During his last run, Chris Jericho was my favorite. Knew how to work a crowd and put people over, unlike people like Triple H, who don’t seem to know how to do anything but push other people down.
Right now I enjoy the heck out of CM Punk if only because he’s so natural and relaxed. Nothing seems forced or overly scripted. There’s a bunch of other guys I enjoy a lot too (Ziggler, Storm, AJ Styles) but the creative end of things seems to be holding them back.
Ric Flair in his old WCW days was the best heel of all time, IMHO.
Bret “the Hitman” Hart, how can you root against a guy kicking ass while wearing pink? honorable mention goes to Shawn Michaels, he was just pure fun to watch.
I grew up watching Saturday morning wrestling on ITV in the UK, and continue to watch TNA today. Love all the English wrestlers Nick Aldin (Magnus) / Rob Terry / Doug Williams / Dave Finlay / Stephen Regal obviously 
Loved all the WCW stars especially Sting / Flair / Van Hammer / Arn Anderson / Diamond Dallas Page etc.
In TNA I like watching Alex Shelley, Christopher Daniels, Abyss, Brian Kendrick etc. basically anyone with fast action and a likeable personality. Don’t care much for the likes of Bully Ray, Matt Morgan, Rob Roode etc.
Used to catch New Jap Pro wrestling on Eurosport years ago, Scott Norton was ace. And of course Jushin Liger, Hiro Hase, Great Muta and the like. Also Chris Benoit as the Pegasus Kid.
Too many to think of! Prefer the action to the big blokes arguing any day.
First of all, thanks for starting a pro wrestling thread.
I grew up in the height of Hulkamania and totally got sucked into it. I still do like the Hulkster. All those guys from the 80s and early 90s, Macho Man, Andre the Giant, Steamboat, Honky Tonk Man, Ultimate Warrior, etc.
By the late 90s I tuned into Nitro much more often than RAW (although, who didn’t like The Rock?), which meant healthy doses of Goldberg (my favorite at the time), Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Ric Flair, Sting, etc.
I don’t understand why there isn’t a wrestling forum on the SDMB. Maybe call it “The Steel Cage”.
I love hearing peoples wrestling stories. I should have added my favorite tag team of all time, The Fabulous Freebirds. They were the actual originators of rock music themes. The original team of Michael Hayes, Terry Gordy, and perhaps the best tag wrestler ever, Buddy Roberts were truly fabulous. Like so many teams, the later versions were second rate.
I gotta throw some love to JYD.
“Classy” Feddie Blassie, if for nothing more than giving us the phrase “Pencil neck geek!”
Also. Bobby Heenan. Not as a wrestler, but best heel manager and ringside annoucer ever.
I have to say that reading this thread is bringing a smile to my face and bringing back so many memories. From the late 80’s thru Brian Pillman’s death, I lived and breathed pro wrestling.I had 2 good friends that would come over every Sunday and we would watch tapes of all the shows from the previous week-anyone else remember the ‘talk show’ Tuesday Night Titans? On the really GOOD Sundays there would be a pay-per-view. We went to every WWF event that came to town, usually front row tickets.
Brian Pillman. Brutue Beefcake. The Ultimate Warrior. Hulk. The Steiner Brothers. Tito Santana & Rick Martel. Roddy Piper. The Rockers. Jake the Snake Roberts. Bret Hart.
Those were the days, my friends.
Van Hammer? Seriously?
I was introduced to Roddy Piper via Georgia Championship Wrestling on TBS, long before he came into Vince McMahon’s circus. He was a fantastic heel. But he’s not my favorite.
Ultimate Warrior is mentioned, but not Eddie Guerrero. Eddie knew how to hold a crowd in the palm of his hand, both as a good guy and a heel. He was the only one to pair with Chyna who made her interesting to watch. But he’s not my favorite.
25 posts in, and only mentioned in passing by Barkis, my favorite to this day is Rick Steamboat. Usually it is the heel(s) who makes the babyface, but Rick Steamboat was a rare babyface who could make the heels.
Honorable mention to the Magnificent Muraco and Tully Blanchard as my favorites.
Conspicuous by his absence from my list is Ric Flair. 10 years ago, Flair and Steamboat would be my 1 and 2, and nearly equal. But Flair has so tarnished his legacy by his antics that I cannot, in good conscience, consider him a favorite anymore. Even when now watching him in his prime, I can only see what he has become.
Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat.
I don’t understand why I don’t remember this guy. He wrestled here in San Antonio a lot in the late 60s and tagged with Red Bastein, who I do remember.
I was just looking through Wiki at various wrestlers bios the other day and ran across Lyons and saw where he and Bastein unmasked the original Spoiler #1 in 1972. I know I saw this match on TV because it was a big billed event and Fritz Von Erich was quest commentating with Frank Brown at the anouncers table.
When Spoiler was unmasked, the crowd went wild and Brown asked Fritz if he knew who the Spoiler was, and Fritz yelled out “It’s Butcher Jardine!”
I know somewhere, I have an old audio recording of that broadcast on reel-to-reel tape, which was the only recording medium available to me at the time. One of these days I will have to go through those old tapes and see if anything survives and listen to the rest of the match.
Rufus R. ‘Freight Train’ Jones! Roofa were “Da Fray Tray, Bay-Bee!” “Da name is Roofa Ar-uh Jones, and da Ar-uh stand for ‘Guts!’” I don’t know that he actually said that, but if apocryphal, as most pro-wrestling stories are, it’s still worth repeating (as most apocryphal stories are). Rufus wasn’t much of a worker, but he got immediately over in our area because he had personality in sp. . . , uh, he had LOTS of personality.
I noticed that the Royal Rumble a couple weeks ago featured 3 “legends.”
Mick Foley, whom I can’t believe got himself into the ring again. I don’t think the dude can even tie his own shoes these days, he’s so physically messed up.
“Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, my dad’s favorite wrestler back in the day, and the winner of the first and only Royal Rumble that I actually saw on TV (can’t remember what year exactly).
The Road Dog, a guy who could never wrestle, but talked a good game.
I marked out when Shaun Michaels threw Marty Jannety through the Barbershop window and started his sexy boy schtick. I had watched wrestling since the Rock and Roll wrestling connection but I never really liked Hogan that much, I always gravitated towards guys whose schtick seemed “real” and could work a match. Michaels in his heydey was the best and his work rate was awesome and then I started hanging out at Rec-Sport-Pro-Wrestling in college and began to get “smart” with the biz and started to appreciate the heels even more. I lost my smile for Michaels at some point but I still appreciate what that guy can do in the ring.
Others include:
Bret Hart – great all around ring tactician.
Owen Hart – Good worker, not the best on the mic. RIP.
Rowdy Roddy Piper – When I started watching wrestling he was THE heel. Great mic work, and not the best technical wrestler, but a great worker in the ring who could tell a story with a match. He was still good after his face turn as well.
Mr. Perfect – Curt Hennig was another amazing worker in his heyday. I wanted to see him come back and fued with Luger after that Wrestlemania, too bad it didn’t pan out.
Bam Bam Bigelow – Great moves for such a big man. I wish he got a bigger push and I think he got screwed over back in the day. I thought he and Bryan Clark as Adam Bomb would have been a great tag team back when WWF had the Smoking Gunns (yawn) wrestle jobbers every week for the tag belts.
Vader – Stiff. The standard that which all big men should wish for.
Ric Flair – the man.
Others still: Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, D’Lo Brown, Jaques Reugaeu, Chris Jerricho, Mike Awesome, Diamond Dallas Page, Ricky Steamboat, Randy Savage, Rob Van Damme, Steve Austin, Mick Foley. There are probably a few more.
I don’t watch wrestling any more. I got married right around the “attitude” era where the the main faces all acted like a-holes, and there didn’t seem to be a distinction between them and the heels (I loved when Kurt Angle asked Kevin Kelly who he would cheer for when he wrestled the Rock because the Rock was always picking on Kelly). My wife worked in a school in the ghetto where the kids wanted to “lay the smackdown” on the other kids and would hit each other with chairs and shoes. I got soured to it and just started watching other stuff in my spare time.
My most memorable wrestling was the local Texas scene from about 1968-1973. Most of the good wrestlers were here at one time or another, but I mostly enjoyed Johnny Valentine.
He has already been wrestling for some time, and he had not yet gone on the the east coast and revitalized their waning base there, but he was Texas champion for quite a while, and his feuds with Jose Lothario and Wahoo McDaniels were brutal and classic.
Valentine was slow and methodic. Tall guy, for his day. He could wrestle, but he was a brawler.
The slow wary walk around the inside of the ring, the classic face-plant that you saw in Rick Flair in later years - this is where they came from.
Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka: no one could get the height that guy could leaping off the turnbuckle. Plus, he had a pretty awesome vendetta going with Roddy Piper.
Honorable mentions:
The Unpredictable Johnny Rodz and
Special Delivery Jones only because they were THE goto guys where you knew how the match was going to end.
Happy to see someone else appreciates these wrestling fixtures. Johnny Rodz trained an incredible number of wrestlers. This was sort of his role back in the WWWF, and he had his own school in NYC.
Spike Dudley. But only because I went to High School with him. He was my prom king, and an all around great guy. Still is.
Edited to add - he was also in the High School band, and a 3rd Grade teacher before becoming a wrestler, which also says a lot for him.
WreckingCrew, did you ever come up to the Friendly Tap? It changed ownership recently and is no longer a wrestling bar, but Matt used to bartend occasionally between gigs.