#08 CURT HENNIG

Ring Performance - 10
Mic/Charisma - 8
Overall Impact - 6

Curt Hennig is a "Perfect" choice for this list. Curt started his career with his legendary father Larry "Axe" Hennig in the AWA. Early in his career he teamed with his father to feud with the greatest tag team in history, The Road Warriors. They were unsuccessful in defeating them but he did receive his first notoriety during this feud. He later won the AWA Tag Team belts with partner Scott Hall...of Razor Ramon fame. He joined the WWF in 1988 and was launched with a promotional build-up that was ahead of its time. He appeared in numerous vignettes during the WWF telecast that showed him doing amazing things like knocking every ball in on a pool break and making half-court shots on a basketball court. It served to build him up as a superior athlete or the "Perfect" athlete and he became Mr. Perfect. He won 150 straight matches to begin his WWF career which only led to his character being hated by the crowd. He won many of his matches with cheating and then would proclaim that "You just witnessed perfection".

Mr. Perfect was an outstanding technical wrestler. He, along with Bret Hart, were the in-ring standard that all wrestlers would be measured by. Curt Hennig was my first favorite wrestler. I loved the little skits and I loved his "better than you" attitude. One thing that still cracks me up about Mr. Perfect was his pre-match routine. He would walk down to the ring with a smug grin on his face waving his hand at people as if to shoo them away. He would then get down to the ring and spit his gum out and hit it into the crowd. I was just so damn funny!! Curt was injured a lot during his career but he did not let being injured affect his ability to talk shit. In the WCW, he would come down on crutches in get in the ring and hold himself up on his crutch while flexing his tricep and pointing at it and shaking his head....now that is a Viking thing to do. Of course he was as Norwegian as they came..he gets bonus points for that. His technical skill was on display with his finishing move, The Perfect Plex. The Perfect Plex was a suplex that ended with Curt doing an absurd bridge and holding a underhook-leg pin...it was just an awesome finishing move. His match against Bret Hart at the 1993 King of The Ring (Hart won) is regarded as one of the great matches in WWF history. Bret Hart called him "the best wrestler I ever worked with".

Mr. Perfect was one of the most charismatic wrestlers in history. The only reason he does not receive a higher grade in that department is due to the relative length of his run as a big time heel in WWF. He was also limited by various back injuries that kept him out of the ring for extended periods in his prime. During one of his rehabs he was a bodyguard for Ric Flair during Flair's two WWF Champion reigns. He was also great in this role..helping Flair win by cheating and then acting coy about it.

— arthur@arthurshall.com