The WWE's PG-era has been criticised for many things. The pure in-ring quality of the wrestlers may have increased over time, but wrestling is about so much more than simply what goes on between the ropes. Weak storylines, bland characters, poor booking; areas which were all unquestionable strengths of the company during the 1990s and early 2000s have fallen so far in the past decade or so - and the standard of promos is no exception. Promos are one of the most important hallmarks of the wrestling world; even non-fans will conjure the image of a larger-than-life musclebound figure screaming "lemme tell ya somethin'!' into a microphone when asked to describe a cliche of the business. These days, however, the art of a good WWE promo has been diluted by an overreliance upon scriptwriters, part of Vince McMahon's desire to transform wrestling into an overly sleek, episodic product. Long gone are the days in which every man (and woman) on the roster would be expected to come up with something on the fly. Most of the roster are content delivering the same lifeless lines, each wrestler spouting phrases so generic it's as if they've been written by the same people - largely because they have! Some true promo masters still exist in the WWE, and are allowed a certain degree of free reign because they have proven themselves during that bygone era of improvisation and raw emotion. Others are long-departed - but unforgotten - relics of a better time. Here are ten such examples of those charismatic souls, wrestlers who who could take a promo and make it their own. The current crop of WWE superstars would do well to follow their example.
