So are you asking who sold the most tickets and was the biggest draw? Or are you saying that’s what you value?

There have been plenty of strongmen and giants with just as much if not more success than Mark and Big Show

Plenty of giants as successful as big show? Name 5.

That's where I'm stuck. Because as it is it seems like the GOAT could only ever come from pretty much the 80's or 90's if thats your metric. Everyone else, regardless of skill or talent or anything, is automatically discounted because they will never ever draw anywhere near what the guys at the peak of rasslins popularity did.

Money vs art.

Do you think being the greatest means you drew the most for the longest period of time, or on top the longest. Or do you value the quality of performance, ei who you may subjectively think is the greatest performer, or you thought was the most entertaining.

Or you could be a centrist and think you need to balance both.

Forgot where I read it before but if you go by adjusted box office then the GOAT would be either Austin or Hogan since nobody really drew the same level of gate revenues those two did during their time on top at least in the US. Between the two, think Austin outdrew Hogan using the same adjusted metrics.

Cena has both beat based on pure drawing revenues but not when you adjust for inflation and the rising costs of tickets and PPV prices during Cena's era.

It was talked about. But I don't have him in my conversation. He's outside about everyone on THE LIST MANNNNNM. Still great though and his AEW Championship run was brilliant, MAYBE his best run. That's up for debate because be did a lot of great things in the E.

Cena's longevity definitely makes him a contender IMO. And I think it's debatable he superceded Austin and The Rock. But there is something about Hogan that is just massive in some way. Sure he wasn't a brilliant wrestler but he played his part amazingly. His classic matches are untouchable in their own ways.

Andre the Giant
Undertaker
Don Leo Jonathan
Ernie Ladd
Kane
Killer Kowalski


Other than Eddie, name 1 Luchador/Mexican wrestler that was as successful in the US as Rey

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Im saying it has be part of the conversation. It cant just be who made you pop the most. But i dont think its the only metric that matters. what i do think is its the largest part of the pie and by a wide margin. a guy putting on the same caliber matches as bret hart in front of 200 people in a highschool gym clearly isnt the GOAT no matter hard you nut for him. Ignoring drawing power completely isnt reasonable or objective.

and there's just as much art in getting over as there is in clever chain wrestling. the only difference is you dont respect one for whatever reason

if the conversation was purely money it would be either hogan who drew the most money for the longest time or austin who drew the most per night ever but i definitely think the conversation is more nuanced than purely gates.

(and i think i summed up my thoughts pretty well on pg1)

Hogan made events bigger that's why I picked him.

Hogan is definitely a guy no one can dismiss out of hand. Any GOAT conversation not only has to include him it has to actively defend why he isnt at the top of the list.

to circle back to the comment that "only guys from the 80s/90s can be the GOAT if you go by the gate" id like to point out that the WWF was going under before Austin got hot. a show no one was watching to the hottest act of all time. Thats WHY he's GOAT tier. he got so outrageously over that he turned the business around...and thats why no one today can crack that list.


they arent over.

I think what we are seeing in this thread is exactly why even in the business they qualify greatest of all time.

Austin is easily the GOAT drawing star within the industry. Nobody in wrestling reached a higher peak.

Hulk is still the GOAT associated/recognizable to the average person.

Shawn is the GOAT in ring worker.

Flair is the GOAT successful Pro Wrestler.

Cena is the GOAT successful Sports Entertainer.

Undertaker is the GOAT character.

Jericho is the GOAT at reinventing his character.

Rock is the GOAT for biggest star that came from wrestling.

Angle is the GOAT for most successful athlete that became a wrestler.

Lesnar is the GOAT for most successful athlete after he left pro wrestling.

That is leaving out HUGE names that were great, had success in and out of the ring, and we're good enough to be in that discussion.

It's why I picked Rock, because he was near the top of every qualification the other wrestlers talk about.

It also depends on how Giant is defined. If we are not going just by height, guys like Yokozuna and Vader and Earthquake are absolutely up there. If just by height, I'd rank Kevin Nash's career above Big Show as well.

More about presentation

Hogan. Even my mom knows who he is and she knows nothing about wrestling.

I have a trouble thinking in terms of absolute greatest, because there are too many metrics go crossover, so it is where you put emphasis. I put it on how good business is under you, because that’s the whole reason wrestling exists. It doesn’t matter if you tick all the other boxes — good look, good ring stuff, good talker, etc. — if people don’t give a shit, you aren’t clicking as a professional wrestler.

But that gets hard to dissect too. There are guys that drew everywhere as special attractions. There are guys who turned around shitty businesses. There are guys who did respectable business on top. There are guys who killed it on top in smaller markets, which is actually kind of more impressive in many ways — since you could argue the case that you’re more over per capita.

But then there is the quality of and timelessness of your work. There is how much everything you do stands out.


I don’t feel stupid saying names like Terry Funk, Ric Flair, Steve Austin and Hulk Hogan. The only name that I would throw out that hasn’t been said already, is maybe someone from Japan or even Jerry Lawler in Memphis. It feels like it’s own category though — maybe not GOAT. But there’s something about being so good you don’t need to go anywhere else that I feel deserves appreciation.

I feel that as great as he is, it's easy to disqualify Terry Funk from GOAT. He is obviously a total legend and was awesome pretty much his whole career. He played his part perfectly always. The thing that knocks him off the top of the list for me is that he wasn't a MAJOR draw. Could you honestly say he was the reason 5-10,000 people went to the arena? As awesome as he was in Japan, those people would've been in the seats regardless, and likely the same for his NWA/WCW/ECW days. I think that he was on the cusp of MAJOR draw at times but ultimately was more of an attraction when compared to someone like Flair. Probably because the bulk of his career he worked heel and heels tended to your the territory's more than babyfaces who are clearly set up to be more successful in GOAT talks. All of that aside it's a real fucking shame that Vince didn't want to push Funk vs Hogan in the early days. It could've been so good.

It's a great point, and I think there are certainly different perceptions. Wrestling fans and people in the industry know what a legend he is.

On the other hand, people from the outside world would not know Terry Funk because not everybody can become a part of pop culture. Somebody who was never a wrestling fan is not going to know who Terry Funk is, but they will know Hogan, Austin, Flair, Rock, Cena, etc.

I can definitely say Terry was a great draw. He wouldn't have gotten a 14 month run with the NWA title if he wasn't. I've seen numbers but I gotta find them. I know Funk vs Flair was the highest drawing WCW feud from 89 to 96 and he and Onita drew 41,000 and drew 28,000 on top of an IWA show

Fuck me, that's one helluva stat right there. Never knew that, but dayam!

He's not a Hogan/Austin draw but he's a great one

I'll be waiting for the NWA numbers please have them on my desk by midday.

Haha I think it was something Meltzer posted a while back. I took the day off work to find this

If I'm picking between Austin and Hogan I'm taking Hogan. When Austin got hurt during the "I did it for the Rock" it wasn't like business suffered. I'm pretty sure it actually went up.

You look at cards that didn't have Hogan on them compared to ones that did in the mid 80s and it's crazy.

I remember in 85 Hogan fought August and Sept at the Philly Spectrum and both cards drew between 14-15 thousand fans. October had no Hogan with Andre vs Piper as the Main Event and drew like 7000. Hogan was back in November and it drew 13-14 thousand again

dont have time to go into the weeds but Funk was absolutely a draw. no question. not a draw on par with hogan or bruno but there were absolutely sell out shows because funk was at the top of the card. not an all time great draw (an all time great everything else) but a draw for certain

Now that the conversation has died off Hogan had 4 votes for GOAT here. Flair is the only other guy to get more than 1 vote (3.)

Clearly those are the top 2 in my mind with no question. Its a debate that will last another 50 years.

What happens after 50 years?

Hogan vs Flair. This time it's personal!

people who lived it will be dead and time will only remember them as a lingering phantom replaced by whatever act the people of the day have the largest connection to.

Flair also did it in multiple centuries

Flair is nowhere near as recognizable as Hogan.

Flair's extra shit is the only reason I ordered the last WWE game, however long ago that was.


I remember not even finishing it because it was so bad. The Flair flair was cool AF tho.

I think we all need to just face the fact that if you go by all the criteria set out already, John Cena is the GOAT. No single wrestle can be the top of every criteria, but if we look at a lot of them, Cena is up there as the best. Even if we don't want to admit it.

He's headlined two of WWE's biggest selling PPV's in terms of buyrates (Wrestlemania 27 and 29).

He's a 16-time world champion. A 5-time U.S. champion. A 2-time Royal Rumble winner. 10-time Slammy winner and has ranked No. 1 on PWI's top 500 three times.

He's was the main face and flagbearer of the WWE brand for close to 15 years, which is a major position to hold.

Has done endless charitable deeds for major organisations.

His name will only rise now to non-wrestling fans with his movie roles getting bigger and bigger, with roles in the Fast and Furious, Transformers and DC franchises.

He's had countless match-of-the-year candidates and can cut some fantastic promos when it's not scripted. He may not be as relevant to a 30+ year-old as Steve Austin or The Rock, but to millions of WWE fans who got into WWE after 2003, Cena is "the man".

I'm not the guy's biggest fan, but I do, having typed this post and thought about it, consider John Cena to be the GOAT.

Top five of all time? Easily Cena, Hogan, Austin and whoever else... But while everyone's strengths and weaknesses counter each other, I think Cena's strengths puts him at the top of that list.