Smartest Worker
By Scott Keith on 15 March 2018
Hey Scott,
Was listening to JR and Cornette talking and they mention in passing that they thought that, when Dick Murdoch was on, he was one of the greatest wrestler ever. So I watched some DM matches and, while they weren't fantastic, they were a classic example of someone doing more with absolutely less. Heck, there's a jobber match where he gets punched and literally sells that one punch throughout the match and in the Post-match interview.
So, in his honor, I propose a "Greatest Wrestler" question WITH A TWIST. For this criteria, actual athleticism is a determent. That is to say, wrestlers who actually put in a lot of work into their match or perform a ton of high-flying captivating maneuvers are actually downgraded.
Upgraded are wrestlers that get by PURELY on Ring Psychology; guys who understood know to work a crowd and get the most with the least. Guys like Roberts, Lawler, who could get the crowd excited over a headlock or have a different match with a variety of different wrestlers.
I'm also downgrading "body guys" so as to DQ wrestlers like Sid, Hogan, Warrior, etc because obviously 1/2 of their attraction was their look and their booking.
If you're going by that criteria, it's Jerry Lawler hands down. The man could work a 20,000 seat arena into a frenzy by pretending to stuff a foreign object in his tights that didn't even exist. He was not only a fantastic heel, but an even better babyface, and he did NOTHING in his matches. Sell, sell, sell, comeback, and the big highspot is a fist off the second rope. He could have continued wrestling until he was 80 were it not for the heart attack.
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