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League Unlimited's Favourite Wrestler of All Time

Misanthrope

Moderator
Staff member
Messages
47,604
It has been a while between drinks, but I thought I'd resurrect an old LU favourite.

How it Works

PM me your list of your 15-30 favourite wrestlers in ascending order. This means #1 is your favourite and so on.

I'll then calculate the winner and do a write-up of the top 50, 30, or 20 (dependent on the number of entries).

You can also post your votes below, but that'll take some of the mystery out of it.
 

Misanthrope

Moderator
Staff member
Messages
47,604
I'll give this one until January 10th when I get settled into my new apartment in Tbilisi.

Let's get some votes rolling in, lads!
 
Messages
4,040
That was really hard

I did notice that there’s lots of big names I couldn’t find a place for in my list due to me not quite giving enough of a f**k. Respect what they did in the business but never floated my boat enough - e.g. stone cold, Shawn Michaels, Hogan, edge, goldberg, Kane, HHH, Cena, angle, lesnar, orton, batista, nash
 

Valheru

Coach
Messages
17,513
It is favourites as opposed to best ever so to each their own but if you are leaving out Ric Flair and Steve Austin you are a hard man to please.
 
Messages
4,040
I respect what both did but I was a WCW mark so never liked Austin during the height of the Monday night wars as a kid.

for flair, was first exposed to him at the same time and he was past it by then, so never really believed him as a credible wrestler. Looking back I have tremendous respect for his work in the 80s but let’s face it, by 1997 he was on the slide
 

mackdadday

Juniors
Messages
1,038
That was really hard

I did notice that there’s lots of big names I couldn’t find a place for in my list due to me not quite giving enough of a f**k. Respect what they did in the business but never floated my boat enough - e.g. stone cold, Shawn Michaels, Hogan, edge, goldberg, Kane, HHH, Cena, angle, lesnar, orton, batista, nash

No Goldberg, Edge, Kane, HHH, Lesnar, Orton, Batista or Nash on my list. Nash was the only one who came close but only on account of his connection with the NWO.
 

Big Pete

Referee
Messages
28,939
Sent my list.

I placed a heavy emphasis on the past decade. While I have a lot of respect and admiration for guys like Ric Flair, Bret Hart, Steve Austin etc. their careers were winding down when I was becoming a fan.

The biggest challenge I had was dealing with the Benoit situation. He was my favourite in-ring performer of all-time but for the sake of avoiding a headache I decided to disqualify him from the list. He would have been an easy top five pick otherwise, and felt deducting him 20 spots would have been silly.
 

Valheru

Coach
Messages
17,513
I will send mine through soon.

I would be quite interested to see what differences a best workers of all time list has opposed to a favourites of all time and if people could separate the two.

Number one on my list for example would probably just scrape in to the top 10 of best workers IMO.
 

Big Pete

Referee
Messages
28,939
I will send mine through soon.

I would be quite interested to see what differences a best workers of all time list has opposed to a favourites of all time and if people could separate the two.

Number one on my list for example would probably just scrape in to the top 10 of best workers IMO.

There's a wrestling forum that goes by Pro Wrestling Only where they attempted to decide this. They gathered up all the available footage, all the voters committed to watch as much as they could and they engaged in a lot of long form debates to determine criteria and where everyone should land.

It looked like this.

1: Ric Flair
2: Terry Funk
3: Stan Hansen
4: Mitsuharu Misawa
5: Daniel Bryan
6: Jushin Liger
7: Rey Mysterio Jr.
8: Kenta Kobashi
9: Toshiaki Kawada
10: Jerry Lawler
11: Jumbo Tsuruta
12: Eddie Guerrero
13: Genichiro Tenryu
14: Vader
15: Ricky Steamboat
16: Nick Bockwinkel
17: Bret Hart
18: Randy Savage
19: Arn Anderson
20: Tatsumi Fujinami
21: William Regal
22: Negro Casas
23: Shinya Hashimoto
24: Steve Austin
25: Barry Windham
26: Akira Taue
27: Jun Akiyama
28: Bobby Eaton
29: El Hijo del Santo
30: John Cena
31: Shawn Michaels
32: Dustin Rhodes
33: Ricky Morton
34: Chris Benoit
35: El Dandy
36: Buddy Rose
37: El Satanico
38: Mick Foley
39: AJ Styles
40: Yoshiaki Fujiwara
41: Riki Choshu
42: Ted DiBiase
43: Rick Martel
44: Tully Blanchard
45: Harley Race
46: CM Punk
47: Brock Lesnar
48: Fit Finlay
49: Aja Kong
50: Billy Robinson
51: Andre The Giant
52: Akira Hokuto
53: Dick Murdoch
54: Greg Valentine
55: Curt Hennig
56: Jim Breaks
57: Bill Dundee
58: Owen Hart
59: Samoa Joe
60: Volk Han
61: Bull Nakano
62: Kiyoshi Tamura
63: Giant Baba
64: Sgt. Slaughter
65: Shinjiro Ohtani
66: Keiji Mutoh
67: Jack Brisco
68: Kurt Angle
69: Blue Panther
70: Yuki Ishikawa
71: Dick Togo
72: Brian Pillman
73: Chris Jericho
74: Atlantis
75: Hulk Hogan
76: Hiroshi Hase
77: Rick Rude
78: Dynamite Kid
79: Terry Gordy
80: Tito Santana
81: Yoshihiro Tajiri
82: Steve Williams
83: Roddy Piper
84: The Undertaker
85: Manami Toyota
86: Hiroshi Tanahashi
87: Cesaro
88: Sami Zayn
89: Atsushi Onita
90: Ron Garvin
91: Too Cold Scorpio
92: Dusty Rhodes
93: Bob Backlund
94: Shinsuke Nakamura
95: Sangre Chicana
96: L.A. Park
97: The Destroyer
98: Kerry Von Erich
99: Virus
100: Daisuke Ikeda
 

Valheru

Coach
Messages
17,513
There's a wrestling forum that goes by Pro Wrestling Only where they attempted to decide this. They gathered up all the available footage, all the voters committed to watch as much as they could and they engaged in a lot of long form debates to determine criteria and where everyone should land.

It looked like this.

1: Ric Flair
2: Terry Funk
3: Stan Hansen
4: Mitsuharu Misawa
5: Daniel Bryan
6: Jushin Liger
7: Rey Mysterio Jr.
8: Kenta Kobashi
9: Toshiaki Kawada
10: Jerry Lawler
11: Jumbo Tsuruta
12: Eddie Guerrero
13: Genichiro Tenryu
14: Vader
15: Ricky Steamboat
16: Nick Bockwinkel
17: Bret Hart
18: Randy Savage
19: Arn Anderson
20: Tatsumi Fujinami
21: William Regal
22: Negro Casas
23: Shinya Hashimoto
24: Steve Austin
25: Barry Windham
26: Akira Taue
27: Jun Akiyama
28: Bobby Eaton
29: El Hijo del Santo
30: John Cena
31: Shawn Michaels
32: Dustin Rhodes
33: Ricky Morton
34: Chris Benoit
35: El Dandy
36: Buddy Rose
37: El Satanico
38: Mick Foley
39: AJ Styles
40: Yoshiaki Fujiwara
41: Riki Choshu
42: Ted DiBiase
43: Rick Martel
44: Tully Blanchard
45: Harley Race
46: CM Punk
47: Brock Lesnar
48: Fit Finlay
49: Aja Kong
50: Billy Robinson
51: Andre The Giant
52: Akira Hokuto
53: Dick Murdoch
54: Greg Valentine
55: Curt Hennig
56: Jim Breaks
57: Bill Dundee
58: Owen Hart
59: Samoa Joe
60: Volk Han
61: Bull Nakano
62: Kiyoshi Tamura
63: Giant Baba
64: Sgt. Slaughter
65: Shinjiro Ohtani
66: Keiji Mutoh
67: Jack Brisco
68: Kurt Angle
69: Blue Panther
70: Yuki Ishikawa
71: Dick Togo
72: Brian Pillman
73: Chris Jericho
74: Atlantis
75: Hulk Hogan
76: Hiroshi Hase
77: Rick Rude
78: Dynamite Kid
79: Terry Gordy
80: Tito Santana
81: Yoshihiro Tajiri
82: Steve Williams
83: Roddy Piper
84: The Undertaker
85: Manami Toyota
86: Hiroshi Tanahashi
87: Cesaro
88: Sami Zayn
89: Atsushi Onita
90: Ron Garvin
91: Too Cold Scorpio
92: Dusty Rhodes
93: Bob Backlund
94: Shinsuke Nakamura
95: Sangre Chicana
96: L.A. Park
97: The Destroyer
98: Kerry Von Erich
99: Virus
100: Daisuke Ikeda

Wow, that's quite the project.

What do you think of the list?

I know less than nothing about Japanese wrestling so can't comment there. Other then that a few things jump out.

Mysterio at 7 - I don't see any way he is the 7th best worker of all time.

Steve Austin seems to low at 24 for me.

Interested to see what the criteria was as well, whether it was purely in ring work. If not and they considered mic skills, box office etc. then Hogan is way higher and rock has to be on the list.
 

Big Pete

Referee
Messages
28,939
It was purely based on their in-ring performance and it was universally judged on the number of quality matches, how effective they were at their role whether it was babyface or heel, longevity, ability to get over in various promotions, selling, offense etc.

With Rey they basically had his entire career on tape from 1989 - 2016 and they enjoyed how versatile he was. He could adapt in any environment he was in, whether it was Mexico, Japan, ECW, WCW, WWE and even back to the indies.

Meanwhile Austin missed a lot of time due to injuries and even when he came back had to adjust his style to take less bumps. Considering the obvious drawbacks, he actually did really well in that company to rank as highly as he did.

With Hogan, while he couldn't hope to touch the top performers of all-time he was extremely effective at working his own style of match and his efforts against guys like the Warrior demonstrated how sound his psychology was. He also showed in Japan that he could adapt to the environment. While the Hollywood Hogan era delivered some of his worst outings, the fact he was able to go from the biggest babyface to the biggest heel was another tick.

I forget what happened to The Rock. I think it was a case where he was put head to head with Hogan, and because Hogan had more runs on the board, The Rock just didn't get enough votes. He was one of those guys who was said to appear on a lot of lists lower down in the 70s, 80s and 90s which cost him. Basically they didn't see him as a good worker until the 2000s and even then a lot of his matches were plagued by interference. Personally I don't see how you can watch Hogan vs. The Rock at Wrestlemania 18 and not find a place for him. He's certainly on my list.
 
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