Which wrestler still gets named most often when the general public is asked to name a wrestler?

When you ask 503 American adults to name a pro wrestler, 85 will say The Rock. You’ll get a blank stare from 166. Two will say Bobo Brazil.

That’s what I found when I conducted a nationwide survey. Backstory: Dave Meltzer shared on Twitter that one of his readers asked people at a mall to name a wrestler. I thought it would be fun to make the same ask of people on a national scale via Google Survey.

You can see the topline results in the chart above. The wrestlers recalled the most were Hulk Hogan (19% of those surveyed named him) and The Rock (17%). If someone named a wrestler, they were more likely to name Hogan or The Rock than all other wrestlers combined.

There was a drop after Hogan and The Rock to John Cena (7%), “Stone Cold” Steve Austin (4%), The Undertaker (3%), Ric Flair (2%), and “Macho Man” Randy Savage (1%).

No other wrestler cracked 1%. No tag teams were named. Ronda Rousey, the only woman identified, was named by one person.

The highest totals for active wrestlers were Sting and Roman Reigns, tied at four responses apiece. This is the same number of people who named Triple H. It’s also the same number of people who named Mike Tyson. And Mr T.

Goldberg and Kane were named twice. So, too, were Chief Jay Strongbow, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Dusty Rhodes, and the aforementioned Brazil.

A full 33% of respondents did not name a wrestler (the “None” category in the chart). They either said they did not know any or provided the name of a non-wrestler. For example, a few folks responded with “Joe,” and I doubt they meant Just Joe. One or more might have meant Samoa Joe, but we counted such generic replies as Nones. (You can find my data in the link at the end of the article in case you want to make different assumptions than I did and count every “Joe” as a vote for Joe E. Legend.)

Note that “recall” is not the same as “recognition.” It is much harder to recall info (Who is the President of Ukraine?) than to recognize it (Is Volodymyr Zelenskyy the President of Ukraine?). Some chunk of the 33% of Nones would recognize a wrestler name if it were given to them. Note, too, that we asked those surveyed to name a wrestler. We did not ask them to exhaustively name every wrestler they could think of. Less than 1% (3 people out of 503) responded to our survey with “Andre the Giant.” If we instead asked, “Who is Andre the Giant,” or even, “Please name every pro wrestler you know,” Andre’s numbers would be higher.

Fifteen percent of repliers (the “Other Wres” category in the chart) identified a wrestler other than those named on the chart. Among those were wrestlers named a single time, like:

• Randy Orton
• Matt Hardy
• The Miz
• Booker T
• Bruno Sammartino
• Verne Gagne
• Wilbur Snyder (!)
• Kerry Von Erich (said by a 45-54 year old Texan)
• “Daniel Bryan”
• Rey Mysterio
• Gorgeous George
• The Great Bolo (said by a 65+ year old man in Arizona)
• Terry Funk
• Eddie Guerrero
• Bill Dundee (said by a 55-64 year old woman in Kansas, which we must assume is a hotbed of nostalgia for 80s Memphis wrestling or the dying days of Central States)

The national survey results suggest that when it comes to pro wrestling, people are most familiar with Hulk Hogan and literal movie stars The Rock and John Cena. Hogan and Rock were named more than all other wrestlers combined. The wrestling headliners of today and tomorrow may or may not be on Americans’ minds, but they’re not on the tips of their tongues.

[Note: What’s pictured in the chart reflects the raw response totals: the number of people who named each wrestler, divided by 503. To make the sample more representative of the country as a whole, Google Surveys also weights responses by gender, age,  and geographic location, but those results did not meaningfully differ from what’s in the chart. Those interested in creating charts using the weights or otherwise in exploring my data can see it HERE.]

*Thanks to Dr. John Sakaluk for feedback on an earlier draft of the chart.

(Dr. Alex Williams is a licensed clinical psychologist and teaching professor at the University of Kansas. He is a designer of the Rampage Wrestling computer game. In addition to the Pro Wrestling Torch, Alex has bylines with Scientific American, Aeon Magazine, the Wrestling Observer, and Fightful. A TEDx Talk speaker, Alex can be reached on Twitter @williamspsych or via email at alexwilliams123 [at] gmail [dot] com.)