While it remains committed to conveying authenticity and realism, professional wrestling is a fiction at its heart. The matches are pre-determined, the stories are created by committee and the wrestlers play a character often wildly different to who they are in real life. As the times have changed, wrestling has got bigger and bolder, with an emphasis on spectacle and showmanship. Gorgeous George is often credited with really bringing this showmanship into professional wrestling. He created a persona that the fans of the forties could hate, he was a flamboyant glamour boy with elegant robes and exaggerated entrances. Muhammad Ali credits George for inspiring his own cocky attitude, and theres at least a little bit of Gorgeous George in every wrestler alive today. These days everyone has a signature taunt. Its not enough to be a good wrestler, have a cool finisher or say a cool catchphrase; you need something that can be instantly linked to you without any context. Taunts convey character in a way that words cant, they show how confident a wrestler is, where his affiliations lie, or even signal that the end of the match is at hand. There have been dozens and dozens of memorable taunts over the years, and here are twenty of the absolute coolest.
