10 Wrestlers Who Were Way Ahead Of Their Time

1. Brian Pillman

Brian Pillman Hart Foundation
WWE.com

The 'Loose Cannon', Brian Pillman was ahead of his time when it came to truly blurring the lines of business and reality. Arn Anderson described him as either 'the craziest smart man I ever met or the smartest crazy man', and it is difficult to disagree with Double A.

Pillman had made a good name for himself as an athletic high-flyer, but it was his about-turn and seeming obsession with destroying kayfabe that really set him apart from his peers. Whether it was his infamous feud with Kevin Sullivan that led to the 'I respect you, booker man' in the middle of the ring, his threat to piss in the ring in ECW or even brandishing a gun on WWE Monday Night RAW, Pillman had no respect for the envelope whatsoever.

Pillman set the tone for the Attitude Era more than any other, a character that smudged the lines between fact and fiction and established the 'anything can happen' atmosphere that managed to make professional wrestling incredibly cool in the late 1990s. It's a tragedy that he wasn't around to see it.

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Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.