Can you imagine some 24 year old television writer telling Ric Flair what to say in his next promo? How about Stephanie McMahon pulling the Rock aside and saying "Rocky, we took the liberty of printing out your next promo word-for-word." Steve Austin would curse out anyone within a 100 foot radius if someone handed him an entirely scripted promo. However, that's exactly what WWE is doing these days, scripting promos for talent word-for-word. Anyone who has seen the leaked Raw scripts knows this fact is true but those "in the know" have been aware of this fact for a long time. Sure, some talent that is trusted (Cena,Triple H, Rock, etc.) are allowed to ad-lib and actually put their own voice in the promo, but your standard midcard guy is expected to memorize the script like an actor. I'm not sure if WWE is aware of this but they are in the wrestling business, not the television show business. No matter how much Vince McMahon and WWE wants to stay away from the dirty word "wrestling", they are a wrestling promotion. They do not employ actors or stunt men, their guys aren't professionally trained thespians and they certainly aren't going to be winning Emmys anytime soon. Since every promo is written by the same person or group of people, every promo starts sounding exactly the same. There is no difference between a promo from Dolph Ziggler or Damien Sandow because the same guy has written both of them. So instead of setting the workers apart, promos are just making wrestlers sound the same and stripping away any individuality that may arise from them. Listen closely to promos the next time you watch WWE programming. The same vocabulary is used in almost every interview, the same sentence structure is used, and it's essentially the same voice in every single promo. This has taken away a method that workers can use to get over. The Rock never would have gotten to the megastar level he is at today if Pat Patterson scripted his promos for him in 1997. That's not saying that Patterson isn't a good promo guy but his voice isn't the same as the Rock's voice. You have to allow workers to be themselves and allow their own personality to shine through. Fans can spot a fake a mile away and, right now, every single promo sounds fake.
