You'd have to add Lou Thesz to the Babe Ruth argument. He pretty much ruled the North American scene from the late 40s through the 50s.

No it starts in the late 1800s/early 1900s with Frank Gotch and George Hackenschmidt. Moves into the 20s and 30s with Ed "Strangler" Lewis and Jim Londos which goes into Lou Thesz in the 40s and 50s. Then things splinter out as the 60s dawn and you get Verne Gagne in Chicago, Bruno Sammartino in the Tri-State area and Thesz still at the top of the NWA. The 70s get more complicated as you have Pedro Morales and Bruno Sammartino as the top of the Tri-State area with Bob Backlund taking over at the end of the decade. The Chicago area was Verne Gagne and Nick Bockwinkel for most of the decade with some Mad Dog Vachon thrown in. The NWA was Dory Funk Jr., Terry Funk, Harley Race and Jack Brisco throughout the decade with guys like Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair starting to climb the cards.

In Japan you had Rikidozan pave the way for Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki who then lead to the Great Muta, Mitsuhara Misawa, Kenta Kobashi and several other guys.

The thing with wrestling is that until the WWF in the 1980s and cable television it was very regional. Florida was it's own area, the Carolinas were an area, St. Louis was an area, the WWF ran New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington DC., etc. So there isn't a super clear lineage of stars at times.

Rocca was the big NY star before that area was known as the WWF. Calhoun was a big fat guy that wrestled as kind of a special attraction wrestler in many areas. He did hold the WWF Tag Team belts with Tony Garea at one point in time.

Giant Baba is regarded as one of the best wrestlers of all time. In his era of the 60s and 70s he was a native born Japanese wrestler that stood 6'10'' and weighed just under 300 lbs.

Couple general things:

@ Ish: If you like women's wrestling, the best place for it these days is SHIMMER. That's a Women-only indy fed.. they put every event they do on DVD, and I'm sure if you hunt around you could find some matches.

@ action Ace: They're a team in WWE developmental (NXT) called the Ascension that is VERY, VERY much like the Road Warriors (no Spikes and Face Paint, though)... If you do the free trial for the WWE network, you could check them out.

I so cannot wait for The Ascension to eventually move up to being on RAW and/or Smackdown...I agree they're like the Road Warriors, but with a vampire craze catering aspect thrown in for good measure. Between Ascension (who remind me time and again how much I actually liked Gangrel and his gimmick, which became part of Edge and Christian's big league beginnings) and Bray Wyatt and his Family, it's delightful to see WWE embracing some more horror themed fun lately.   


Well, over at the wrestling board I read on/off, they bandy the 'midget wrestling' term around as if there's no tomorrow. And I suspect it will be thrown around A LOT in the upcoming weeks, if not months too if the following is true...word is that WWE is liking the reception for their 'WeeLC' match between El Torito (Los Matadores' bull mascot) and Hornswoggle (dwarven 'mascot' for Three Man Band, who's been involved in a bunch of various silly/comedy feuds...beforehand, he had a leprechaun gimmick and was Dave "Fit" Finlay's sidekick and the kayfabe son of Mr. McMahon), and reportedly looking to hire more dwarf wrestlers. It's a grain of salt thing, but I feel it might have legs because, at least to me, the El Torito/Hornswoggle feud has felt like a testing of the waters for a 'midget wrestling division' in the E...   

Mick Foley was discussing Edge and Christian on Legends Round Table and brought up how Edge was brought in. Jim Ross who scouted him felt Edge could be a near Shawn Michaels type with talent . But he never expected that Edge could actually be great on the mic as was Christian. Gangrel was having an issue cutting a promo so Edge was given the mic and his 1 promo its claimed made the WWF decide to dump Gangrel from them.