The Rock and the best talkers in Wrestling

With the recent return of ‘The Rock’ to WWE programming and the resulting increase in buzz surrounding the product of WWE, the question that comes to my mind, as a seasoned fan of the product, is this: What makes a pro-wrestler resonate with the audience the most? What makes him/her tick and get the crowd to invest and respond to him? Is it being the best athlete on the roster? Or being a good looking guy with a great physique? Or just having the charisma, the X-factor?

The right guy, the breakout superstar, usually ends up having most of these attributes, if not all of them, in some quantity. But if you look at all the big names over the years who have had the most appeal with the fans and have gone on to attain the mainstream popularity that everyone craves for, it is evident that there is a common thread, a common attribute that binds all of these guys who have managed to reach the pinnacle of success in their profession: the ability to cut great promos! The ability to talk people into buying tickets and watch them beat/get beaten up by their opponents, depending on which side of the fence they are, when it comes to the fans’ feelings for them, is what I believe is the greatest difference maker between the good and the great in the make-believe world of professional wrestling/Sports-entertainment. With the passage of time, the fans of this sport (yeah, it is a legit sport given the physical demands the athletes have to endure and the various injuries that they acquire trying to entertain you!) have become smarter and more demanding. While the results are pre-determined and wins and losses pretty much mean the same for a wrestler, the audience has come to look for a lot more in their heroes and expect them to live up to a whole different set of standards today. The days of the big, lumbering wrestlers with a limited move-set have given way to fast-paced athletic wrestlers who come up with crazy moves and counters that the players of the past can only look at in amazement and marvel! While the pace of the in-ring action has been pushed, the promos have gone from being loud, rambunctious screaming matches between the giants of yore to more realistic, lifting-the-veil shoot type banters between wrestlers of today. Simplistically put, while quantity still takes precedence when a wrestler promotes himself, the focus is on better quality and cerebral nature of the promos that the audience laps up eagerly.

In the next 2 articles, I intend to highlight the promo skills of the wrestlers who have left an indelible impression on me. I have been following the product since 1993, so please note that the names that figure in my list are the ones from that period and are WWE employees primarily. With that out of the way, here is my list of the greatest talkers in the WWE and there can be only guy who can start this list off -’The Great One’.

The Rock

The Rock embodies everything that this business stands for and should stand for in the future. Impressively built, extremely charismatic, highly athletic and boy oh boy, did he cut some promos in the golden period of wrestling, popularly known as ‘The Attitude Era’! For much of that period, he was the face of the business and rightfully so. Every time he grabbed a mic, people across the world would gasp a collective sigh because they knew that something special was about to happen. What exactly would happen is something no one knew but it is this unpredictability that makes ‘The Brahmabull’ the absolute greatest in my opinion. Possessing a never-ending list of catchphrases, trademark insults and delivering his lines with fervent energy, he would make most of his opponents look like amateur idiots waiting to be slaughtered at the hands of the big stud. He has the ‘rarest of the rare’ ability to be equally engaging both as a heel (bad guy) and a babyface (good guy). Even when he turned heel and joined the Nation of Domination, the moment he started talking and cutting people down, including the live audience, people would start cheering him. Why? Because it is so hard not to like such an entertaining SOB! It was the same thing over again when he supposedly ‘sold out’ to become a Hollywood star and made sporadic appearances in the WWE as a snobbish heel! As a baby-face, he cut promos on heels like Triple H, Big Show, Chris Jericho etc. which stand the test of time even today. Recently back after a long hiatus owing to his movie commitments, he still is capable of high-quality mic-work and still gets the best response from the crowd for his promos.

Chris Jericho

Another one of my personal favourites to ever hold a mic and talk in a wrestling ring is Chris Jericho, who is a sheer pleasure to listen to if it is the cerebral quotient in the promos that you are after. A highly intelligent guy in real life (the man has authored 2 of the best wrestling autobiographies, bar none!), his versatility and talent shine through in each and every promo of his. Always creative with both words (gelatinous anyone?) and insults, he is responsible for some of the most LOL-worthy moments in the last decade or so. The thing that truly sets Jericho apart is his absolute selflessness in both the ring and on the mic. You will nary, if ever, find an opponent who hasn’t been better off having feuded with the ‘Ayatolah of RocknRolla’ as it is never about just himself, when it comes to Jericho. Be it CM Punk, The Rock, Kurt Angle or Shawn Michaels, every wrestler who has feuded with Jericho has ended up looking even better and more of a threat after the feud than they were going in. He is also a geek in the truest sense of the word and his references to pop-culture both in his promos and interviews just makes them that much more relevant and entertaining.

CM Punk

The current ‘It’ man in wrestling, CM Punk, in a couple of years’ time could lay claim to being the absolute best ever, if he continues in the same vein as now.

It was a year and half ago that Philip Brooks (real name) sat on the ramp on an episode of RAW and delivered a diatribe that woke up the wrestling world from its slumber. It was uncharacteristically unbecoming of the WWE television to broadcast such a profanity-laced promo and that is exactly when the live and television audience came alive and wondered aloud “What the f*$@? was that real/unscripted/shoot?”

CM Punk was already a major star by then. However, following this promo (below), his career sky-rocketed and then followed a title reign which has gone on to become the longest title-reign in WWE in the modern era. The highlight of Punk’s reign so far has been the ground-breaking mic-work that he has exhibited since the infamous shoot promo on RAW. Combining his rebel-like persona, intensity and delivering his lines like an erudite English professor, it is not a far stretch when he says he makes WWE must-watch TV. Admittedly schooled by one of the best minds in the business in Paul Heyman, CM Punk is the poster-boy for the smart marks, who hang onto every single word that comes out of his mouth, just so that they can claim to be ‘in’ on the things that Punk supposedly means! Honest to the point of being dubbed as arrogant and blunt, Punk is unlike any of the other ‘superstars’ in that he almost never tows the company line and it is apparent that when you are watching CM Punk, you are watching a self-made man and not a company-promoted entertainer/superstar. In a stale environment, he comes as a breath of fresh air and is without a doubt, the best thing on wrestling television today.

To be continued…