In the event that things don't get better, it makes me happy to know that Flair buried the hatchet on so many petty personal feuds of the past in recent years and seemed to be at greater peace in general.

Ric Flair in ICU is terrible news, gonna be a sad, sad day when the great man passes

I love it how his twitter feed is just pure unadulterated Naitchure Boy

Lets hope he recovers, good luck bro

I've felt this way about him, Hogan, and Vince for years. I've expressed it before in this forum. Tears will be shed.

I put this up on Twitter today:

In the category of least surprising news ever, Adam Cole has signed with WWE and will be with NXT.

I assume it's not true, and Meltzer said he doesn't think so either, but rumor is Corbin lost his MITB because he was Twitter fighting with people.

Which is stupid. Isn't that part of his character? Kevin Owens twitter fights with people all the time.

So the Flair thing:
Was his heart, isn't his heart.
Was his colon, might not be his colon.
Last I read, his wife/fiance is saying he's dealing with multiple organ issues.

Hoping we still get a positive outcome here, but would that make Hogan the last of the 80's legends left with Piper, Dusty, Randy, Andre all gone?

Closest ones that come off the top of my head are Steamboat and Funk. Technically Vince since he took over the WWF in 1983.

Although Vince was the most important figure in 80s wrestling, it was for his off screen role, so he's a different category. No one else is close to Hogan and Flair.

Decided to try to quantify the 80s from a kayfabe perspective. I took the PWI top 4 for wrestler of the year and gave them 4 points for 1st all the way down to 1 point for fourth.

Top wrestlers of the 80s:

Flair: 27 points
Hogan: 18
Backlund(!): 12
Savage: 8
Race: 7
Luger: 4

Bunch of other people with 1, 2, or 3 points, so those 6 stand out.

Vince Sr. built WWF around Backlund for the first part of the decade. But he's not nearly as fondly remembered as Flair or even Hogan. Even with the hatred Hogan has in the IWC, he's begrudgingly acknowledged as one of the biggest stars of all-time.

Surprised at how low Dusty was. He only got a single 4th place award. According to this stat, he's exactly as important as Nikita Koloff, which seems really off.

For the record, the other people who finished in the top 4 in the 80s are (in order): Lawler, Martel, Bockwinkel, Kerry Von Erich, Andre, Tommy Rich, Verne Gagne, Steamboat, Steve Williams, Nikita Koloff, Slaughter, Snuka, Dusty, Iron Shiek.

If you include tag teams, Road Warriors would be at the top of the list. I didn't total that award, but they won 4 times and no one else won once.

Do the same for the 90s and the result is:

Hogan: 11
Austin: 11
Bret: 9
Sting: 9
HBK: 8
Luger: 8
Flair: 7

I'd sure be curious as to a ranking of name recognition among the general public, particularly after getting past household names Hogan and Rocky. Seems like the margins would get razor-thin in a hurry once you get down to the likes of Bret, who only a very small percentage of non-wrestling fans would know (outside of Canada anyway).

I wonder how well Undertaker stacks up against Steve Austin in terms of name recognition amongst non-fans.

You have to realize the Backlund was the world champ in one of three big federations from 80-83. Actually 79, but for your purposes I only used 1980. I don't know if you were familiar with the ranking section of PWI, but monthly they had the top 10 from every territory, and then did a top 10 overall. The world champs from the AWA, WWF, and NWA were usually the top three, but sometimes one would slip to #4. It was also relatively the same for the yearly rankings they did. Another thing to factor in with regards to backlund is that PWI and all of its sister publications were based out of NY which was the heart of WWF land. So this also had an effect on how the wrestlers were seen.

The other thing is that wrestling in 1982 was way different from wrestling in 1985 due to the influence of cable TV. I think this is why some of the numbers look the way they did. I think a better time frame would have been 1984-1989.

As for your Dusty point, that makes sense. With the exception of that one week after Starrcade 85, I don't think he was ever world champion in the 80's, and with out that he was on the downside of his career and his work wasn't nearly as good as it was in the 70's. Without that belt he really wouldn't warrant a rating in the top 4 at the end of any year.

Edit: I guess I should have checked before typing, but apparently Dusty had the title in '81 for 88 days. For some reason I thought his first two reigns happened before '80. I was wrong. I also completely forgot about his 14 day reign in 86 at the Great American bash, but I don't think that was long enough to register on the yearly PWI rankings. What year did Dusty get his 4th place vote?

My original statement was pretty much based on this. People my parents would recognize (Hogan, Flair, Savage, Piper, Dusty, Andre).

New Southpaw Regional Wrestling this Friday !

Cass holding a jersey that says 7ft while standing next to 6 7 Aaron Judge is kind of funny.

https://twitter.com/johncena/status/898288502353350660

fyp

My peers (I'm 30 yrs old so adolescence during the attitude era), especially male, would prob have over 90% recognizing taker and stone cold by name, after that probably john cena (actually he might be right up there with the 2 you named) and Goldberg then another drop probably to HHH and a few others.

Dusty got his vote in 1981, when he held the title. But he also was #1 in 1977 and 1978 and #2 in 1979. He headlined Starcade in 1984 and 1985, but the spots those years were filled by the champs of WWF, NWA, and AWA.

Good points about the awards being biased towards the big 3 title holders in the 80s. That explains why Gagne and Martel were in the top 4 even though they were barely known to pre-teen wrestling fan me, living in WWF TV territory.

That also explains how Lawler got his second place vote in 1988, he was AWA champ that year. By the 90s, the territorial system was dead, so everyone in the top 4 in the 90s was either in the WWF or in WCW or was named Taz

Nowadays I think people will know Cena and lesnar and not much more

CM Punk though.

Just watched the first episode of the new Southpaw, and it was excellent.

I would think Orton would be right up there - if only for the popularity of 'RKO outta nowhere'-memes.