The best eva? That belongs to Phil Baroni.
If we are talking American pro wrestling and based soley on your criteria of in ring work aka wrestling ability, I have Bret Hart easily. Owen could be seen as more entertaining but in the ring, I'd take Bret's work over Owen's any day of the week. Again, it's all down to preference but anyone saying Owen, all I ask is, name the best Owen Hart match or a collection of the best Owen Hart matches and it's a tough one not because he had so many great one but the opposite; he was always solid, very entertaining, great character work but honestly lacked the dedication and desire to be great. It's hard to come up with 5 great Owen Hart matches and any two of those 5 will have Bret in it.
Strictling in ring work for Americans, these are the names that should come up and it's a toss up depending on what one prefers and working with wrestlers with a large catalogue of available matches so mostly from the late 60s until now would be: Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Ric Flair, Ray Stevens, Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Curt Hennig, AJ Styles, Bryan Danielson, Dynamite Kid and Dory Funk Jr (far better from a pure wrestling/ability standpoint than Terry).
PS, nice to see Flow get back in on this. Sonny is an oldie and oft-forgotten pro wrestler due to his lack of flashiness and when he wrestled. For his time period, and he wrestled for 50+ years, he was as solid as there was in the ring, that's for sure and from an athletic standpoint and body, he accomplished far more than one would've ever thought. I know Harley Race thinks the world of him but again, both are from Missouri and spend the bulk of their time there, which Harley coming into pro wrestling while Sonny was at the top of this game.
