Good Matches Ruined By HORRIBLE Commentary

[Dewar]

1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

I loved the Hog, and Dusty was great when he had something to mark out over or laugh at. C'mon, he had some of the most famous calls in wrestling history: 

"HE GOT A BICYCLE"

"THERE'S A LADY IN THE MEN'S RETHTROOM! Maybe she just stopped off for some relief" 

"He just wore his 'ol tired ass out" while laughing maniacally

I mean, c'mon, he's the only reason anyone could sit through a Public Enemy/Harlem Heat garbage match. 

 

Hidden Dusty gem in this match: Public Enemy puts a garbage can on Booker's head, and they both start punching the can. Dusty's response was "I used to do that to my little brother". Laughed my ass off the first time I saw this match, and laughed my ass off again watching it today.

[Jiji]

I'd take Dusty over any commentator outside of Ventura. So many great moments in WCW were elevated by his enthusiasm. 

I enjoy Schiavello in MMA occasionally but, yeah, I'll pass on the rassling. 

[Curt McGirt]

Schiavello can be tolerable in MMA and kickboxing but hearing THE BIG KIBOSH!!! etc. on a wrestling show every week would be way irritating. Funny thing is he actually started out in wrestling in Australia. 

CM Punk seemed like he could have been a great color guy when he was doing it in WWE but then you watch some IWA-MS and you want to strangle him.

[cwoy2j]

2 hours ago, zev said:

Was it Starrcade 95 where Chono used a Yakuza Kick, as Tenay called it, and Dusty just didn't care for the name and said, "He kicked him in the mush!" or am I utterly remembering that wrong? I want to say Heenan was there egging on Dusty just because it was amusing.

Yeah, Dusty said something like, "what's that gotta do with the Mafia? He kicked him in the mouf!.

[Curt McGirt]

2 hours ago, caley said:

Watch that Finlay-Regal SNME match where they beat the everloving crap out of each other and Dusty is the only one paying attention to vicious and amazing it is.  

That was specifically what I was talking about when Dusty had something to mark out over. "He booted heem." Also notable in that is Brain's crack about Dusty's verbiage (Jeeves, chives, chaves) which never fails to elicit a laugh. 

[Raziel]

Every single match called by Jerry Lawler.

 

In watching everything old, he was never good, he was always absoultly terrible in every way.  I have no idea how he kept his WWE job for damn near 20 years.

[Curt McGirt]

Putting him out to pasture (for the most part) was the best thing they did in years. Aside from NXT of course

[ka-to]

Alex Shane on Fight Network ruins New Japan and Lucha as a horrible heel announcer on Fighting Spirit Wrestling. He is on one of the UK wrestling programs without doing the heel gimmick and is only 10% as annoying.

 

[The Iron Yuppie]

1 minute ago, ka-to said:

Alex Shane on Fight Network ruins New Japan and Lucha as a horrible heel announcer on Fighting Spirit Wrestling. He is on one of the UK wrestling programs without doing the heel gimmick and is only 10% as annoying.

 

This reminds me...Perhaps not a popular opinion, and it's in no way a slight on his classic WWF/E calls, but I find Jim Ross on the AXS New Japan broadcasts to be awful. He's working the Podcast J.R. gimmick. 

[Matt788]

Schiavone was too fake in Nitro era WCW, I suspect he didn't even like wrestling. As stated before, he was dead inside.

I know many disagree but I think Steve Corino is killing ROH television. His voice is bad and his take on the events unfolding in the ring are always dumb. He would be a perfect heel manager for the Addiction or some other heels. Get him off commentary and put him ringside where he belongs.

Joe Rogan from UFC always acts like he just had a testosterone injection for the first time in his life and he doesn't know how to handle it. Like today is his first time in his life that he ever had a erection and now he wants to annoyingly explain a fight. UFC could save a lot of money by replacing him with an actual chimp.

Matt Striker's WWE tenure was a tale of a man who starts out as a great announcer but as the match progresses he would get lost in the depths of his own mind. First you really like him, then you question his sanity. He is very well read though, there must have been a library in the New Jersey state mental hospital.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

1 hour ago, ka-to said:

Alex Shane on Fight Network ruins New Japan and Lucha as a horrible heel announcer on Fighting Spirit Wrestling. He is on one of the UK wrestling programs without doing the heel gimmick and is only 10% as annoying.

 

Alex Shane is much more tolerable on NGW British Wrestling Weekly. He ruins some damn good matches on Fighting Spirit Wrestling.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

9 hours ago, The Iron Yuppie said:

The outlandish backstories they'd give for some of the guys were amazing. Personal favorite: Mike Awesome was an All-American defensive lineman on Dan Devine's Orange Bowl-bound Missouri Tigers. For those wondering, that was the 1969 college football season, and the commentary was on a 6-man tag from 1997, which would have made Awesome about 50 years old on that timeline. 

That's OK, though. In the 28 years between, he also recorded over 100 jumps as a paratrooper in the Green Berets, per the Tokyo POP team! 

I thought it was Terry Funk they said was a Green Beret. I have a bunch of those FMW Tokyopop releases. I can't properly express how bad that commentary was. IIRC, those dvd's had the option of the Japanese commentary. 

[DreamBroken]

11 hours ago, nofuture said:

The worst was Striker marking out like crazy when Booker T returned at Royal Rumble a few years ago that Cole had to tell him to calm down.

"That's what pay per view is ALLLLLLLLL about because ya neeeeeeeeeever know!!!"

The Survivor Series 2010 one linked last page is always classic

"Cena's FREE!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Cena's...fired..."

[Thomas Bugg]

11 hours ago, nofuture said:

The worst was Striker marking out like crazy when Booker T returned at Royal Rumble a few years ago that Cole had to tell him to calm down.

When Michael Cole has to tell someone to shut the fuck up, that's next level annoying.

[The Great ML]

11 hours ago, Tromatagon said:

Yeah, these win.  

ahem, some of you need to revisit how bad XPW commentary was.

[thee Reverend Axl Future]

Superstar Billy Graham was a huge disappointment for me, adding nothing and besmirching the use of the word "daddy" and destroying his legacy as a talker. To be honest however, fitting with the theme of the thread, I cannot recall if any of the matches he did color on were worthwhile anyway, with or without his blathering (steroids apparently do not enhance one's creativity).

- daddy,

RAF

[zev]

I went looking on YouTube for Dusty's take on the Yakuza kick.  Found this:

 

[Matt788]

2 hours ago, The Great ML said:

ahem, some of you need to revisit how bad XPW commentary was.

After five minutes of XPW television I felt like I needed to take a shower. I felt scummy for watching that.

 

It's like watching someone step in dog poop and then checking your own shoes.

[Curt McGirt]

Oh yeah, the guy with the faux Speedy Gonzalez accent. That's some shit that will make you feel scummy for sure, match content aside. 

[davekool666]

36 minutes ago, Matt788 said:

After five minutes of XPW television I felt like I needed to take a shower. I felt scummy for watching that.

 

It's like watching someone step in dog poop and then checking your own shoes.

Kloss and Rivera were the two most annoying announcers of this fucking planet. XPW had some good stuff every now and then but the announcing was just downright atrocious. I recently saw some indy event, not sure of the promotion, but Kloss came out to commentate and to quote Vinny Mac about a Y2J match "he was the drizzling shits!"

[sydneybrown]

Survivor Series 1990 and Royal Rumble 1991 were two of my favorite PPVs as a kid, but holy shit, rewatching them now, Roddy Piper is fucking atrocious on them. 

[twiztor]

i hated Dusty Rhodes' commentary when i was younger, and the nWo stuff was current. i'd watch the weekend shows and just couldn't understand why they kept him around.  flash forward, and watching some of those weekend shows is only make bearable BY Rhodes. there was some PPV that i rewatched and live tweeted the best Dusty Rhodes-isms. it was the best way to watch whatever shitty ppv that was.

Michael Cole, for me, is just flat out BAD at announcing. he never adds anything of value, points out the most obvious things, but misses anything more subtle. (haha, subtlety in WWE, that's riot!)  his stint as a heel was just freaking atrocious, but i've never found him to be good. ever. i issue a challenge to show me one match that his commentary actually ADDS to, instead of detracting from.

[Matt788]

Mike Tenay and Joey styles were completely awesome at introducing an american teenage audience to international wrestling. This is not exactly on topic, but they led me to seek out international wrestling.

Tenay in particular is responsible for bringing a level of respect to international wrestling that paved the way for companies like New Japan and AAA to have much more north american fans. He introduced a million fans to something new to them. Companies like those profit today because of the goodwill supplied by Tenay and Styles in the late 90's

. Heenan, Schiovane, and Zbyszko put themselves in the role of the fan watching someone like La Parka for the first time. This act was all a softball pitch for Tenay to knock it out of the park by explaining the awesomeness of Lucha and also Yuji Nagata and Blitzkreig and others. The act didn't age well, but if you put yourself in the shoes of an early Nitro era WWE fan, this act was necessary to win over an audience with something different to them.

Some disagree, but I feel this was all part of Eric Bischoff's genius. An Eric Bischoff show is the ultimate variety act based on what was available at the time. Paul Heyman was also a genius for the same reason. These two changed wrestling. Someone like Neville would never be in the WWE in the 90's. Also, what is WWE's new exciting idea that just debuted? The Cruiserweight division. I hope HHH wrote Bischoff a check for that idea.

It all comes back to Styles and Tenay putting over guys like Malenko as a technical genius and Myysterio as a Mexican cultural icon. That is the heart of good commentary. "This is new and different because..." "This grappler is dangerous because..."

WWE commentary goes straight into "These two dislike each other because" and that's the feud. You need to build up two tanks better before you send them into war against each other, not just send them into battle without a solid foundation. Tenay and Styles built a solid foundation by making the grapplers seem new and different and awesome, and only then building the feud.

[Curt McGirt]

Bischoff wanted to demask Rey on the best match of his career featuring some of the best calls of Mike's career. He doesn't deserve credit for promoting a sure thing when he's willing to do something that stupid. 

[sydneybrown]

1 hour ago, twiztor said:

Michael Cole, for me, is just flat out BAD at announcing. he never adds anything of value, points out the most obvious things, but misses anything more subtle. (haha, subtlety in WWE, that's riot!)  his stint as a heel was just freaking atrocious, but i've never found him to be good. ever. i issue a challenge to show me one match that his commentary actually ADDS to, instead of detracting from.

My opinion of Michael Cole changed with his 24/7 commentary of the 1980 Shea Stadium show with Mick Foley.  I think it's as close to the real Cole as you'll ever see.  The Shea Stadium show isn't particularly good but Cole and Foley make it more memorable.  It's just two guys bullshitting over a classic show.    This as close as WWE will get to the Wrestling Gold series.