Hogan, Stone Cold or The Rock, who was actually the biggest star professional wrestling has ever produced

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Three names tend to dominate any conversation about wrestling's single biggest drawing card, and each one essentially defined an entire era of the business in a completely different way. Hulk Hogan turned Hulkamania into a genuine cultural phenomenon through the 1980s, headlining the first WrestleMania and going on to main event most of the early ones, becoming the very first mainstream face of a business that had previously been treated as a regional carnival attraction rather than a genuine national phenomenon.

Stone Cold Steve Austin dragged the entire industry into the Attitude Era with a beer drinking, boss defying anti-hero character that connected with audiences in a way the more cartoonish 1980s stars simply could not, becoming the central figure in the ratings war against WCW and helping turn WWE into a genuinely dominant cultural force through the late 1990s in the process.

The Rock, meanwhile, arguably surpassed both of them in terms of pure crossover reach, going from a electrifying, microphone dominating in ring performer into one of the biggest movie stars on the entire planet, a level of mainstream global recognition that neither Hogan nor Austin, for all their own considerable drawing power, ever actually achieved outside the wrestling business itself.

So who actually wins this one, the man who first made wrestling a mainstream phenomenon, the man who saved the business during its biggest ratings war, or the man who took it furthest beyond the ring altogether?