The 10 best Superstars from the Attitude Era

#3 The Rock

The great one.

No single Superstar's career best mirrored the rise of the WWF during the early Attitude Era than the Rock's. In 1996, the future Hollywood legend was struggling to appeal to the fans as a corny, white-meat babyface that had no relevance to what was happening in popular culture at the time.

But with a few adjustments and a full embrace of the anti-authority, 'stick it to the man' mentality, both the WWF and the Rock had become universally popular entities by the middle of 1998.

Rock's heel turn and alignment with the Nation of Domination was a true turning point for the wrestling business as a whole. If the company had not ben facing the threat of WCW at the time, it's unsure whether management would have ever seen sense and gone with the character change. That's not to say that the man's talents wouldn't have eventually risen to the top, but without the WWF machine behind him, who knows where he would have ended up.

The Rock was also the perfect example of how the age-old heel/face dynamic of pro-wrestling didn't really fit during the Attitude Era. After a few months of berating the fans after his first heel turn, his taunts would become so popular that he would effectively spend the rest of his time with the company as a tweener — somebody who acts like a heel but gets babyface reactions.

Johnson would also have several key rivalries that helped define this era, including with Triple H, Ken Shamrock, Mick Foley and most importantly Steve Austin.

Terms like 'greatness' and 'legend' get thrown around quite often amongst wrestling fans, but when they are applied to the Dwyane 'The Rock' Johnson, you don't often hear too many objections.