The greatest pro wrestlers of all-time include WrestleMania winners, WWE champions and TNA favorites. The entertainment of professional wrestling may be staged but all of these professional wrestlers are easily some of the toughest professional fighters inside of the ring or out.
Combining Greco-Roman wrestling with boxing, freestyle wrestling and theater, professional wrestling dates back nearly a century. At first, professional wrestling was more about the actual competition rather than the script. In the early days, it was Lou Thesz who was the most-feared wrestler around. Thesz, who had no trouble going off-script to win a match and keep his title, is considered the first true wrestling superstar and an innovator of the business.
Thesz continued to dominate until the next era of wrestlers entered in the 1950s and 1960s. Top contenders like Bruno Sammartino and Buddy Rogers helped the sport of professional wrestling grow with their flashy and flamboyant performance styles as well as more often than not came out on top of their matches.
Moving into the 1980s and 1990s, wrestling evolved into a performance. The uniforms the wrestlers wore became flashier and the scripted aspects began to increase, as did the fan following. Some of the best wrestlers of all time came from that golden era such as Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Andre the Giant, Ric Flair and Bret Hart. With business booming, professional wrestling only continued to grow in recent years with big names like Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock using their WWE fame to launch their careers.
Professional wrestling may not be for everyone but with a long history of success and a wildly popular following, the likes of WWE and TNA are not going away anytime soon. Any one of the current wrestlers competing today could become the next greatest professional wrestler of all time but until then, we can only enjoy watching them compete to become that.
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Bret Hart
Chris Jericho
Hulk Hogan
Kurt Angle
Randy Savage
Ric Flair
Shawn Michaels
Steven Williams
The Rock
Undertaker