10 False Wrestling Facts You Probably Believe
2. Bigger Wrestlers Are Bigger Draws
The biggest draw UFC ever had wasn't a heavyweight; Conor McGregor floated between the featherweight and lightweight divisions.
The biggest draw boxing ever had wasn't a heavyweight; Floyd Mayweather, the undisputed king of all combat sports pay-per-view, floated between the welterweight and light middleweight divisions in his prime.
Wrestling is slightly different - its box office titans were mostly big, big men - but it's not quite as automatic as certain fans would have it, and again, a lot of those fans have been brainwashed by years of rhetoric. Wrestling is a personality business that just so happens to have been monopolised for most of all our adult lives by a gentleman who preferred to promote giants.
What draws a crowd has transformed dramatically in recent years. All In, the last true barometer of what sells beyond an established powerhouse of a brand, was sold on an intoxicating blend of futuristic style and restorative traditional storytelling.
But even wrestling's past, the province of the legitimate and the gigantic, yields compelling evidence that fans weren't necessarily drawn by those who boasted coveted size as prerequisite. In terms of top ten all-time draws, Argentina Rocca was a proto-workrate phenomenon; Ric Flair was hardly small, but fans gravitated towards him for his excellence and star power, above all else; Jim Londos, the undisputed top drawing star anywhere, in a time of the least ideal conditions, no less, was 205 Live-sized at 5' 8" and 200 lbs billed.