All-Time
I. Shawn Michaels ~ No explanation required but it's not like that's stopped me before. However, I won't ramble on too long and actually keep this relatively concise, Shawn is just about as good as everyone claims him to be. Mic-wise he's definitely in my top five if we're excluding non-wrestlers (i.e. Vince McMahon, Paul Heyman, anyone whose main job isn't primarily as a wrestler). Wrestling-wise, he's obviously my number one, I just love he doesn't confine himself to just one style and more or less really adapts to his opponent. Granted, it's not usually huge changes mind you but it's enough. He's in a lot of my favorite matches, Michaels/Angle at 21 is my third favorite match period, Michaels/Taker HIAC is my favorite HIAC and one of my favorite matches ever, Michaels/Trips on Raw ending off 2003 is my favorite Raw match & second favorite TV match, Michaels/Jericho at No Mercy is my favorite singles match, and the list goes on and on.
II. Kurt Angle ~ Honestly, if I've seen more of his work, he may just be my number one of all-time. His mic skills are awesome, he was really hilarious with Austin or The Rock for example but he was also pretty good when it came to serious. I'm blanking on an example but I'm pretty sure he had some great ones against Michaels during the build to 21. Which brings me to my next point, he's in at least two of my five favorite matches ever. My favorite ever in Angle/Benoit at the Rumble in 03, the aforementioned Shawn match and possibly the Iron man match with Lesnar (my favorite TV match). I never can work myself up to rewatch it though because of how long it is so I'm wary about putting in my top five but even so it was great. I also really love his match with Taker at No Way Out 06.
III. CM Punk ~ I've talked to death about CM Punk. Legitimately wrote a two thousand plus words post on my thoughts on CM Punk, both positive and negative ones and while that was the most excessive I've rattled on him, I've done it several other times in the past so I really won't go into much detail here. But, what makes Punk stand out is that I've only been watching since 2006. For everyone else here, I had to go back and watch most of their stuff or at least a lot of it but for Punk, he debuted only a few months after I started watching. I hooked onto him immediately and I've gone through his entire WWE career and there's just something special about that, you know?
III. Chris Benoit ~ Refer to Angle's when I mention my favorite match ever. Needless to say, that isn't the only great match Benoit has had.
V. Chris Jericho/Kane/Undertaker ~ I can't decide and nobody wants me to go into detail about all three and make this already absurdly long post even longer so this time I really will be concise (unlike the previous post). Chris Jericho is just awesome, great wrestler and fantastic on the mic. I also really loved the It Begins (as obvious as it was that it was Jericho) vignettes and how his return played out. Kane's character got me interested in checking out wrestling (a lot of my interest came from playing a videogame at my cousin's house) so he holds a special place for me and I do think he is a good wrestler (albeit the worst of the bunch) and I also think he is just fantastic on the mic when he's ready to go. Undertaker isn't an extension of getting me interested in wrestling because he was the American Badass in that game, still love the supernatural character, great wrestler but I find his mic skills mostly poor unless he is the American Badass.
Currently
I. CM Punk ~ For the first time since Shawn retired pretty much, this wasn't an easy pick. There were two other superstars who really wanted to be number one but Punk wins out mostly because his match with Brock is what I'm most interested in.
II. Dolph Ziggler ~ I've been a fan of Dolph Ziggler ever since he popped up on Raw and started saying "Hi, My name is Dolph Ziggler". As stupid as a reason as that is to get behind someone, I'm so glad it paid off because just recently Dolph, and Del Rio, provided the best match of the year and one I really considered giving a perfect score to (not to imply it hasn't paid off plenty of times before but this time was really something special). That's really enough to place him as number two.
III. Daniel Bryan ~ Yeah, he's only number three for me. I do love the guy though. That recent match with Orton was great, loved the outcome and several of the spots. By the way, these are much shorter due to me hardly watching anything in WWE outside of PPV's (I've seen both Henry promo's, the Heyman/Punk promo, & the Orton/Bryan match).
IV. Brock Lesnar ~ Refer to CM Punk [currently].
V. Um, Mark Henry I guess. The fake retirement promo was really good so I'll give him the nod here.
