Wrestling Heritage welcomes memories, further information and corrections.
Merely choosing the criteria to use for our positioning of the greatest masked wrestlers has had us scratching our collective head. One thing we were completely sure of was that quality should reign supreme over quantity. So, while we could reel off well over a hundred masked names that were active during our period of study, so many of them appeared for only a short while, or were copycats, that any listing would be pointless. Indeed, half those hundred might be made up of sundry Doctor Deaths and Zebra Kids alone. We consider only originators, and no imitators.
In the end, we actually struggle to find a full twenty worthy of mention alongside the great names who will occupy the top spots. In terms of quality, we look for originality. Believable originality. We inevitably consider the stories, mythical or otherwise, that surrounded the masked men during their hooded heydays. We also value the length of their runs, mostly generally described as unbeaten. What kind of commitment has a guy pull on a bonnet almost nightly over 5, 10, 20 or even more years? The restriction on movement, the faffing around upon arrival and departure from the hall, maintaining secrecy and perhaps silence; role extends well beyond the 25 paid in-ring minutes to become a life-consuming costume.
Perhaps most of all, however, we consider the largely unquantifiable spine-tingling impact they made on us at the time, when at a time we didn’t know who they were, and as we watched, captivated, with the slight possibility that we were, tonight, to be amongst a small few privileged enough to witness their defeat and unmasking at long last. Surely this is yet another area of our site where fans have a great advantage over the wrestlers: only long-term fans knew what it was like to be kept in the dark and to be kept on the edge of their seat with the prospect of being put out of their misery.
Since the above entry was published in 2010 further information has come to light.
Page added 12/20
Wrestling Heritage 