Hey Scott--
Love your thoughts, love your rants. Hope you can weigh in on something here.
It is my thinking (and many other members of the IWC) that a wrestler needs three things to become a legend/huge success. Those three are: 1) Charisma/Look 2) In-ring skills 3) Mic work. The best of all time have all three of these (Flair, HBK, Angle, Savage, Austin...), many other have become legends with only two of them, but my question is this---Can you name the wrestler that has "gotten the farthest" in terms of overall respect by fans, status among the boys, reputation and everything else who only possessed ONE of the three factors.
Here are mine:
(again trying to find the biggest disparity b/w their "status" and their talents)
1) Legendary wrestlers with tons of charisma and a great/memorable look but no in-ring skills or mic work. My pick is Andre the Giant. The man is one of the most recognizable and well known wrestlers of all time, and he did it all with just who he is. Even when he was younger, he never was anything close to a good wrestler and his mic skills are even worse. My back-up pick is Abdullah the Butcher.
2) Legendary wrestlers who had amazing in-ring work, but hardly any charisma or mic skills. My pick here is Bob Backlund. Incredibly bland (except when wrestling) and snooze-inspiring promo work. My back-up here is AJ Styles (sorry TNA fans).
3) Legendary wrestlers who had great promo work, but sucked in the ring and didn't have much in the way of charisma/look. This one is the toughest obviously, since anyone who has great mic work usually can be said to have a decent amount of charisma. I can't find the perfect example, but Larry Zbyszko is the closest I can come up with.
Curious to get your thoughts on all three.
Also, the wrestler who made it the farthest w/o any of those three factors is Pedro Morales. He sucked.
Pedro was awesome for his time, you're nuts.
I don't think you can really divide "promo skills" from "charisma" so the whole argument kind of falls apart for me. Like I'd say a Michael Hayes was all promo, but obviously he had a natural charisma that made it easy to hate him as well. And Andre absolutely had in-ring skills! You're obviously not watching the right matches if you think he didn't.