10 Coolest Wrestlers Of All Time
6. Brian Pillman
Brian Pillman was a wrestling revolutionary.
The Sonics planted the seeds for punk rock with their deranged, howling deconstruction of rock n' roll. David Lynch paved the way for the artistic landscape of television's Golden Age by injecting the medium with his surreal auteur sensibilities, inducing within the American public an hallucinatory high.
Brian Pillman, under the guise of his astonishing 'Loose Cannon' persona, was modern wrestling's progenitor; he destroyed the last embers of kayfabe because he was compelled to. It was his only chance of succeeding in a giant-dominated landscape, and he was smart enough to know that he needed only to pull the plug. He was the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, but like that meteor, he himself burned out. He owned all the traits associated with the tragically cool; matinee looks, a scary charisma, a once-in-a-generation talent, a short life lived in the fast lane.
Pillman secured his immortality through his influential genius and by virtue of not fading away; a controversial iconoclast who shaped the very future of his arena, he proved, sadly, that premature death is the elixir of cool.