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APRIL 2020 WRESTLING DISCUSSION


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About current WWE announcing; last night I nearly threw my remote at my TV when they said "Lethal Lothario" 3 times in about 45 seconds.
 

I have no idea if any of these people are any good (well, Graves was good in NXT and Lawler used to be hit or miss in the 90's) but it's impossible to give a good performance with the way WWE produces them.

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Guest Edwin
1 hour ago, AxB said:

So who is your favourite commentator, man?

For me, it varies depending on the style, organization and presentation. There's a lot of commentary teams I enjoyed...

For mainstream US wrestling, Heenan and Gorilla were by far my favorite commentary team WWE's ever had and for WCW I enjoyed the different rotations they had in the early 90s with Schiavone, Ventura, JR and Cornette.

For indy wrestling, I think Dave Prazak was the best when he was working in IWA-MS and ROH. I specially thought he fantastic when he was paired with Punk and Hero between matches.

For current indy wrestling, I enjoy the EVOLVE team who's names I don't remember. I think one of them was a commentator for early ROH, too. Gabe Sapolsky was rough to sit through in early ROH -- "DANGEROUS!"

I don't think there's even been a standout CZW or GCW commentary team. I zone out the current GCW commentary and the CZW commentary team from the early 2000s of Eric Gargiulio and John House was rough to sit through -- "SOMEONE CALL 911!"

I think Bryce Remsburg, Leonard Chikarason and Quack were good commentators for CHIKARA. Like the IWA-MS commentary team, it would always vary on who wasn't in the ring, but it was usually good.

The XPW commentary team was one of the cringiest in indy wrestling, along with the XPW product itself.

For European wrestling, I think Walton was a perfect fit for the style when he wasn't commentating Sammy Lee matches, of course. He was a little too enthusiastic for my taste whenever he was commentating Sammy Lee matches, but I never felt he was too over the top.

For the current European wrestling I've seen, I'd say whoever is doing the PROGRESS commentary is good and I love wXw, but their English commentary is a bit rough, but that's mostly to English being the commentators second language and the in ring quality usually being a ton of fun, so they get a pass from me.

I also speak Spanish, so for Spanish commentary teams, I'd say when it comes to lucha, through the years CMLL and AAA have always had knowledgeable and pleasant commentary teams.

When it comes to Puerto Rican wrestling, the only really great commentator I can recall is Eliud González back from WWC in the 80s. He was fantastic. Many consider him the Puerto Rican Gordon Solie. Chicky Starr was a great heel commentator also whenever he was given a chance. Hugo Savinovich, whether in Spanish or English, was rough no matter who he was paired up with. His commentary with Rip Oliver and Bobby Jaggers from those late 80s WWC commercial releases was rough and his commentary in Spanish wasn't much better. He also did Spanish commentary for WWE in the late 90s along with Carlos Cabrerra and they were rough. They would translate every moves name to Spanish and it sounded awful and so did their promo voice overs. There was also the AWA and IWA commentary team from Puerto Rico with Moody and Moyano, but they were rough to sit through and would constantly begin talking about the main event angles and forget about the current matches going on in the ring, so that was a bit distracting.

Any speak Japanese and want to chip in on what the Japanese commentators are saying? I've always wondered what the Samurai! TV, GAORA, Nippon TV, etc. commentary teams were talking about during the events. I know they do a lot of recaps at the start and end, but I'm not sure what else are they talking about. What do they say during DDT on Samurai! TV, Toryumon JAPAN on GAORA or classic All Japan on Nippon? I'm hoping someone like @gordi can chip in.

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Best announce team - Gorilla & Bobby, no explanation required

Worst - I’m not doing a worst. The people that are actively bad usually don’t last long.

Overrated - Don Callis. He was ok in ECW, but his absence from big time wrestling seemed to make the heart grow fonder for a lot of people but his impact run has been very meh.  

Underrated - Dave Prazak.  He’s always excellent

Honorable mention - Eric Gargulio & John House from CZW. They added to the carnage of those early shows.

”oh... my... god.... John”

”SOMEBODY CALL 911”

Honorable mention 2 - Vickie Guerrero on a recent AEW Dark was great.

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Shout out to Bill Watts in the category of “promoter/booker on color commentary to help get his stories over”. He was great at that. 

I also will never understand the pre-internet dirt sheet crowd view of Gorilla as terrible. When I first discovered this, I thought well maybe I was a kid and it was all nostalgia and he sucked, but even watching now he’s really good. Never understoood it.

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49 minutes ago, Edwin said:

Bobby Jaggers from those late 80s WWC commercial releases was rough

Boy is that an understatement. 

I like the guy in that Cain clip that looks like either a Goomba from Mario the movie or Pinhead from Puppet Master. 

Also, I had a dream about working for Bill Watts as a school janitor last night. He kept making me do more and more stuff so I cussed him out and quit. I guess I managed to escape before he beat my ass.

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One announcer who would crack us up was this RoH guy who would yell DANGEROUS at certain "instant death" spots. Someone even went and made a YouTube compilation of him yelling it during various matches on KILLER MOVES!! Lmao he was meh on commentary but then someone hits a crazy finisher or dive and he just yells DANGEROUS like the whole ring gonna collapse. ?

Not saying he was a fave, just his Dangerous yell always cracked me and my cousins up when we'd toss a new VHS tape in and sit down to catch matches we'd heard praised for months.

Cole and Tazz were a fave of mine, what little I actually remember about them at least. 

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2 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Boy is that an understatement. 

I like the guy in that Cain clip that looks like either a Goomba from Mario the movie or Pinhead from Puppet Master. 

 

Real talk, hahaha, I have this mechanic who does jobs for my car and my dads, I met him through my stepbrother so the guy always takes care of us

But I had to quote and reply because the guys name is Mario and legit he looks like a Goomba facially from the Super Mario movie! ?

First time I met him in person I had to text my siblings and send them a screenshot of the live action Goombas since they probably hadn't seen the movie since elementary school ? Now they'd met Mario plenty of times so when I mentioned how he looked like a Goomba oh man we were all LAUGHING the rest of the afternoon hahahahaha!

Cain to Bloodsport, to get on topic, would be sick! I've only seen one Bloodsport, where Allie came out and there were some big Japanese stars headlining, but damn that's one fed I'd love to see holding quarterly events when shows pop back up, whenever that may happen.?

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5 hours ago, AxB said:

Announce team content? Ok, let's old school it:

Best Announce Team: Short lived and obscure, but the most fun I've ever had listening to announcers talk was Gordon Solie & Lord Steven Regal on WCW Worldwide.

Worst Announce Team: WWE's gets progressively worse as Vince adds more foibles and bans more phrases, forces people to repeat taglines over and over. Also a lot of their announcers are legitimately awful people (except Mauro). So some sort of Lawler/ Graves/ Layfield / Ranallo/ Cole combination would be the worst.

Most Overrated Announce Team: Lots of people have fond memories of the Ross & Lawler duo. False memory syndrome. They sucked the whole time.

Most Underrated Announce Team: Schiavone & Ventura. Tony was really good before he became a Monday Night Wars overseller. Jesse was always good with any partner, but his WWF era partners like Gorilla and Vince were pretty annoying and not as much fun as Tony.

Honourable Mentions: Personally, I never could get into Bobby Heenan. Probably because the first time I heard him it was in WCW and he was clearly only there for the paycheck at that point. Seemed bored and lazy, when he was sober. But loads of you lads grew up on him and have fond memories, so I'll give him an honourable mention to acknowledge his existence. 

Kent Walton and Joey Styles were both best as solo announcers, not as part of announce teams. Although Joey outed himself as a massive cunt eventually. Kent Walton didn't. He just became a softcore porn producer instead. 

Styles depends largely on what era Styles you're listening to.  He was pretty bad in late-era ECW, shoehorning "OH MY GOD" in wherever he could.  But man, I watched some Eastern Championship Wrestling TV the other day and he was absolutely unlistenable.  That shouting voice he does when something happens in mid-to-late era ECW ("It's NEW JACK! NEW JACK IS HERE!")?  He uses it constantly.  Someone told him to turn it up to 11 and stay there: "PAT TANAKA WITH AN ARMDRAG! HE PUTS FUNK IN A HEADLOCK!  FUNK GETS UP TO A VERTICAL BASE!"

Anyways:

BEST TEAM: I don't know if I ever enjoyed an announce team as much as Schivone/Dusty.  I liked Venture, too.  For WWE, it's probably sacrilege but I think the first iteration of Cole and JBL was probably their best, most consistent team.  Cole would just call the action, JBL would defence the heels, crack some jokes and poke fun at Cole but it never felt like they hated each other.  Every time they added a third man, it would go down as JBL would just steamroll whoever was with them (Byron).  I actually think Phillips, Saxton and Joe could be a really good trio if given the chance.

WORST TEAM: Josh Matthews and Jeremy Borash.  They were doing this feuding announcers thing like WWE (Which was bad) but this was unlistenable.  Borash would say something, then Matthews would talk over him playing a pseudo-heel character but still trying to cal PBP over Borash who was also trying to call PBP.  Mercifully, it didn't last very long.  Honourable mention to the Cole, Graves, and Coachman team which was just Cole and Graves literally waiting for Coachman to misspeak so they could pouond on him and make fun of him.

MOST OVERRATED: JR and Heyman.  Heyman was trying to do a very old-schoolish heel announcer role, few jokes.  Ross was clearly ticked off about his partner being dumped and overplayed the face role, disagreeing with everything Heyman said.  They had little to no chemistry (Which was weird because the one syndicated WCW show I used to get in the early 90s was Ross, Dangerously and Missy Hyatt and they worked well together then) and just did NOT work well together.

UNDERRATED: Matt Striker and Vampiro.  Man, do I dislike most (Almost all) of Striker's announcing ("I'm marking out!") but he and Vampiro worked perfectly together in the first 2-3 seasons of Lucha Underground (I didn't stick around much past the second season).  Striker sold the onscreeen lunacy like death while Vampiro reacted to big moves, talked about lucha and got involved in a reasonably believable way.

HONOURBLE MENTIONS:

=I actually thought Joel Gertner was particularly well-suited to late-era ECW, letting Styles call the action and make dirty jokes or cheer for the heels in between.  I could never understand why they would have him on the weekly show but find a reason to take him off the PPV broadcasts and replace him with Cyrus.  I mean I get that the weekly shows were taped and they could script and edit him but the show was such rampaging nonsense for the last so many months but they still did it to get Cyrus on, when Gertner worked better with Styles anyways. 
-I actually really liked Renee Young on the announce team, added a different-sounding voice to the equation.  I think if she had started with Phillips instead of Cole and Graves, she would have found her footing a little better. 
-That kind of snorting/grunting noise Booker T does when someone hits a big move in a match, to me, gets a guy way more over than anything Corey Graves has ever, or will ever do on commentary.  Like,  when Booker T does it, it feels earned like "Wow, that was something!" whereas everything Graves says sounds like it comes from the Bobby Heenan playbook which he has read but not understood.
-Vince McMahon is underrated as a PBP guy.  He could never go back to it now, because he's played and pushed the Mr. McMahon character so far over the years.  But before Montreal, McMahon was absolutely perfect for WWF-style wrestling.  He didn't need to call moves by the right names, because it didn't really matter.  He would laugh like a lunatic for things the faces said or did (Go watch the the scene where Doink trips Bam Bam with the tripwire and McMahon sounds like he's going to have a heartattack from laughing so hard at it) and he was and is, hands-down, the best at sounding angry when a wrestler crosses the line (Listen to him in early Austin 3:16 when he attacks Pat Patterson: "That's hall-of-famer Pat Patterson!"
-I actually think Colt Cabana is not a bad colour commentator.  *ducks*  No, seriously, you know where he would have been a much better fit than AEW, is back in WWE, announcing alongside Tom Phillips.  He has a pretty decent wrestling knowledge, can play the tweener role a bit, and loves a good poop joke. I think he's much better commentator than a wrestler.  *ducks again*


DISHONOURABLE MENTIONS

-Mark Madden is hands-down the worst of anything ever.  When he would say "Snootchie bootchies, Tony!  Snootchie bootchies." you could practically hear him elbowing Schiavone in the ribs like "GEt it? Get iT?"  There was no match so bad, that he couldn't bring it down further with his commentary.
-Jerry Lawler was probably never good.  I used to think he was good before he just perved out every episode, but I went back and watched some of his earlier WWF stuff and he was just as bad then (I know I mentioned it in the Raw thread a few weeks back, but one one of the shows they had WWF announcer Bonnie Blackstone and Lawler talked about "her ugly mug" and made dog whistles at her while calling "Here Bonnie!").
-CM Punk wasn't a very good wrestling announcer.  Everything about him and his promos made him seem like he'd be good but it just wasn't.  Him bullying Scott Stanford wasn't entertaining either, just kind of uncomfortable and only tolerated/loved by wrestling fans because of who it was.  You do that exact same pairing with JBL and Stanford with all the same lines, and we'd be hearing over and over about what a bully JBL was for it.
-*preemptively ducks* I don't really care for the Schiavone/Jericho pairing.  Jericho swings wildly from cartoony heel announcer to trying to explain holds and Schiavone spends too much time laughing at and with Jericho.

Edited by caley
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Best - Tony/Bobby/Dusty, I will die on this hill.  Monsoon/Ventura is second.

Now, *I* like Kelly/Charlton/Gambino/Rocky variations on NJPW English, but that's a combo of "my favorite promotion" and "They clear a pretty low bar set by pretty much everyone else", although I like Tony/Excalibur when they're JR-less.

I feel like guys like Russel and Caudle never really get their due, due to Caudle getting overshadowed by Ross and Russel never getting a National shot.

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7 minutes ago, caley said:

=I actually thought Joel Gertner was particularly well-suited to late-era ECW, letting Styles call the action and make dirty jokes or cheer for the heels in between.  I could never understand why they would have him on the weekly show but find a reason to take him off the PPV broadcasts and replace him with Cyrus.  I mean I get that the weekly shows were taped and they could script and edit him but the show was such rampaging nonsense for the last so many months but they still did it to get Cyrus on, when Gertner worked better with Styles anyways. 

Yuch, no... Cyrus actually brought out the best in Styles, and hid his worst tendencies. Gertner was as bad as Rude, in that they never sounded like they were ever with Styles, and recorded all their lines separately. Which is probably why they didn’t have him do live broadcasts, because he couldn’t re-record his commentary.

Edited by LoneWolf&Subs
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David Crockett really deserves a nod on here. Enthusiastic to the point of goofy, but nice enough to take seriously. Just kind of an "aw shucks" guy that you could mark out with.

Always liked Marc Lowrance too, he had good levity, if that's the word for it. I know this is about teams but I can't think of any team pairing they had that was off or anything. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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10 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

David Crockett really deserves a nod on here. Enthusiastic to the point of goofy, but nice enough to take seriously. Just kind of an "aw shucks" guy that you could mark out with.

 

He also knew the names of the wrestlers signature offense, and put over faces & heels without a fuss. I like Ventura, and Heenan more, but somebody consistent like Crockett can pay off a lot more in ways.

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You know who's good at commentary? Both Jeff @Gorman and @DylanWaco Hales are really good.

Can we all agree that announcers who don't get on IRL are usually bad, whereas announcers who are legit friends but have a 'wind each other up' commentary gimmick are good? But when you take it further and they're actually having a commentary feud, that's just the worst?

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"Look at him, Toe-nay!" 

Crockett fits in well with Dusty and Booker in the enjoyable over-the-top energy crew. I actually don't love Booker's commentary because IIRC he'd do a bunch of weird vet takes at inappropriate times and kind of shit on stuff pretty frequently but when he was into something it really made whatever you were watching way better.

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