One of the most important skills for a proper all-round star in professional wrestling is the ability to talk. Not just to family or friends, not on chat shows, not even in interviews: in character, in the ring and in front of a live crowd. Its vital to advance storylines, get across motivations, and put over the persona the wrestler is representing. And then there are those people who simply cant make it work. Whether theyre intimidated by the crowd, cant string a sentence together, have a speech defect, cant remember their lines or just dont have any presence whatsoever, plenty of otherwise perfectly adequate performers cant talk to save their lives. Of course, its not necessarily the end of the world. Some wrestlers gimmicks require them to be mute (like Abdullah The Butcher or Kane when he first appeared) or not to be able to speak English (Umaga, the Wild Samoans), or to speak with such an unnatural affect that traditional promos are rendered impractical (the Undertaker is a prime example). And there are ways for certain wrestlers to be booked to accentuate the positives and hide the negatives. After all, thats why Ernie Roth invented managers: voices for the voiceless. Nonetheless, its rare for a main event level wrestler to get to that point in his or her career without mic skills out the wazoo or is it? Here are ten of the worst talkers in WWF and WWE history, and how they either transcended their limitations to smash through that glass ceiling or crashed and burned, stammering all the way.
Honourable Mention: The Ultimate Warrior
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF4ZTcuhixc Warriors legendarily nonsensical promos are some of the funniest of all time but botched? Theyre perfectly delivered, pitched correctly and with no stumbling or stuttering. They just dont make any sense, incorporating fantastical mixed metaphor, entirely made-up words and flights of lyrical fancy but if theyre not supposed to make sense, then you cant really argue that theyve been screwed up. From interviews, its apparent that the former Jim Hellwig was well aware of what he was doing, and was in character the whole time. Moreover, he personally found the promos hilarious.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
