10 Promos That Totally Changed Your Opinion Of A Wrestler
6. The Rock Incinerates Billy Gunn
Before the promo:
Billy Gunn was a big, imposing and athletic performer who was never all that great in the ring, but who exuded charisma and had a knack of manipulating the crowd with a choice call-and-response bit. He was, in an era in which great wrestling matches did not much matter, absolutely a guy the WWF were justified and even wise to push hard as a singles act. He had earned it in the meritocracy of the Attitude Era.
After the promo:
The Rock incinerated Billy Gunn's main event career in the course of a single promo on, of all shows, Sunday Night Heat. Rock had already seduced the crowd in seconds, as he was wont to do, by describing Triple H's nose as three feet long. He then turned his machine gun in the direction of Billy Gunn by ruthlessly exposing the failure of said push. In a moment of beautifully cruel poetry, Rock made an ass out of the Ass Man. "Oh dear God," Rock said in mock prayer, adopting a cadence of total panic that underscored the desperation of it all. "My name's Billy, and I just won King Of The Ring, but there's one problem: everybody still thinks that I absolutely suck!"
Instantly, even the name "Billy' sounded less like a barrel-chested southerner and more like one of those feeble kids Troy McClure would terrify with a back-pat.
It did matter what his name was. His name was Billy, for f*ck's sake. How could you take that seriously?