10 Wrestlers You Didn't Know Were HUGELY Influential
The uncredited architects of modern pro wrestling.
Today's wrestling scene is influenced by many names you can quite easily determine.
Kenny Omega is so great and acclaimed that of course he was going to inspire his successors. That's what happens everywhere, in every medium: a 'Nevermind' always begets a 'Sixteen Stone', and a 'Sixteen Stone' doesn't happen without a 'Nevermind'. Omega has either inspired the move-sets of wrestlers (Seth Rollins) or used a strand of his hair to clone one (Buddy Matthews). Matthews is actually great, so explosive that he threatens to burst out of his own skin, but he isn't the same wrestler if Kenny Omega was never born.
Shawn Michaels and his first chapter of spectacular athleticism and comeback run melodrama influenced so much artificial-feeling storytelling that he could be accurately compared to a plague. The Rock inspired every subsequent babyface - or the writers tasked with scripting those babyfaces - to become a worse stand-up than he was, spawning an excruciating number of utterly lamentable TitanTron "gags". CM Punk meanwhile inspired every wrestler in NXT to take up the profession (apart from those collegiate athletes who barely knew what WWE was until they were scouted by them).
But what about those oft-uncredited architects...?
10. Taz
Taz evolved from bizarre early '90s cartoon character to zeitgeist-grabbing killer shooter throughout his and ECW's prime years, which intersected.
"Zeitgeist-grabbing" sells it all a bit short. Taz was savvy enough to draw inspiration from the nascent UFC league years before it broke big. He sensed immediately that the aesthetic and elements of the proto-MMA style would add a brand new dimension of credibility to his character. It was inspired, and would have worked brilliantly in and of itself, but it was especially great in contrast to the woefully outdated WWF. Really, in defining the promotion, Taz was one of the all-time great wrestling gimmicks.
Taz wasn't merely instrumental in defining and influencing pro wrestling in the '90s: through his pioneered tap-out finish, he completely transformed the very dramatic principles of the sport. Watching that hand hover inches over the mat, as the crowd bites on the idea of the babyface literally agonising between their health or a loss, can be traced back to Taz.
Something like the incredible finish to Shawn Michaels Vs. Kurt Angle at WWE WrestleMania 21 would not be possible, were it not for his innovation of the visual submission and what became the drawn-out tease of it.