Well, I seriously doubt many now would agree that Terry Bollea was the best wrestler of all time, without a doubt he was huge, he had charisma in buckets, and Hulkamania put wrestling on the map.He personified 1980s USA and had some great matches.However there are a lot of 'buts' with Hogan.He is a vicious money grabber and simply not a great wrestler in any way, his matches were often poor and one feels he did not put enough effort into some.He definitely put wrestling onto the map, but when he quit in the early 90s to pursue a movie career(great choice) other wrestlers carried the WWF:great technical wrestlers like Bret Hart (whom you rightly mention as probably one of the all time best), Shawn Michaels, then later the attitude era came along, effectively spelling the demise of WCW, while Hogan simply demanded more and more money there.People like the Rock, Austin, DX, Foley and many others carried wrestling to new heights, with Austin essentially reaching heights above what Hogan did.Let's not forget that when Hulkamania was reborn in 2002 and he won the title, ratings actually went down.Bottom line is really that Hogan was the most popular of all time, but he was far from the best actual wrestler and where was he when the WWF was redefining itself? Nowhere.
For me, the best all round wrestler of all time is/was Ric Flair.His promos were better than Hogan's most of the time, as Hogan was never an effective, money drawing heel.Flair could lift opponents to great matches and has legendary feuds.No-one would cite any, and I mean any, of Hogan's matches as the best matches of all time.No, they cite Flair/Steamboat, Rock/Austin, Michaels/Hart all of which Hogan had nothing to do with.
I mean just look at his tv show.Every time he calls someone or meets someone from a tv station, is at an awards show, a premier he says ''hey brother, this is bigger than when Hulk Hogan(he frequently refers to himself in the third person) slammed Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania 3, brother."Yeah, great, you don't see Austin saying he hit the Rock countless times with a chair to win the title in front of 67, 925 screaming fans at Wrestlemania X-Seven.The reason?The modern wrestling will probably always remember that and all of their great matches, whereas Hogan has to continually remind people of what he did almost 20 years ago, dude.