Recently I’ve been carefully following the excellent Wrestling Playlists substack and creating some video highlights for the matches that strike me as being especially notable. If you’re not familiar with it, Charles from the PWO message board is curating the entire televised history of professional wrestling, from the earliest existing footage to the present.
It’s a work of both profound love and substantial expertise. That’s a great and surprisingly rare combination and I highly recommend it.
You can go back and peruse the listings at your leisure, but right now we’ve reached the early 1980s and the dawn of the VCR era. Before that, televised wrestling existed only sporadically. No one thought to save most of it and many of the sport’s mythological figures were rarely captured for posterity. That began to change as people gained the power to document their own history. Soon, tapes of wrestling programming that would have otherwise been available only to a local or regional audience were being mailed across the country and the world.
It’s no coincidence, then, that the first batch of wrestlers widely considered among the “best ever” performers come from this era when greats like Terry Funk, Jumbo Tsuruta and Harley Race were at the height of their powers and many others were just coming into their own as substantial national and international acts. Legends of lore also lurked, like the incomparable Nick Bockwinkel, the enormous Giant Baba and the dueling technical gods Jack Brisco and Dory Funk Jr.
In the last two decades we’ve lost many of these legends, men who their peers considered the best to ever do it. And, with the recent passing of Funk, perhaps the greatest wrestler of them all, a place is now available at the top of the heap.
Who is the best living professional wrestler? That’s certainly a tough question to answer.
The top stars are Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin, men who defined two generations for American wrestling fans. No one can match their box office might and both propelled the WWE further in the stratosphere, setting the stage for the promotion’s current global domination. But, while both excelled as artists in their own way, neither is generally considered one of the sport’s top craftsmen.
On a regional level, as you can see in the video above, few shined brighter than Jerry Lawler, the biggest star in Memphis since Elvis himself. He stood tall as the top act in his territory for more than a decade, entertaining thousands of fans in Tennessee year after year with his fantastic punches, his level-headed and plain-spoken interviews, and a bevy of incredible stories, innovative matches and sometimes over-the-top angles. Memphis was one of the few areas to build a bulkhead against the WWF’s relentless and soul-crushing march to conquer the entire business. The King was the reason they stood strong long after most regional promotions fell by the wayside.
Broadcast live to the nation on the SuperStation TBS, Ric Flair was the Hulk Hogan alternative who was considered the real champion by most hardcore fans. His bombastic interviews were matched only by his equally wild selling, his blonde hair often matted in blood as he’d toss himself around the ring to make his opponents look good. While Hogan proved to be the biggest star of the 1980s, Flair and Dusty Rhodes were valiant opposition, drawing huge crowds around the country for matches that resembled the wrestling that had come before it—much more than the cartoonish WWF show that opened the sport up to newer, younger fans.
In Japan, you have Kenta Kobashi and Toshiaki Kawada, two of the four pillars who rebuilt All Japan Pro Wrestling after the unexpected loss of Tsuruta when the big man was still firing on all cylinders. The wrestlers of this era took the sport to dangerous new heights in the ring—but they may have flown too close to the sun. The top act of the time, Mitsuharu Misawa, tragically died in the ring. If there is a case against Kobashi and Kawada it’s that they were clearly slotted a notch below their peer in green and silver. It’s hard to be the top wrestler of all-time when you weren’t the top performer of your own time.
1980’s stalwarts like Riki Choshu and Tatsumi Fujinami also deserve mention, though you could argue neither quite escaped the long shadow of their predecessor Antonio Inoki. Stan Hansen, like Funk, was able to work at a high level over multiple generations in a very grueling style and should be considered. As a total package, however, he didn’t quite reach the heights of others (Funks, Brody, Hogan) who were able to work both America and Japan with equal success in both regions.
Mexican wrestling is represented by true greats like El Hijo Del Santo and Negro Casas, workers of immense skill and popularity who didn’t excel at the same level worldwide. Those who did achieve international acclaim, for example Rey Mysterio Jr and Mil Mascaras, weren’t quite on the same level domestically. Much of the modern style of wrestling was informed by Mysterio’s genre-bending work that combined traditional lucha libre spots with a more physical approach popularized by Japanese junior heavyweights like Jushin Liger and Chris Benoit—either a feather in his cap or damning condemnation depending on your point of view.
There are others whose work I absolutely love—Kiyoshi Tamura, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Yuki Ishikawa and Volk Han among them—who wrestled in a niche style that didn’t penetrate the fandom generally, products, now, of a kind of wrestling that has died. Others I don’t hold in as high esteem as some, but who probably deserve mention, include 90’s stars like Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart and their successors Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kurt Angle. To me, all four fall just below this class of performer.
Readers of the Wrestling Observer newsletter can spout off a list of “five star” matches by current kingpins Kenny Omega, Kazushika Okada and Will Ospreay. Their more carefully choreographed matches are filled to bursting with unmatched athleticism and intricate sequences. Whether it’s taken wrestling to new heights or turned it into an emotionless stunt show is up for debate. Many fans, certainly, would include them on the list of the greatest ever. Bryan Danielson, the best contemporary star in my humble opinion, is the closest to an all-timer in my book.
So, who is the best? Of course, this is a purely subjective discussion. It’s an interesting question. To me, Flair now stands alone as the complete package. His combination of ring work, promos and ability to attract an audience are unmatched.
With each passing day, however, his style becomes more and more of an anachronism. His work was built on selling and bumping around the ring like a pinball for the babyface wrestlers he competed against. That was the hallmark of great workers for decades. He followed Ray Stevens, another bumping heel beloved in his time, and was followed in turn by Shawn Michaels and others.
Today, that’s no longer what fans look for in a great wrestler. When this question is asked 20 years from now, Flair likely won’t even be a consideration. Contemporary elites focus instead on explosive offense and complicated sequences of reversals and counters. With that as your baseline, the style of the 1980s looks almost indecipherable. It’s pro wrestling, but performed in an entirely different way.
Some call it progress. Me? I’m not so sure. Who do you consider the best ever? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
Jonathan Snowden is a long-time combat sports journalist. His books include Total MMA, Shooters and Shamrock: The World’s Most Dangerous Man. His work has appeared in USA Today, Bleacher Report, Fox Sports and The Ringer. Subscribe to this newsletter to keep up with his latest work.
Who Is The Greatest Living Professional Wrestler?