Without a doubt, the Living Embodiment of ALL CAPS, "The Macho Man" Randy Savage is the quintessential "Best Ever" for me.
Macho Man Tribute Video, created after his death
* A great look (he wore a f*cking NEON PINK COWBOY OUTFIT WITH TASSELS and made it look masculine and bad-ass).
* A great voice (he was easily able to move into voice acting with little effort)
* One of the best promos of all time- watch his "I HATE YOUR GUTS!" promo against the Hulkster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrlSz-Xxo50. A perfect mix of anger, defiance, ego and cocaine.
* Phenomenal worker. Randy was one of the best of his day (held back only by his apparently insane attention to detail- annoying his "opponents" by forcing them to plot the entire match out ahead of time), and could have a good match with anyone. A frenetic pace and an ability at slowing things down as well.
Overall, he was also one of wrestling's best CHARACTERS. In the early days, he was an Abusive Boyfriend archetype- pushing around his dainty, pretty girlfriend Elizabeth, turning the entire audience into White Knights who wanted to save her. Eventually he saw the light and learned to trust others, in Hulk Hogan. But his volcanic rage could grow out of control- you'd see hints of it here and there, when every time there was a misunderstanding, he'd believe the worst and need to be calmed down. But like a true Byronic Hero, it was his undoing. His anger at Hulk Hogan's constant grandstanding (which was easily-observable to anyone) led him down a dark path, and eventually reached a breaking point.
Soon, Savage turned his back on everyone, forming a partnership with the evil Sherri. And only after years of bad stuff, and her betraying him, did he finally come back to the light and reunite with Elizabeth, in one of wrestling's great Perfect Moments at
WrestleMania VII (watching the match, you can actually see people CRYING in the stands. Actual TEARS for the reunion. Wrestling does a lot of great stuff with crowd reactions, but you see VERY few tears).
He kind of fell apart in later years, but there's still fantastic stuff in the early '90s, like when Jake "The Snake" Roberts actually SLAPPED Elizabeth on live television, shocking the wrestling world (she'd never been hit like THAT before!), and Savage basically goes apoplectic and promises to literally MURDER his opponent! There was also a great promo where he insists that despite his hatred for Jake, he's "not insane"... only to change course immediately and declare that
"maybe I AM INSANE, yeah!" One of the best parts of his promos was the fact that, instead of just yelling at the camera and then awkwardly walking away once he's done, Savage would CONTINUE TO SCREAM as he was walking off-camera, frequently being heard in the background yelling incoherently while Mean Gene was trying to do the "back to you" stuff for the commentators.
One of the greatest moments in wrestling history: Macho Man gets sick of Hulk Hogan's obvious grand-standing and hot-dogging, lets his anger, jealousy and feelings of inadequacy go out of control, and the Mega Powers EXPLODE!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InFdR4IXHgg