Your Favorite Wrestler and Why

[supremebve]

Yeah, the way the question is worded Savage is by far #1 because that is who was my favorite for the longest amount of my peak fandom.  I'd like to add that Flair, Foley, Austin, and Eddy are at basically the same level as Savage in my memory.  If I had to watch any one wrestler for the rest of my life it would be Flair, because he is basically the best at every single thing that makes a wrestler great.  I think I feel the most emotionally connected with Foley, and I'm probably the biggest Cactus Jack mark on the board.  Despite what The Rock says(just missed the top 5 by the way), Austin was the most electrifying man in sports entertainment.  Every time he was on my TV as Stone Cold my heart was pumping, and watching a lot of his Stunning Steve days shows just how incredible he was in the ring.  Is there another guy who has ever been so good in two roles as different as Stunning Steve and Stone Cold Steve Austin?  Austin was a high energy, technical, bump freak as Stunning Steve, and turned into a wild crazy brawler after he became Stone Cold and was outstanding as both.  Eddy is in my absolute favorite match of all time(Halloween Havoc '97), and didn't have a single hole in his game.  I probably rooted for Eddy more than anyone else because he always seemed to be a step below where he should be on the card.  He was clearly underutilized in WCW, and his early problems with WWE was heartbreaking to me.  He was the rookie that I bought stock in early, but could never get over the hump.  I was at the Raw where he won the battle royal to get the title shot against Brock(almost died in the snow storm driving there).  We got moved down to the seats next to the entry way because half the arena didn't show up in the snow and after Raw went off the air Eddy walked down the aisle and shook all of our hands for coming to the show in that weather.  It was the best wrestling moment of my life.

[leglockwrestling]

Mitsuharu Misawa. I don't think there is anyone better than he was in the ring. 

[E.J.]

Chris Jericho, with Eddie Guerrero a hair behind. He was the first guy that really caught my attention when I first got into pro wrestling. Dude could fly through the air, yet still put you in a pretzel if he wanted to. The Walls of Jericho looked like it was the most painful experience you could go through, and on top of all that the guy was entertaining as hell on the microphone. I always enjoyed his matches.

[Just Dave]

Arn Anderson. He reminded me of that one friend's dad everyone has who you only mess with if you really need the discipline.

 

Chris Jericho. Used to crack me up as a middle/high schooler.

 

Mick Foley. Mankind scared me, but Dude Love was my favorite. That was the summer between 10th/11th grade for me. Good times.

 

Roman Reigns. Dude can light a bunson burner like no ones business...

[twiztor]

"Macho Man" Randy Savage.

 

i know he's been mentioned a bunch already, but nobody else even comes close. As a kid, i think i naturally cheered the faces and booed the heels. unquestionably, whoever was the good guy was the best. I don't want to say that Savage changed that for me. i didn't see him and immediately start to question every guy's workrate or motivation. Quite frankly, Savage could do no wrong. I'd always root for the faces, and Savage was forever a good guy. Whoever he was facing (whether it was Hogan, DiBiase, Steamboat, Roberts, etc.) was obviously the bad guy here.

Pro wrestling is like real life superheroes (which i remain a big fan of). Larger than life characters, garish costumes, a game of morality played out in front of us. Savage IS a superhero. His gruff voice. his ability to fly off the top rope with an elbow that has yet to be matched. those outlandish outfits. but most of all, the intensity. if he dropped those sunglasses and you got a peek at those eyes, you know shit was going down.

 

in later years, i started to appreciate his work ethic. dude has never had a bad match. he's great at selling, he knows when to pick the pace back up, and he's pure kinetic energy. he was willing to put over other wrestlers (most notably, without him, DDP wouldn't have become as big as he was in WCW).

 

Savage not making a late-life appearance with the WWF is a bit of a raw point with me. a Hall of Fame without Savage is pure garbage.

[Domino_Not_Deuce]

I love Stan Hansen. He's blind, fat and just wants to punch a motherfucker in the face to feed his fat wife. He is everything a professional wrestler should be.

[ebbie]

I love Stan Hansen. He's blind, fat and just wants to punch a motherfucker in the face to feed his fat wife. He is everything a professional wrestler should be.

 

 

I wish I could like this post more than just once.

 

 

Scott Hall is my all time favorite. I started watching in '93 because we only had one TV at the time and my brother either made us watch the football game if Denver was playing or Raw if he remembered it was on. I was only five or six at the time, but Razor was just so cool. He had cool in ring music. He had the cool shower pyro. He looked cool. And his finisher was cool.

 

I didn't know he left for WCW because my brother didn't give a shit about WCW. It wasn't until I stayed the night at a friend's house during that first Daytona shows with Hall and Nash that I learned he was in WCW. I remember being "Oh, that's where Razor went." then my friend's 80 year old black grandma said, "that son of a bitch ain't so tough without the baseball bat." Then Nash shot Rey to the trailer and she started raging about how they were beating up a little kid. Since then, I've always thought of Rey as some little kid.

 

 

So, Hall has been my favorite since I was little because I defended him against my friend's grandma. The fact that he was the first person I remember treating jobbers like fucking jobbers was the best as well.

 

 

Skip to 7:00. THAT is how you beat the piss out of someone and he didn't have to drop on his head.

[Super Weak Machine]

Grumpy old Tenryu punching people in the mouth.

[Sky Blue Sam]

I have the weirdest taste in favourite wrestlers. If I was to list a top 10, it'd feature names like Tom Zenk, Scotty Riggs and Johnny Curtis, normally due to one small incident that makes me start paying attention to them. For example, a really great match between Kanyon and pirate Riggs just as the Flock ended made me start liking Riggs and suddenly I was aghast that WCW were misusing him.

But my favourite? It's Bret.

I started liking Bret because the British Bulldog was my favourite wrestler as a 10yr old (and comes a close second to Bret today), so the fact they were family made me like Bret too. But I didn't have Sky at that point, so the only wrestling I saw was taped by friends or WCW on ITV (and in many respects, getting into wrestling by watching 1992 WCW was spoiling myself early), so the only Bret matches I knew were WM8 vs Piper (my favourite match of all time to this day) and Summerslam vs Bulldog. When my parents got Sky in 1994, I was suddenly introduced to a load of Bret matches, and I became a huge fan due to a combination of his push and a match quality that was evident even to a boy who didn't watch wrestling with a critical eye. The two PPV matches with Owen that year captivated me, and I remember waking up at 4am to watch Survivor Series, which I'd recorded overnight. That Bret lost his title to Backlund haunted me all day at school.

Bret was only the second wrestler I didn't start booing following a heel turn (after Bulldog in 1995), and Canadian Stampede fucking blew my mind at the time. Here was my favourite wrestler, who got booed to shit each week, getting a thunderous ovation. I loved it. I just couldn't see why anyone would cheer a yob like Austin or a smug prick like Michaels over Bret (I now see why people cheered Austin, but still no idea about Michaels). And when I became a proper obnoxious little 18yr old internet fan? Hey, Bret was still pretty awesome, despite being stuck in WCW. The time he knocked out Goldberg with a steel plate under his shirt? Loved it. The Hitman will forever be my favourite.

[peterien]

Great topic.

I have two favourites- Austin as a kid and then Bryan Danielson.

Austin was the man, simple as. As a 10-13 year old kid, actual wrestling didnt matter much to me but Austin raising hell and beating up everyone was awesome. We didn't have SKY back then and I have to wait until the Wednesday after the PPV to get a tape to see if Austin overcame whatever Vince had him up against. I would spend those 3 days worrying that Austin lost and would be delighted getting to see him winning then.

He was my favourite because he was a badass, plain and simple. I dont think we'll see anything like it again but god damn Dean Ambrose is so so close

Edit; Danielson is my favourite these days because back in 05/06, I was getting sick of the WWE and wrestling as a whole until I discovered ROH and Danielsons fantastic run as ROH champion. He was putting on great matches every night, was a great heel and just had a fantastic presence. Everyone knows about his run in WWE, but his matches against Morishima, KENTA, AJ, Strong,Joe etc made him a superstar in my eyes ever before he got the call up.

The culmination of his hard work at WM 30 was a great moment, if he never gets back to his absolute best then so be it, ill always have the memory of him going from ROH all the way to the top closing out the biggest show of 2014.

[John Kennedy]

Terry Funk, been everywhere done everything, comes off as legit crazy, heel or face, amazing promo's, the selling, the stooging, the punches. He's the best.

[cwoy2j]

It was and still is totally Ric Flair for me. I grew up in JCP country and got introduced to wrestling by my uncle who was a firm heel supporter. I know it sounds cliche to say in the IWC but I was the only kid in 2nd grade who was sporting a Horsemen t-shirt while all my friends were rocking Lex Luger and Dusty Rhodes shirts. I just remember thinking that Flair was sofa king cool. Here's this dude who comes to the ring in a goddamn helicopter sometimes and sometimes he has like 50 hot women line up on the aisle for him and he's got a badass robe and a giant belt. In addition to all that, he would turn your kneecap into mashed potatoes and chop you into oblivion.

[Buy Me a Burrito]

When I was a kid it was all about the Von Erichs. 

 

I grew up in the heart of JCP/NWA (which later turned into WCW) country, so I was a big Dusty, Magnum TA and Sting guy, but they were only on TV on the weekends. Kerry, Kevin, David, Mike and Lance Von Erich (yes, I know now that Lance wasn't a real Von Erich, but when I was a kid he was real) were there standing up for everything good and right every afternoon at 4 PM on ESPN. They were it.

 

Now I'm almost 37 and I've gone through a lot of stages as a wrestling fan. But through the Network and the WCCW 80s project set, it's allowed me to revisit those times. I can honestly say that my all time favorite wrestler is Terry "Bam Bam" Gordy.

 

That big motherfucker could do anything. Crazy brawls? Yep. Comedy? Yep. Head dropping Japanese stiff-fests? Yep. Hoss vs. Hoss Bill Watts wet dream matches? Yep. 

 

Bam Bam was one of a kind and I don't think that someone will ever be able to do what he did. There's a few people that can do a Brody thing, and a few that might be able to capture the Von Erich thing, but nobody will be able to do everything that Terry Gordy could. Greatest wrestler of all time. 

[Mick32]

My favorite of all time is Ric Flair. Duh. Some of the old WTBS promos with David Crockett are genius where he would start talking about Dusty, Magnum and Ron Garvin, pissing off the fans, then transition to Nikita and Buddy Landell, becoming a face in the same interview, and then calling out Wahoo, Billy Jack, Kerry Von Erich or whomever from around the country, since it was national TV. It made him seem like a real WORLD champion to me as a 12-13 year old, and a step above Hulk Hogan, who was the be all end all up here in the northeast. And that's before he even worked a match. Flair in real sports would be the 5 tool prospect.

Dean Ambrose is currently my favorite guy, as somebody earlier stated, because he's Steve Austin/Arn Anderson/Roddy Piper to me right now. He can work and can play face or heel equally well and gives the impression that any fucking thing can happen when he's out there. It's different from the homogenized WWE style we see now for the most part.

[Hagan]

A little shocked about the amount of Bret love. Not that Bret isn't wonderful and is the epitome of like persevering fighting champion but it always seemed to be like he's slightly forgotten/underrated. Actually, there's a whole interesting discussion on how the WWE shifts their hierarchy of all-time legends depending on politics. Like, Mick Foley went from being third biggest babyface of the most profitable era in history to being a guy they barely care to have under contract. I'm pretty sure the WWE slots Bret lower than guys like Shawn and Hunter in their historical rankings.  

 

Anyway, also very shocked no love for the Hulkster. He's fucking Hulk Hogan. I wouldn't have known what wrestling was unless my brother shuffled my 5 year old self over to the TV to see him take down the giant. 

 

But my answer is the Naitch. I saw my first Ric Flair match in '89 so I wasn't there for a lot of the early greatness but him winning that '92 Rumble is my favorite wrestling memory ever. 

[MMEK]

It is Shawn for me. There have been better promo guys and overall workers but on a match to match basis there is no one I would rather watch than him. I can also rewatch so many of his matches and still notice new things upon repeated viewings. I also think his matches with Taker at Mania are the peak of WWE main event style. I'm also amazed that he came back from a potentially career ending back injury and was arguably better than before. 

[Skeeball Wizard]

I know it sounds cliche to say in the IWC but I was the only kid in 2nd grade who was sporting a Horsemen t-shirt while all my friends were rocking Lex Luger and Dusty Rhodes shirts.

This right here is awesome to me. As a kid I don't remember anyone having pro wrestling shirts, not until the nWo and Austin shirts could be purchased at any mall kiosk. Nope, it was just me, in my custom airbrushed Bam Bam Bigelow and Crush shirts.

[cwoy2j]

 

I know it sounds cliche to say in the IWC but I was the only kid in 2nd grade who was sporting a Horsemen t-shirt while all my friends were rocking Lex Luger and Dusty Rhodes shirts.

This right here is awesome to me. As a kid I don't remember anyone having pro wrestling shirts, not until the nWo and Austin shirts could be purchased at any mall kiosk. Nope, it was just me, in my custom airbrushed Bam Bam Bigelow and Crush shirts.

 

 

I remember having some cut-rate Horsemen t-shirt that I bought when NWA came to University Hall here in Charlottesville back in 86 or 87. I was a huge Flair and Tully fan. Flair was my #1 and Tully was my #2. I was actually legit upset when The Road Warriors had to fight Arn and Tully b/c I loved both teams and didn't want either to lose. Like I wanted the Warriors to get the belts sooooo bad but didn't want my boy Tully to lose. Total quandary for a 7 year old.

[bink_winkleman]

Flair for me, too.

 

I grew up in Mid-South country and watched a lot of NWA.  Loved Flair from day one.  As I was mentioning in the Hate thread, I loved cheering for bad guys as a kid and there was no more awesome bad guy than Ric Flair.  He was always the "real champion" to me.  And boy could he talk shit.  I still get chills from some of those old promos.  Especially when they're in a Killer Mike song:

 

 

Macho is a pretty close second for all the reasons that Bobby mentioned back on the first page.  As an adult, too, he's probably my favorite to go back and watch.

 

I loved Austin and Rocky, but it was so safe to cheer for them that it was hard to get too invested in them.

 

My favorite run of all time, though, is Jericho's WCW heel turn.  That will always have a very special place in my heart, and I've still got the WCW Monday Night Jericho shirt to prove it.  At the time, I was in high school and thought I'd outgrown wrestling.  All of my friends started watching again because of the NWO, so I got back into it but still didn't feel that it spoke to me anymore.  Then, holy shit, here comes Chris Jericho doing some of the most hilarious segments I've ever seen and getting tremendous heel heat for it.  The 1004 holds, the nicknames, the Lenny Lane/Loverboy feud, the hair/chops combo, the security team, the tiny Goldberg.  It was perfect in every way and I felt like I was one of the few that really got it.  I think people often forget just how over he was as an actual heel because you see those segments now and categorize them as pure comedy.  But at the time, that WCW crowd fucking hated his guts.  For those of us in the back of the room in on the joke, though, it was like nothing we'd ever seen in wrestling.  It was making fun of the rubes, but Chris never tried to be cool or wink at the crowd.  You never got the impression that he was anything but a dick of a pro wrestler.

 

And he was a tremendous underdog that I put so much energy into cheering.  Not to mention the fact that he was wrestling guys like Malenko, Rey, Eddie, Benoit, just that whole WCW cruiser scene.  When he finally debuted in WWF in '99, I couldn't even talk at school the next day because my voice was gone from marking out so hard.  It was glorious. 

 

The Dusty finish when they should have put the strap on him was heartbreaking, and it was never quite the same after that.  I was still a die hard for several years, but Chris just didn't have the longevity of Flair, who will still always be my favorite.  Y2J is now well past his prime, has a terrible haircut, is in an awful band and does some of the worst comedy I've ever heard on his podcast, but you'd still be hard pressed to get me to say much bad about the guy. 

[Charlie M.]

Barry Windham, Bret Hart, Steve Austin.

 

Always liked Windham because he seemed like he could do a bit of everything.  Bret stood out because he carried himself like an elite level athlete and a sports star in a world of rasslers and cartoon characters.  The only shame with Bret is that WWF's TV format didn't give him more opportunities to have long random matches like WCW guys would get to do.  Austin's the guy who probably made me a fan for life because I could see myself dropping off around '95-'96.  I think I've gained more of an appreciation for how difficult it is/was to be a strong babyface without coming off as corny or having the fans turn on you.  You can tell from his podcast that he thinks about details that most guys miss and think don't matter. 

[Ultimo Necro]

Brian Pillman for me.

 

I look back on his run and the different stages of his career match almost my childhood / teenage years.  He was the high paced white-meat babyface Pillman when I was around 10-12, his matches with Liger were the greatest things I had ever seen.  He turned heel just as I became a teenager and started to go through my own adolescent rebellion.  His ECW run was the first time I ever really saw ECW.  He then jumped to WWF just as I was getting back into that world after not watching WWF for a few years, then all his over the top nonsense with Austin and then Marlena / Goldust just seemed perfect for that era as a 17 year old.  I loved every aspect of his work during nearly every stage of his career.

 

I've a few others that are close, but Pillman had an impact on me as a kid / teenager and its hard for me to replace that.

 

[Tabe]

Nobuhiko Takada.

Ultra smooth in the ring, movie star looks, and the perfect wrestler physique. Could do fast-paced juniors stuff and transitioned to being the #1 draw in the world for a minute while headlining my all-time favorite promotion, UWFI.

Honorable mentions: Kobashi, Ronnie Garvin, Flair, Volk Han

[OSJ]

Boy, this is tough...

 

On any given day I might tell you:

 

El Samurai - Could be dickish heel or total face, always made his opponent look like a million bucks.

 

Playboy Buddy Rose - Not the out of shape version you saw in WWF, but the guy who was Portland's most hated heel and most loved babyface.

 

Bret Hart - Maybe it was still real to him... He made you believe.

 

Arn Anderson - When all is said and done, I don't think there's anyone I rewatch more frequently than Arn. One of the greatest promo men ever, you believed what he said, it wasn't Marty Lunde playing a character, it was Arn F'N Anderson and if he told you that an ant could haul a semi, you just better hook that little fucker up. Maybe not the greatest in the ring, but had an uncanny ability to fuse stooging with deadly seriousness and make it all work. Yeah, I never missed watching TBS when Arn had the TV Title as I knew I was going to see one great match no matter what.

[Tromatagon]

The Undertaker

Why?

He's the fucking Undertaker

[Ramsey]

Yeah, this one is tough and could change at any moment.

 

Harley Race: Huge offensive set, great bumper and could work with anyone. The epitome of the traveling champion

 

Nick Bockwinkel: Snug style, AMAZING promo, and was fucking amazing for decades.

 

Ric Flair: I doubt I have to explain this. If I do, go watch some wrestling.

 

Barry Windham: Between 85 and 89, I'd say Barry was one one of the top 5 workers on the planet. Plus I'd put him alongside Steamboat and Race as Flair's best opponents.

 

I didn't even go to Japan wit this list but names like Tsuruta, Kobashi, Kawada, and Misawa are there.