Wrestlers who were in the ring with the World Champion (MSG)

Dave Meltzer, on the F4W/WO message board wrote:

You know what would be a project: Who had the most main events over a career combining --

1. PPVs (every group that had them although you could argue TNA & ECW were never really major league at that level)
2. MSG house shows (prior to monthly PPVs when MSG house shows were the second biggest priority)
3. Atlanta Omni main events (until WCW went monthly)
4. Greensboro Coliseum main events (until 1988)
5. St. Louis main events (until 1985)
6. Chicago main events (until 1985)
7. Los Angeles main events (until 1975)
8. SF Cow Palace main events (1961-76)
9. Minneapolis main events (until 1985)
10. Toronto main events (until 1984)
11. Montreal main events (until International closed)
12. Japanese Dome & Stadium shows
13. Sumo Hall, Budokan Hall, Osaka Furitsu Gym/Castle Hall (or Nagoya Aiichi Gym or both)
14. Dallas Reunion Arena (during its era)
15. Houston (until 1986)
16. New Orleans Superdome

I looked at prolific WWE & WCW PPV performers in my latest WhatCulture article.
I don't have results for all of these arenas listed, but there is information on The History of WWE concerning MSG shows from 1963-2013.  [1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s]

Main Events is always a tricky term.  Is it the last match? Is it the match that had the world champion involved?  I look at 1963-1995 and normalized names.

Let's start with who was in the matches that included the World Champion:

Another method of scoring "main events" is looking at people who were in the top quarter of the card.  Basically, I'll give a wrestler a point whenever they're in the final matches.  For instance, on an 8 match card, the wrestlers in the final three matches (#6/#7/#8) each score a point.

Longer version of the List.

The people that show up higher on the "top of the card" list but much lower (or not at all) on the World Champ list are:

• Tony Garea
• Bobo Brazil
• Ivan Putski
• Mr Fuji
• Tito Santana
• Haystacks Calhoun
• Dominic DeNucci
• Tony Atlas
• Afa
• Davey Boy Smith
• Rick Martel
• Rocky Johnson
• Dino Bravo
• Haku
• Junkyard Dog

A lot of these wrestlers are tag team guys.

People that are higher on the "World Champ" list but not as high on the overall "top of the card" list were:

• Don Muraco
• Freddie Blassie
• Harley Race
• Stan Hansen
• Paul Orndorff
• Sheik
• Kevin Nash
• Buddy Rogers
• Bobby Duncum
• Lex Luger
• King Curtis Iaukea
• Bruiser Brody
• Johnny Valentine
• Gene Kiniski

Certainly some heavy hitter in there, but some of these weren't longer term WWWF/WWF guys.