There is a significant difference between professional wrestlers who help wrestling companies make money and those who help them survive. There are literally thousands who fit in the former category, while less than a handful fall in the latter. Hulk Hogan and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, of course, are two of the few whose contributions impacted the very existence of not just World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), but the cultural relevance of sports entertainment as a whole. However, to quote Yoda, “There is another.” If you smell what Yoda’s been cookin’, then you know I’m talking about The Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment, The Great One, The People’s Champ, The Brahma Bull, The Final Boss, Dewey himself, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The Rock is a global icon and arguably the most popular action star in the world. Weirdly, though, fans, historians, and former wrestlers have a hard time agreeing on where he stands in the GOAT conversation. He is routinely left off Mt. Rushmore lists, and sometimes out of that discussion altogether. On a list of favorites, by all means, take him or leave him. In the GOAT discussion, though, The Rock sits in a class above with only Hogan and Austin as peers. 

Before we dig into what makes The Rock one of the three greatest professional wrestlers in history, it’s important to explore why it might not be so obvious to the millions…and millions of The Rock’s fans. The #1 reason that his true significance is often overlooked is likely because he bolted town like Barry Sanders, leaving his fans wanting more, so much more. Despite The Rock’s Houdini act, it might come as a surprise that he has a nearly identical career resume to Austin. Both failed to gain traction with their initial gimmicks. Both had relatively short peak runs. Austin broke through in 1997 and retired in 2003. The Rock broke through in 1998 and left the company in 2004. Both were pivotal in WWF defeating WCW in the Monday Night Wars. They cut the greatest promos in the history of the business, delivered the most iconic catch phrases, elicited the loudest crowd reactions, and were booked as the main event in three WrestleManias. The difference in perception between the two might just come down to hurt feelings. Austin didn’t go anywhere which made his departure more palatable to fans. The Rock left for Hollywood, which, for many, felt like being stabbed in the back. The fact that The Rock was still at his physical peak while Austin wore visible battle scars only exacerbated the perception that Austin was the real people’s champ, while The Rock was a Hollywood turncoat. This criticism of The Rock is fair, and it was undoubtedly a gut punch for many at the time. However, the move to Hollywood would not only make The Rock a bigger star than ever before, but it would eventually give WWE credibility on a scale that it never could have imagined. 

The Rock and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin were in very similar positions in 1996. Both were struggling with gimmicks that fans didn’t care about. For Austin, it was The Ringmaster. For The Rock, it was Rocky Maivia. The WWF was struggling immensely at the time. WCW was galvanizing increasingly older audiences with the NWO angle, while Vince McMahon and the WWF were still pushing goofy occupational gimmicks onto its dwindling audience. The contrast couldn’t have been larger, and it showed in the television ratings as WCW Monday Nitro embarked on an 83-week winning streak over Monday Night Raw. The outlook for the WWF was so bleak that McMahon implored his top star–Bret “The Hitman” Hart–to seek employment with WCW because he couldn’t afford to honor Hart’s contract. With media mogul Ted Turner bankrolling WCW’s seemingly limitless budget–and stealing McMahon’s stars on top of it–the future of the WWF was very much in peril. Pay-per-view (PPV) buys had plummeted to record lows. TV ratings had eroded. Merchandise sales were non-existent. McMahon needed a miracle. 

Luckily for–and unbeknownst to–McMahon, he had two megastars on the roster, even if their initial efforts missed the mark. Austin, of course, found his niche with his anti-authority, badass persona. Although Austin’s popularity did result in more exposure for the WWF in 1997, it wasn’t until he had a yin to his yang that his character–and, subsequently, WWF’s TV ratings–launched into orbit. That foil was The Rock, who found his inner Soul Man in 1998, launching WWF to a level of pop cultural relevance that rivaled the hey days of Hulkamania. With an assist from the Mr. McMahon character, the chemistry between The Rock and Austin brought the WWF back from the brink and unlocked WCW’s stranglehold on TV ratings. The impact was just as noticeable in PPV buys as their main event match at WrestleMania XV attracted a record 800,000 buys, and then they smashed the record again two years later at WrestleMania X-Seven with a stratospheric 1.04 million buys. The Rock and Austin weren’t just talented performers; their popularity and chemistry literally saved the WWF from bankruptcy and eliminated its only competition. 

Austin almost always gets rated ahead of The Rock on these sorts of lists and there is ammunition to justify it. The “Stone Cold” character metamorphosed a year before the Rock when the WWF was facing its most existential threat from WCW. Austin was also the king of merchandise. The “Austin 3:16” shirt is likely the most popular in the history of the business. His weekly dust ups against Mr. McMahon–and corporate culture–let the everyman live out their most diabolical fantasies against authority. He also did it while guzzling cans of beer and extending his middle fingers. In contrast, The Rock was a smooth-talking, jabroni-beating, eye-brow-raising, smart aleck. Audiences loved to hate The Rock and loved to love Austin. However, despite Austin’s advantages, The Rock has some things on his resume that Austin can’t touch. 

While it wasn’t obvious to wrestling fans at the time, The Rock was doing something in Hollywood that would make wrestling more popular than ever before. Every movie and TV role he banked didn’t just increase his popularity in Hollywood; it increased the cache that he would eventually deliver when he returned to the place that made him a star. Yes, when the prodigal son returned, he came bearing gifts. After seven years away from wrestling, The Rock reemerged in 2011 to main event WrestleMania XXVIII with John Cena and then offered a sequel a year later at WrestleMania 29. The first match with Cena broke the record for WrestleMania PPVs at a staggering 1.3 million buys, and the two combined matches set the record for buys in consecutive years with a colossal 2.35 million. The Rock’s return came with record breaking numbers and a stamp of legitimacy for Cena–the face of the company at the time–that no active wrestler on the roster could’ve delivered.

Following his successful WrestleMania returns in 2011 and 2012, The Rock once again set out for Hollywood, except this time he would go on to become the biggest movie star in the world, even offering professional wrestling center stage on network television as his biographical TV series Young Rock aired in primetime on NBC. Once again, The Rock’s success outside of the wrestling industry would yield a massive return when he came back home again. He joined the Board of Directors at TKO–WWE’s parent company–and then used it as an opportunity to create his latest in-ring evolution, “The Final Boss.” Twenty-seven years after his first WrestleMania appearance, The Rock returned to main event WrestleMania XL to yet again deliver shine to WWE’s star of the present. This time around, it was “Dashing” “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes. 

While Austin’s white-hot run during the Monday Night Wars outshined even The Rock, his overall body of work might not quite be on par with Rocky’s. Consider that Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Austin, and John Cena never faced each other in the ring. The Rock not only faced each of them, but he was booked against them in the main event at WrestleMania a total of six times. The Rock and Austin are two sides of the same coin. Their contributions are as equally important as they are unique. Their value can be measured in stacks of cash for the companies they worked for and pink slips for the ones they didn’t. Nobody short of Hulk Hogan can say they had a bigger impact on the wrestling industry than The Rock and Austin.

Professional wrestlers are soap opera characters, and just like the characters in the most scandalously addictive daytime soap operas of yesteryear, they are expendable. Sure, some are better at connecting with audiences than others, but writing teams are adept at elevating new talent and burying old on an as-needed basis. For an established franchise like WWE (or All My Children for O.G. soap opera fans), no character is more important than the show itself. Take Roman Reigns for example. Reigns has had a massively successful career in WWE. He is one of the most popular and accomplished characters in the history of the business. Let’s engage in a thought experiment where Reigns doesn’t pursue a career in professional wrestling. How would that have impacted the success of the industry? Well, probably not much at all, and that’s no slight on Reigns. WWE was a multi-billion-dollar business before he joined the company, and it will continue to be after his career ends. Much more important than a talented character like Reigns are factors outside of the ring like entering emerging markets, acquiring and cultivating talent (NXT etc.), and savvy promotional relationships. Reigns certainly deserves credit for playing his role effectively, but had he been a professional football player instead, the WWE creative team would’ve used a different character to tell an equally engaging story. Reigns–for all of his success–is just a cog in a machine, waiting to find out what is next in his character’s story.

For 99% of wrestlers who have stepped into a ring, success looks like it does for Roman Reigns. However, there are a select few whose contributions literally impact survivability. It’s quite possible that professional wrestling would still be a regional sideshow had Hulk Hogan’s popularity in the 80s not given Vince McMahon cover to consolidate talent under one umbrella and then package it to the masses via cable and pay-per-view (PPV). No character had more influence on professional wrestling’s appeal–or its flagship business–than Hogan. Although Hogan is largely responsible for professional wrestling’s grip on pop culture, there is another character whose impact reached outside the physical parameters of the wrestling ring, and that is none other than “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

Austin was not destined to change the industry. He wasn’t anointed as the “chosen one” by a company president or ordained by birthright through family lineage. In fact, before Austin exclaimed his now legendary “Austin 3:16 says I just whooped your ass” salvo to Jake “The Snake” Roberts at the WWF King of the Ring pay-per-view in 1996, he was just another veteran name on a wrestling roster struggling to gain traction with fans. Providing the backdrop for Austin’s eventual transcendent impact on WWE was the fact that the company was in dire straits financially in the mid-90s. Hulk Hogan was not only long gone, but he was leading WCW–WWF’s emerging rival–to unprecedented success. With WWF (now WWE) no longer having a creative stranglehold on wrestling audiences, and years of legal disputes digging into its bottom line, the viability of WWF as a business was in serious doubt. In a development that seemed impossible to fathom just two years earlier, WCW rocketed past the WWF in popularity as evidenced by WCW Monday Nitro’s 83-week winning streak over WWE’s Monday Night Raw in head-to-head television ratings beginning in June of 1996. Success is often described as the intersection where opportunity meets preparation. With the WWF barreling toward financial ruin, the opportunity to deeply impact the industry was at an all-time high. The only question was whether or not anyone on the WWF roster was prepared to meet the challenge. The answer, of course, was a “hell, yeah!”

After gaining traction from his King of the Ring promo in 1996, Austin cultivated his organic badass persona throughout 1997 and then elevated it to full-fledged superstardom in 1998. His impact on financials and ratings was so swift and deep that it spawned a whole new era: the Attitude Era. Austin headlined his first WrestleMania in 1998, garnering the company 730,000 PPV buys. Remarkably, it represented a threefold jump in buy rate from the previous year at WrestleMania 13. That number would jump to 800,000 in 1999, and after missing WrestleMania 2000 with an injury, Austin’s return in the main event slot at WrestleMania X-7 (2001) generated a monstrous 1,040,000 buys. Austin’s popularity boom in 1998 surged Monday Night Raw ahead of Monday Nitro in the ratings. After 83 consecutive head-to-head losses in the Monday Night Wars, Raw finally edged past Nitro to break the streak in April of 1998. Behind Austin, Raw regained its hold on Monday nights and, starting on November 2, 1998, it defeated Nitro for 119 consecutive weeks until WCW was forced to sell to Vince McMahon on March 26, 2001. Austin helped take Raw from a paltry 1.55 rating vs. Nitro on December 23, 1996, to a resounding 7.33 on May 1, 2000, which represents the head-to-head high point for either organization in the Wars.

With “Stone Cold” Steve Austin driving record television ratings, PPV buys, and merchandise sales, Vince McMahon’s WWF went from the brink of bankruptcy to dispatching and acquiring its only remaining rival, clearing the way for it to become the global entertainment juggernaut it is today. The WWF’s revenue in 1997 was just $81.9 million–far below the peak of Hulkamania–and by 2001 it had skyrocketed to $438.1 million. Austin had impacted business fivefold in just four years. Revenue would dip following his retirement in 2003, but, with no competition in sight, the runway was cleared for the final act of the plan that McMahon hatched two decades earlier behind the star power of Hulk Hogan. 

Many wrestlers get over with the crowd and secure memorable legacies while doing so. Defining “greatness” in this regard is quite subjective. Take a comparison between Ravishing Rick Rude and Mr. Perfect, for example. There is a lot to consider. How did they make the audience feel? How were they on the mic? Who had better entrance music, ring attire, and finishers? These are the normal questions to ponder when putting together a list of the GOAT wrestlers. With Austin (and Hogan), the conversation takes place on a whole different level. Austin didn’t just make audiences feel something, he did it so profoundly–and at such an important time–that it rescued a company valued north of $8 billion (as of 2025) from the brink of irrelevance. Whereas Hogan created wrestling as we know it today, Austin saved wrestling as we know it today. 

The Michael Jordan/LeBron James GOAT debate will rage until the end of time, and it’s unlikely there will ever be a consensus. Regardless of what side you stand on, can you imagine if they were able to face off against each other in their primes for 20 years? That would be bananas! Except, that very same hypothetical has actually been happening in soccer as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have been exchanging blows for two decades in a race for the GOAT throne. It has been the greatest head-to-head GOAT battle in modern history, and it’s not over! Both are still dominating domestic leagues, and are primed for their final acts on the grandest stage at the 2026 World Cup in North America. 

Whether you prefer Messi’s surgical free kicks or Ronaldo’s aerial superiority, there is something for everyone in this heavyweight battle. Determining the winner of this GOAT standoff is an exercise in nuance, because with all due respect to Pele, there is nobody even close in the history of soccer who can match these two juggernauts when it comes to the combination of peak production, strength of competition, health, and longevity. As a bonus, Messi and Ronaldo are polar opposites when it comes to how they dominate games. Messi is a diminutive open field magician who keeps the ball on his foot like a yo-yo as he weaves past defenders. He is a master at creating space and then using it to both lace precision shots on goal and find open teammates for scoring opportunities. His free kick accuracy is legendary, stressing goalies from post to post and corner to corner. Ronaldo, for his part, is a statuesque figure who uses his size and uncanny vertical athleticism to control the box. He has tormented goaltenders on corners and crosses for two decades. He is also a relentless assassin who unleashes howitzers on net from anywhere and everywhere in the offensive zone.  

Soccer is often described as an artform in a way that football or baseball is not. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are compared and contrasted based on their statistics, not the mechanics of their respective throwing motions. Soccer, though, seems to leave room for an artistry score when deciding the value of a particular player. In that regard, Messi and Ronaldo are as different in style and equal in talent as Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh. If this is art, then there is no wrong answer–there are just two majestically gifted virtuosos to admire. However, in the spirit of athletic competition, the GOAT conversation requires a winner or, at the very least, a statistically worthier option. With the clock ticking on their time left on the pitch, it’s Messi who has the edge in the most spectacular GOAT battle in history.

Considering Messi and Ronaldo dominate soccer in very, very different ways, it’s quite likely that the winner would theoretically be dependent, in large part, on the makeup of the rest of the team. That caveat aside, the statistics show that Messi has an advantage in just about every comparison. He has a decisive lead in Ballon d’Or trophies (8-5) and domestic league championships (12-7). He won the World Cup and nearly won a second. Messi even has the best high-end seasons, owning single-season Big 5 domestic league superiority over Ronaldo in both goals (50) and goal contributions (66). Messi also holds the advantage over Ronaldo in career goals per match and goal contributions per match. Additionally, Ronaldo has scored a disproportionate number of his goals (119) on penalty kicks (PKs), which require far less skill than goals scored in play. Messi already has an advantage in goals and goal rate without considering the fact that he only took and scored roughly half as many PKs as Ronaldo. This makes Messi’s statistical advantage even more pronounced.    

If there was a draft of all the soccer players in the history of the sport, the team with the second pick would not lose any sleep over who the team with the first pick selected. Messi and Ronaldo are fully capable of leading a team to championship glory. It’s more likely than not that Messi and Ronaldo are equally talented and equally important to winning. Choosing one simply means diminishing the other, which is an unfortunate byproduct of creating a list like this. At the risk of diminishing Ronaldo, it’s Messi who gets the crown.