with very good reason.

A lot of the best matches of all time involve him, Bret vs Shawn Michaels in an Ironman match at Wrestlemania, Bret vs Benoit at the Kansas Arena in a tribute match to Owen Hart, Bret vs Owen at Wrestlemania 10, Bret vs Steve Austin at Wrestlemania and Bret vs The British Bulldog at Summerslam 92, a match I was extremely fortunate to witness live and in my opinion this is the greatest wrestling match of all time. How many other PPV’s have had an Intercontinental Title match as the main event?

Bret Hart’s first major match in the WWE was at Wrestlemania 2 in 1986 when he competed in the Battle Royal that involved not only WWF superstars but American Football stars as well such as William “The Refrigerator” Perry. Hart and Andre The Giant were the last 2 in at the end and, unsurprisingly, Andre gorilla pressed Hart over the top rope onto Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart for the win. He teamed up with Neidhart as the “Hart Foundation”, capturing the tag team titles before embarking on a solo career sometime in late 1991 – early 1992.

At Wrestlemania 8 he won his first singles title, beating Rowdy Roddy Piper for the Intercontinental title in yet another classic match before dropping it to The Mountie. This was however to set him up to become the WWF Champion, and later on in 1992 he beat Ric Flair in Saskhataewn (sp) in Canada for his first title run. Hart had a 5 year run at being one of the top superstars in the WWF, battling with Owen Hart, Shawn Michaels and Steve Austin until the famous screw job at Survivor Series 1997 which was his last match for the WWF.

He left for WCW where he had further singles success until a match with Goldberg where he was kicked on the back of the head and suffered brain damage which ended his wrestling career. A few years later he fell off his bike and hit his head, suffering a stroke which took him a year to recover from. Now back to health, he still does personal appearances and may even appear at the next Wrestlemania where he is due to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Quite simply, Bret Hart is the best wrestler of all time.

Andre The Giant

Andre Rouissmof was the first wrestling superstar of the modern age and is, in my opinion, the reason wrestling is around like it is today. OK Hogan played a part but in the early 80’s Andre was wrestling itself and people watched it simply because of him. Standing 7’4 and weighing around 500 lbs, he was undefeated in something like 15 years before Hogan defeated him in the mid 80’s.

He battled with Hogan in the mid 80’s and his finest hour came at Wrestlemania 3 when in front of over 93,000 fans he fought Hogan for the WWF title. This whole event was hyped up on this one match and it was a huge success. Andre lost but this has to be one of the best matches of all time and what you have to realise is Andre was very ill at this time.

In the year before Wrestlemania 3 Andre’s body was literally collapsing in on itself from his sheer size and he had to have back surgery to stop his spine from breaking. Bear in mind at Wrestlemania 3 Hogan slammed him into the mat before the legdrop and the pin and this move itself could have paralysed or even killed him.

After Wrestlemania 3 Andre and Hogan had a rematch and Andre won the title, however he then sold it to The Million $ Man Ted DiBiase and the title was vacated leading to the WWF Title tournament at Wrestlemania 4. His last appearance at a major event was at Wrestlemania 7 when he interfered in the Big Boss Man vs Mr Perfect match.

In 1993 Andre went to France for his fathers funeral and went to sleep in a hotel room that night. He never woke up. His body could cope no longer and he died of heart failure in his sleep aged just 46.

Andre the Giant was not the best wrestler by far. His sheer size meant many moves were off limits to him but that didn’t stop him becoming one of the best superstars of all time in my opinion, and if it were not for him the WWE today would probably just be another small independent organisation.

HHH

OK guys/gals you know he has to be in here! Personally I hate the person, both the HHH character and Paul Levesque but he is one hell of an athlete. Marrying the bosses daughter has boosted his career and I believe that if he hadn’t he wouldn’t be a 10 times Champion but I still believe he would have been a multiple Champion none the less.

He started wrestling under the name Terry Ryzing (terrorising – get it!) before being known as Jean-Paul Levesque and then Hunter Hearst Helmsley before coming to be known as HHH. In his early WWF days he battled Owen Hart for the European title before getting a push which he then completely wrecked by being involved in the infamous Madison Square Garden incident, where he broke character and hugged Diesel and Shawn Michaels in the middle of the ring and was held back for a year.

Since then he’s not looked back, winning title after title and there haven’t been too many periods when he’s not held a title or even two at the same time! As a wrestler I thing he’s a good solid all round performer and plays the crowd as good as anyone can whether a heel or face but he’s especially good as a heel. He doesn’t think twice about sacrificing his body for the sport and you can tell he lives and breathes wrestling and always has 100% commitment to his matches.

A few examples of this are when he ripped his thigh muscle clean away from the bone in a tag match with Steve Austin as his partner. He laid at ringside nearly in tears at the pain he was in but still got back in the ring and allowed Chris Jericho to put the Walls of Jericho on him. That injury could have ended his career and as it was he was out for 8 months before returning.

Also in the very first Elimination chamber match RVD jumped from the top rope and hit him in the throat with his knee, partly crushing his windpipe. If you watch the match you can see him rolling round clutching his throat and even passing in and out of consciousness with the referee trying to get him to leave the match and go to the back. He refused and completed the match and was then rushed to hospital where he spent 3 days recovering before going home to fully recover. It was that bad it was comparable to an asthma attack or someone having an allergic reaction to peanuts or a wasp/bee sting and he still carried on to finish the match.

He’s also regularly involved in matches where he’s busted wide open, not from a true blow but where he’s cut himself with a razor blade hidden in the wrapping around his wrists to give the effect of a nasty blow to add to the overall effect of the match. That’s commitment. People like Jericho are too vain to do this, claiming that it’ll spoil their looks, ok HHH isn’t the best looking of people but how many other people as part of their job will go to such lengths to try and strive for perfection?

If he’s to be believed he will retire in 2-3 years and then more than likely will take over from Vince as the boss of WWE. If I were Shane I’d be livid. Like him or not he’s going to be around for a long time to come.

In conclusion I think HHH is one of the best superstars of all time but the methods he’s used to get there are very questionable. I believe he’s had too much influence over his character, a bit like Hulk Hogan, and if he wasn’t the boss’s son in law he wouldn’t have hogged the limelight for so long which has damaged other superstars opportunities.

The Rock

If ya smelllllllllllllll what the Rock……is…..cooking. Quite simply the best microphone skills ever. No-one comes close, Hogan, Michaels, Austin all trail in his wake. The boring 20 minute promos you get at the start of RAW and Smackdown make me cry when I think of how good the Rock used to be. I never missed one, never.

Now I tend to turn RAW or Smackdown on about 15 minutes into the programme as I know it’s unlikely there’ll be any wrestling, just the same wrestlers spouting out the same rubbish week in week out trying to hype up their next match, which was the same opponent as last time, which was the same opponent as last time………….

There are too many great Rock mic moments to recall. The one that comes off the top of my head was when The Coach interviewed him in Charleston and the Rock made him dance like a complete idiot. Then the Rock made a comment about how he liked to sleep with animals to which The Coach whispered to him “Come on Rocky, it was only once” to which the Rock replied “I was only joking you damn freak!” Absolute classic!

Dwaine Johnson started out as Rocky Maivia and was a member of the Nation of Domination which included wrestlers such as Faarooq, and his first taste of gold was beating HHH for the Intercontinental Title after only a short period of time since his debut, leading to the famous “Rocky sucks” chants.

They didn’t last long as he became one of the most popular superstars of all time. He did try to turn heel but it failed miserably, he’s just one of those wrestlers who can only play a face, rather like HHH can only play a heel to be any good.

As a wrestler he’s a good solid performer who can hide any technical weaknesses with charisma by the bucket load and fancy showboating moves like the People’s Elbow, which let’s face it is a simple elbow drop made legendary by his build up to it. Very few wrestlers can do that.

This is probably going to be a controversial comment but I feel that the Rock is not a better wrestling superstar overall than any of the other wrestlers I’ve commented on here. He lacks commitment. OK Hollywood came calling and he’s doing a great job there but he’s sold out the business that’s given him a break to stardom, turned his back on the fans and turns up when he feels like it, usually when it involves a big pay off.

If it were left to me unless he commits himself to wrestling regularly again for the WWE I’d never have him mentioned again let alone wrestle or even appear at a WWE event, televised or not. He’s simply an ungrateful traitor.

Stone Cold Steve Austin

Interesting fact (or not!). “Stone Cold” comes from his first wife who was English. She’d made him a cup of tea one day and he didn’t drink it so she told him to drink it up quickly before it became stone cold.

Another great mic performer and the inventor of some great catchphrases. “And that’s the bottom line, cause Stone Cold says so!” is probably the most famous.

Steve Williams was part of the “Hollywood Blondes” in WCW (look at him back then with long blonde hair, can you believe it’s him?!) and later Steve Austin. He didn’t like the name as it’s the same as the $6 million mans but he stuck with it. After suffering an injury to his neck he was fired by Eric Bischoff as he was going to be out for a while. Very harsh.

He went to the WWF under the name “The Ringmaster” managed by Ted DiBiase and used his Million $ Dream finisher to start off with. DiBiase became disillusioned by the WWF and therefore to write him out of the organisation, Austin competed in a match where if he lost DiBiase was fired from the WWF. Austin of course lost and DiBiase left, leaving Austin on his own and with a change of name and change of finisher the rest, as they say, is history.

His first major feud was with Bret Hart, culminating in an absolute classic series of matches the best of which has to be at Wrestlemania 13 which on one wrestling poll was voted the best Wrestlemania match of all time. He then feuded with Shawn Michaels, again in a series of classic matches which even involved Mike Tyson at one Wrestlemania match.

He then feuded with Vince and Shane, getting screwed out of the “ownership” of the company in a ladder match with a briefcase hanging over the ring against Vince. He’s held virtually every title there is to offer on multiple occasions and his in your face personality created the WWF’s “Attitude” period when they reinvented themselves to be pitched at more adult audiences.

In a match with Owen Hart Owen botched a reverse piledriver and all of Owen’s and Austin’s weight, some 480lbs, crashed down on Austin’s neck, breaking it. This serious injury has put a major dampener on his career since then, no-one can do any sort of move to his head in case it causes further damage and possibly paralysis.

Over the past few years he’s been in and out of trouble both with the police and the WWE. He was given a break from the WWE as his drinking was out of control and he beat up his wife, former WWE superstar Deborah getting a 1 year suspended sentence along with community service for his actions. Whether he will wrestle again is yet to be seen. It’s rumoured one of the main events for next year’s Wrestlemania is Austin vs Hogan but who knows? He’s due to appear at the RAW Homecoming next week so hopefully that will reignite his passion for wrestling and he’ll be back full time in the near future.

In conclusion Austin was a good wrestler but his main strength was his mic work and attitude. These combined made him one of the most popular superstars, both as a heel and as a face, and in my opinion he’s the best superstar there’s ever been who can pull off being both a face and a heel.

Undertaker

Mark Calloway was wrestling as “Mean” Mark Callous on the independent circuit in early 1990 when he was snapped up by the WWF. At Survivor Series 1990 he made his debut as the Undertaker in part of Ted DiBiase’s team and hasn’t looked back since. Just 1 year later he beat Hulk Hogan for the WWF title after tombstoning him on a chair at Survivor Series 1991 that Paul Bearer, his manager, had thrown into the ring.

15 years later he’s still a huge force in the WWE after having battled with virtually every superstar there’s been, Giant Gonzales, Psycho Sid, Steve Austin, Yokozuna and Kane to name just a few that spring to mind. Over the years he’s had to take a break from wrestling for 6 months or so as his hips are not good and will soon force him to retire.

His popularity over the years has been massive. When he first came into the WWE he was a heel, but over the next couple of years or so he became a face and although there was a heel turn a few years back for the vast majority of his career he’s been a face.

I think the reason why he became so popular and has stayed the course is peoples fascination with death. Bringing urns and coffins to the ring, as well as a raven I think it was at Wrestlemania 9 kept peoples interest in him and made his popularity grow. A few years back he came back from yet another break as “The American Badass”, riding around the ring on a motorbike which I only ever saw him crash into the ring barriers once! Soon however people were calling for the old Undertaker back and he became the dead man once again.

As far as the character of the Undertaker is concerned I think it’s one of the best inventions the WWF ever came up with, however I’m not so sure about Mark Calloway the person. He holds a lot of backstage influence and like Hogan and HHH usually gets his way in the end and has things the way he wants them.

A great example of this is when the WCW Invasion angle was going on after Vince had bought WCW. The Undertaker was involved in a stalker angle where someone was stalking Sara, his (very sexy!) wife. In the end it was revealed as Diamond Dallas Page and unsurprisingly the two had a feud. Which Mark Calloway clearly didn’t want. He completely no sold all of DDP’s moves and generally made a mockery out of wrestling as a whole.

DDP was doing moves which should have been sold with at least a grimaced face along with a clutching of the part of the body that the hold was done on. Not Calloway. He just got up as though the move hadn’t hurt him, which let’s face it it didn’t but he wasn’t even playing the old Undertaker where he was seemingly invincible and didn’t feel pain.

In conclusion I feel the Undertaker is a great character invention and Mark Calloway plays him perfectly for most of the time, however there are a few occasions where he pushes things a little too far and because of his backstage influence gets away with it at the cost of other wrestlers who don’t deserve it. DDP for example left the WWF soon after the stalker angle was over.

However I feel that the Undertaker is the best character gimmick of all time, although Mark Calloway could do with being a little less arrogant at times and be fair and help his opponents a little more although he does deserve huge credit and a future hall of fame induction for his outstanding contribution to wrestling.

Mick Foley

Simply put in my opinion the best hardcore wrestler ever. The things he’s done to his body, purely for the wrestling fans entertainment is mind blowing. He truly is a legend no question.

I watched his biography on the Biography Channel a while back (in fact I’ve watched it 3 or 4 times) and it’s fascinating. There’s a home video of him jumping off the top of a shed roof onto a mattress practising his wrestling moves which is pure madness but a sure sign of the great stunts he was to perform professionally.

Some of the best (or worst however you view it) are as follows. Facing the Undertaker in a cage match has to be one of the most brutal matches ever. When he was thrown off the top of the cage through the announcers table I was nearly sick, thinking it was an accident rather than a real stunt. It was only half properly executed though as he was supposed to go through on his back but ended up going through on his side and was lucky not to break his arm or shoulder or both.

When he got onto the top of the cage and the Undertaker chokeslamed him, the cage gave way and he plummeted to the ring below. That was definitely not a stunt but the result of shoddy workmanship by the riggers who hadn’t put the cell together properly and it was falling to bits around them. If you watch the match look closely at his nose after he’s hit the ring – the white thing is one of his teeth that was knocked out on impact and ended up going through the roof of his mouth and down his nose. However he still carried on and finished the match.

This match is the only one I’ve seen where Vince and other backstage staff came to the ring not as part of a storyline or run in but out of genuine concern that Mick Foley was going to be killed and wanted the match to be stopped. He refused because of the commitment he has to wrestling and the fans who watch it which makes him one of the best of all time.

The other classic match that sticks out in my head is at the Royal Rumble 2000 when he faced HHH in a street fight for the WWF title in what was another brutal match which HHH won in the end. Mick Foley allowed himself to be back dropped onto a load of tacks (although you can clearly see the padding he’s got on his back to cushion them) and then pedigreed onto them as well which finished him off. When he rolls over you can see them sticking right into his face and arms so he really was pushed right into them and didn’t cushion his fall. Total commitment.

In conclusion Mick Foley is the best hardcore wrestler there has ever been and most probably ever will be. Another certain inductee into the hall of fame and rightly so.

The British Bulldog

Interesting Fact #2 – His real name was David Boy Smith, when his father went to fill in his birth certificate he put his gender in his middle name box!

The British Bulldog was one half of The British Bulldogs along with the Dynamite Kid and had huge tag team success in the 80’s before falling out and splitting up. The official line was that the Dynamite Kid was seriously injured and had to quit wrestling as a result but as far as I’m aware he carried on wrestling on the independent circuit and may still be doing so to this day.

After they split Davey Boy Smith turned to singles wrestling and had good success over the years that followed. His finest hour came at Summerslam 92 when he beat his brother in law Bret Hart at Wembley stadium in front of over 83,000 fans for the Intercontinental Championship, a match which I was fortunate to see live and in my opinion is one of the best of all time.

Over the following few years he had further successes, becoming the first European Champion and gaining a world title shot against Diesel which he unfortunately lost. Than it all went downhill. He got in trouble with the police on the domestic front and became addicted to drugs. All credit to Vince he paid for him to go into rehab and stood by him but it was almost as if the Bulldog didn’t want help and went to rehab to keep his job with the WWF.

In about 1995 I saw him at my local sports centre when he was doing some smaller shows and stood next to him and thought that there is no way he can be as big as he is without steroids. 5”10 and 280 lbs of pure muscle must be impossible to achieve. Unfortunately I was right. About 3 years ago he was playing with his girlfriends kids in Canada when his heart literally exploded from steroid abuse. He was just 39 years old.

The Bulldog had about 20 years as a wrestler and is certainly the best British wrestler there has ever been. If his personal life hadn’t been as turbulent as it was who knows what he could have achieved? He married into the best and most famous wrestling family there has ever been and the possibilities were endless for him. He just didn’t take them.

Asides from these facts the Bulldog was one hell of a wrestler with power moves to make anyone envious. Superplex where he had his opponent vertical for a good 15-20 seconds along with great technical skills, no doubt honed in the Hart family dungeon made him one of the best wrestlers of all time, even if his mic skills and overall personality and charisma didn’t shine through enough. His wrestling ability did all the talking that needed to be done.

The Legion of Doom

Mike Hegstrand and Joe Laurentis made up, in my opinion, the best tag team there has ever been. The first (and as far as I’m aware the only) tag team to hold the tag titles in every major wrestling organisation had millions of followers around the world.

As soon as the music hit “Oooooooooooooooh what a rush” people were up from their seats cheering the arrival of Hawk and Animal with their shoulder accessories and face paint, anticipating yet another great match.

There was something about Hawk and Animal that just clicked, they knew what moves the other was going to do before they even did and flowed effortlessly like any great tag team should.

Their partnership ended in the 90’s but they did make a return to the WWF as The Road Warriors managed by Sunny for a brief period of time before splitting again. The partnership was ended for good in 2003, when Mike Hegstrand moved house with his wife and after a busy day shifting his stuff he went for a lie down to rest for an hour or so. He never woke up. He was killed by a massive heart attack in his sleep aged just 46.

With the state of tag team wrestling in the WWE nowadays I’m often confused as to how it managed to get like it has. Legion of Doom had some great feuds with the likes of The Hart Foundation and Demolition but the tag team division nowadays is usually two singles wrestlers thrown together for a few months before being split up. Legion of Doom lasted decades and were as popular as they’d ever been when they last tagged together.

The partnership of Animal and Heidenreich is a disgrace. When Hawk died LOD should have died as well as they were the one and only Legion of Doom. The reason they’ve been paired is to get Joe Laurentis some exposure ready for when his book comes out in a few months and it stinks. It’s all disrespectful to the memory of Mike Hegstrand.

This aside, LOD were as close to the perfect tag team as you could get and with the state of the tag team division nowadays I very much doubt if any other tag team will come close.

Summary

I hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings on only a handful of who I consider to be the best wrestlers ever. Hopefully in the not too distant future I’ll have the time to post my opinions on many more wrestlers and then I plan to write about current wrestlers who I feel could join this list in the future.

You’ve probably noticed only wrestlers who have been in the WWF/WWE and/or WCW are mentioned here, that is simply because these are the 2 organisations I’ve watched regularly for the past 20 years and feel that I am qualified to comment on.

Only recently, really only for the past 2 months or so have I begun to watch other federations on TWC, for example TNA and therefore don’t feel I’m in a position to be able to pass judgement on their wrestlers for at least another year or so yet, however anyone who does want to make comments on wrestlers from other organisations please feel free to do so.

I hope you’ll add your own comments to mine so we can have a healthy debate as to the good and bad points of established or up and coming wrestlers and how we feel they can become great, or continue to be great superstars in the future.

Thanks for reading

Richard aka Smedlos.