6. Lou Thesz
Lou Thesz is probably the greatest professional wrestler of all time. The perennial NWA Champion, Thesz delighted countless audiences throughout his glittering career. He would eventually wrestle across an astonishing 7 different decades. Born in 1916, Thesz was the son of a Hungarian-German shoemaker, (who had himself been a formidable amateur in his day). He first wrestled at age 8 and discovered a talent for it. The young Thesz dropped out of school, aged just 14, because he was sure that he wanted to be a wrestler. To that end, he swiftly made a name for himself via a combination of good looks, hard work and being a very skilled (and very dangerous) mat technician. Eventually, somebody decided to put him in the ring against Ed The Strangler Lewis, arguably the toughest wrestler of all time. I know youre thinking that Im about to say that Thesz totally owned the ageing Strangler, but Im not. Thesz couldnt even get the old man up. Disheartened by being trounced by an old timer, Thesz returned home and went back to working in his fathers shoemaking business. However, unbeknownst to Lou, although he had triumphed easily over the boy, the man known as The Strangler had been genuinely impressed by him. So impressed in fact, that he called Theszs father and actually asked the boy to come back. From there, Lou Thesz became the student of Ed Lewis. He studied, he learned and he grew. Wrestling in the 1930s was a vastly different animal to today. Despite Lewis himself helping to lay the foundations for wrestling as a work (an event with a predetermined outcome), the men who faced off against young Thesz were often throwbacks to the era of legitimate contests (that could very easily get out of control). Sometimes it was a work, sometimes it was a shoot and sometimes it was both. So, in addition to learning ring psychology, the art of popping a crowd and generally improving as a worker, Thesz also learned how to punish any opponent that strayed from the planned finish. In his time, Lou Thesz would become known as the most dangerous hooker (a wrestler that can seriously hurt you) in the world. In 1937, he became the youngest World Champion ever at 21. Randy Orton may be the youngest WWE Champion in history (at 24), but Lou Thesz is still number one in everybody elses book. The early forms of professional wrestling had peaked as a (legitimate) sport via the popularity of championship bouts between the likes of Georg Hackenshmidt and Frank Gotch in the early 20th century. The sport had survived the Depression and two World Wars. However, in the intervening years, professional wrestling had been on at first a steady, and later rather a steep, decline. However, with the 1950s came the advent of television and, along with television came the rebirth of professional wrestling. It is here that pro wrestling, as we might recognise it, truly begins to emerge. Wrestling leapt out of the arena and on to the small screen as cheap programming that was easy to make and, crucially, drew a LOT of viewers. It has been said that the only people who loved wrestling more than the fans were the advertisers. Whenever it was broadcast, everyone for miles around clamoured to the windows of their nearest electronics stores in order to watch the wrestling. The star of the show? Lou Thesz. So, Thesz is responsible for bringing the post war generation into wrestling and for defining the role of the iconic babyface champion. Both on-screen and off-screen, Thesz sought to unify the many disparate world championships into one, definitive title, helping to give birth to the NWA Championship. The NWA belt is the belt that all true world titles (including the WWE Championship currently held by Daniel Bryan) are directly related to (in some shape of form). Thesz was the only man who could do this. He had the wrestling pedigree, the marquee name value and (perhaps most importantly), the ability to seriously hurt anyone that tried to test him. For the rest of his career (and indeed, his life) Thesz would act as wrestlings glorious ambassador.