With WWE's annual Wrestlemania extravaganza coming this weekend, it's time for our annual look at the state of wrestling fandom online. And folks, like Hacksaw Jim Duggan, it ain't pretty. 2002 saw wrestling popularity continue its steady slide from a late-90's high.

Last year, we wrote that it had not been a good year for the WWF. Well, this year's been worse. Bringing back classic bad guys nWo was a colossal disaster. Splitting the roster into two camps so half the wrestlers appeared only on TNN's Raw and half on UPN's Smackdown hasn't really worked. Angering top draw Stone Cold Steve Austin so he left wrestling for half a year turned off a lot of fans. Heck, renaming the organization the "WWE" hasn't gone so well either.

This has been the continuation of a trend that has lasted as long as the Lycos 50. In 2000, WWE usually was in the top 10 each week. In 2001, you would usually find it between 10 and 20. In 2002, you would usually find it between 15 and 25. Now, you usually find it between 25 and 40.

It's interesting to watch how WWE searches act from week to week. They remain steady for three to four weeks, then jump the week after a pay-per-view as fans who didn't get the show search for results, then they settle back down for another month. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It isn't all bad news, because WWE is doing a couple of things well. They still know how to market hot babes: a television special and accompanying magazine called WWE Divas Exposed has been responsible for a large portion of WWE searches since they were released in November. More importantly for the future of the company, if search traffic is to be believed, they've done a fairly good job creating new stars over the past year. The top of our list is the same as usual, but the bottom features new faces.

When we list the most popular wrestlers online, we're not including recently deceased star Curt "Mr. Perfect" Henning. He received a ton of searches after his death (enough to make #21 on the Lycos 50) but none before that. We're also not including ex-wrestlers Joanie "Chyna" Laurer or Rena "Sable" Mero, who have disappeared from everywhere except the world of Internet pinup downloads.

Here are the top 20 most-requested wrestlers on Lycos, male and female, over the past six weeks. Last year's rank is in parentheses:

1) Trish Stratus (1)
2) Torrie Wilson (10)
3) Stephanie McMahon (2)
4) Stacy Keibler (5)
5) The Rock (4)
6) Stone Cold Steve Austin (9)
7) Lita (3)
8) Bill Goldberg (7)
9) Hulk Hogan (6)
10) Jeff Hardy (12)

11) Kane (17)
12) Shawn Michaels (18)
13) Triple H (8)
14) The Undertaker (13)
15) Terri Runnels (11)
16) Bret Hart (20)
17) Brock Lesnar (-)
18) Nathan Jones (-)
19) John Cena (-)
20) Scott Steiner (-)

While Trish Stratus is still the hottest hottie of the WWE, Torrie Wilson has been super-popular over the past couple weeks thanks to a Playboy pictorial. The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin have been hot since they both returned to wrestling a few weeks ago.

Ever since we started looking at the top wrestlers, former WCW champion Bill Goldberg has been one of the most popular stars online -- even though he hasn't been in a ring in the United States since WCW folded in 2001. But that's about to change. Vince McMahon has finally landed his white whale, with rumors flying that Goldberg will debut either Sunday night at Wrestlemania or Monday night on Raw.

Jeff Hardy continues to be astoundingly popular online. This year his tag team with brother Matt broke up, with the brothers now performing on different shows. And so Jeff has gone from #12, with three times as many searches as his brother, to #10, with four times as many searches as his brother. Both Hardys are extremely popular with female fans, but the extent to which Jeff is more popular is astounding.

At the bottom of our list you will find some of the names that WWE hopes will someday be as well-known, even by non-wrestling fans, as The Rock and Steve Austin. Here's a guide to these new talents gradually rising on our search logs:

Brock Lesnar is a massively muscled former college wrestling champion who has been heavily pushed over the past year by WWE. He started out as a bad guy but turned good guy and will wrestle former Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle for the title at Wrestlemania. Wrestling fans are really looking forward to this one because there probably has never been a pro match in history between two wrestlers with such great amateur pedigrees.

Nathan Jones is an Australian who once held the championship of a group called WWA that toured Europe and Australia. His gimmick is that he's a recently released criminal.

John Cena is a young bad guy on Smackdown who was known as Prototype when he wrestled on the independent circuit. Now he has a "white rapper" persona that the crowd loves to boo.

Other new stars that don't make the top 20, but come close, include Rey Mysterio, who wears a Mexican-style mask, Batista, a gargantuan bad guy known before WWE as Leviathan, and Randy Orton, a third-generation wrestler whose father, Cowboy Bob Orton, was part of Rowdy Roddy Piper's crew back in the MTV "Rock and Wrestling" days.