I am an old time wrestling fan and can go way back but without a doubt the greatest wrestler all time is Ric Flair.
If you were able to watch NWA or World Championship Wrestling as it just went national on TBS and got to see the formation of the Four Horsemen and follow that group and storyline out through the years until they broke up and Tully and Arn went to the WWF, you got to witness wrestling at it's most entertaining ever.
The Four Horsemen in the early 80's were superstars the caliber of rock stars and movie stars. Across the southern US the Horsemen coming to town was bigger than Greatful Dead or Lynard Skynyrd. And to watch them just beat the hell out of people was something. Old school stuff, it was awesome.
No one could pump a crowd like Hogan, though for the life of me, now that I look back at old WWF stuff, I don't see why. His matches and stick were all exactly the same. Heck, without a doubt the NWO Hogan was a better entertainer and wrestler and show than anything Hogan did in the WWF before moving south.
McMahon vs Austin may have taken wrestling as we know it to it's pinnacle. Monday Night watching Raw with my three boys and waiting to see how McMahon was going to take it from Stone Cold was, without a doubt, some of the most entertaining moments I have ever had watching TV with the kids.
The Rock has been and always will be the most entertaining of all the modern day wrestlers. He decided not to make a character he just decided to play himself.
I worked for this guy in the mid 90's who was the cousin of the traveling television producer for the WWE. We traveled on business all the time as we were in a service industry. Well, one day he detours off of 95 south in Stamford CT. because we're driving to Jersey and the traffic report for NYC was unreal. He decided to go to say hi to his cousin and give me a tour of the WWE facilities.
Unreal, simply unreal. I spoke with and shook hands with Gorilla Monsoon(hands bigger than any NBA player, simply huge hands) , Alfred Hayes(sweetheart of a guy), the spanish announcing team(I think it's still the same two guys that are doing it today), Lex Luger(complete ass, what a tool), Sable(stunningly gorgeous, as ugly a personality as you could find), and some other lesser guys.
They had one workout area where there were about 4 or five rings set up and all these guys were practicing matches or moves. Computer systems they had there were like nothing I had ever seen. In their television graphics area they had Macs attatched to screens the size of current HDTVs and their interface was futuristic like out of a movie. Then they had this room that was just filled with data storage units holding all their television footage, commercials, anything and everything that may have been televised or film. Each machine was the size of a cigarette or Coca Cola vending machine and cost a half million dollars. They had to have over 200 of them in this one room.
I did get to meet and talk with this behemoth of a dude named Glen. I was having lunch with my boss and his cousin and this guy walks in and sits down, he had to talk to my boss's cousin. So he ends up having lunch with us. Big, nice gentle guy, college graduate trying to break into big time wrestling and was working on this new dentist routine. I laughed, he looked at me. I told him that there wouldn't be a single person out there that would believe he was a dentist. I told him he was a monster of a man it would never work. Both guys smiled at me and said to let the pros handle it.
Glen was a real nice guy. Turns out I was right about the monster part. He now goes by the name Kane.