10 Wrestling Matches That Shaped Vince McMahon’s Vision Of Sports Entertainment

3. Gorgeous George Vs. Hans Schnabel - 11/03/1950

This wasn't the first match Gorgeous George wrestled - but it is the most high-quality video of his available within the recesses of YouTube. George was such a revolutionary that he demands inclusion here, enforced inaccuracy be damned.

Before he revolutionised the babyface versus heel dynamic, wrestling matches were often dry affairs, contested by like-minded technicians. George wasn't the first proper baddie - wrestling was always a game that played on geopolitical tensions, long before Rusev crushed Enzo Amore's balls in a hotel room - but he was the first proper character, one whose histrionic affectations glowed through the television he popularised.

George, famously, was never an in-ring general - but his legacy to wrestling was mastering the space between moves, stalling with his hands behind his back to manipulate the ire of the crowds who loathed his effeminate preening. Running away from the more masculine - and thus heroic - Schnabel, George would admonish the fans for jeering him - which just infuriated them all the more.

George wasn't merely a wrestling innovator. His sense of showmanship was adopted by the most prominent figures of several entertainment mediums - Muhammad Ali, most notably.