10 Best Wrestling Talkers Of 2018
1. Samoa Joe
Samoa Joe is a legitimately terrifying presence with a microphone in his hand.
His work opposite AJ Styles saw him read a bedtime story, with an actual prop book, and it was still borderline unsettling. More unsettling still was his "Daddy's gone night night!" roar, with AJ's head held lifelessly in his hands - but Joe isn't a one-note guttural monster.
More recently, Joe has taken to terrorising Jeff Hardy. Hardy's troubled, even recent past is easy material in WWE's classic cheap heat mode, but still, Joe doesn't coast on the dialogue, knowing he'll generate a lip-pursing reaction irrespective of his cadence; he really seeks to torture Jeff with a purposefully glib, mannered tone designed to burrow into the Charismatic Enigma's psyche. Joe has tapped into something, in this year of all years: he is the smiling bearer of bad news. He knows full well that what he's saying reeks of bullsh*t, but there's nothing to be done. You can't elect an honest man, you can't tell your boss to stick it, and you can't escape Samoa Joe's suffocating coquina clutch. The world is ran by the gleefully, transparently wicked, and that's who Samoa Joe is. Even when reading clearly scripted material, Joe doesn't search internally for his lines, resulting in an external tell.
Joe is fearless out there; the only fear experienced is through his bone-chilling delivery.