5. Dean Malenko
His nickname says it all; The Man of 1,000 Holds. Dean Malenko is a man who throughout his entire career has earned constant respect for his talent in the ring. Despite this however, he is perhaps the one guy on the list who isn't likely to have DVD anthologies released to cover his career and life story, and whilst he is more than deserving of Hall of Fame induction, no one is out there campaigning for it to happen right now. So why is this? His matches in ECW and WCW as well as matches from elsewhere around the world have shown him to have the kind of gritty, technical battles which certainly are as good as anyone else on the list. Unfortunately for Malenko, his high profile departure from WCW to WWE as part of The Radicalz in early 2000 proved to call an end to his in ring relevance. Upon entering the WWE, all of the Radicalz were said to be too small for WWE, and it would take time before any of them hit their stride. Chris Benoit, who had won the WCW World title the day they all quit the company was quickly entered into main event feud, but still took three years to win the big one. Eddie Guerrero, who was the most charismatic of the four, soon began high profile story lines with Chyna and matches for the intercontinental title. Perry Saturn found some level of success in his story line with Terri and her love rival who was a kitchen mop called Moppy. Dean however was given James Bond like music, but nothing else to back the gimmick up. Despite some wrestlers reports that Dean is hilarious backstage, he was never able to translate that personality on screen so in the promo heavy WWE Dean was relegated to the Lightweight division, where although he became champion the title was so thoroughly meaningless to the WWE, that they would later drop the belt without mention on TV. Dean could see his time in the big league was over and retired from in ring competition relatively young to work behind the scenes in WWE which he still does to this day. Regardless on his lack of achievement in WWE Dean is still a decorated wrestler whose achievements include being a member of The Four Horsemen, winning the United States and Cruiserweight championships, and in 1997 being named by Pro Wrestling Illustrated the number one wrestler in the entire world in their annual Top 500 list. This was a remarkable achievement for Malenko who was by far the smallest man to earn this accolade at that time, and also the first time it had been won by someone who hadn't won a World Heavyweight Champion in any of the major promotions. It's great that up and coming wrestlers in the independents or NXT or OVW are able to watch back matches from the past masters as part of their training, and more should watch the style and moves displayed by the Iceman Dean Malenko.