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Post by Aceorton on Jan 24, 2024 12:58:32 GMT -5
I'll be honest, I'm at the point where I struggle to tolerate the majority of them now. There's just too much shouting and melodrama and soundbytes, everything just sounds overly sincere and contrived and it annoys me. Modern commentary is often sort of the aural equivalent to a spotfest match, people who've heard stuff on other commentaries and tried to emulate that without understanding how and why it worked, and/or just trying to get their shit in. This. They're almost all terrible now. Old school: Randy Savage and Superstar Billy Graham if we're talking regulars. Bonus "points" to Savage for not only being horrible to listen to but also having the obnoxious habit of running into the ring to hug winning underdog babyfaces and water down their moments. For non-regulars, the doofuses they used on regionally televised house shows. Dick Graham was bad and Rod Trongard was worse. And if you haven't heard the trio of Bruce Prichard, Mike McGuirk and Pete Doherty in 1987, look it up and try to handle it.
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Post by nevthebassist on Jan 24, 2024 14:47:20 GMT -5
Graves.
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Post by Tenshigure on Jan 24, 2024 14:54:06 GMT -5
I'll be honest, I'm at the point where I struggle to tolerate the majority of them now. There's just too much shouting and melodrama and soundbytes, everything just sounds overly sincere and contrived and it annoys me. Modern commentary is often sort of the aural equivalent to a spotfest match, people who've heard stuff on other commentaries and tried to emulate that without understanding how and why it worked, and/or just trying to get their shit in.
I swear every major promotion now has a mandate that the commentators need to come up with some significant sound byte so they can use it in Shorts/clips from here to eternity. Even the more tolerable/praised ones tend to lean too far into the curve and can only be really tolerated in smaller doses.
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Allie Kitsune
Crow T. Robot
Always Feelin' Foxy.
HaHa U FaLL 4 LaVa TriK
Posts: 46,162
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Post by Allie Kitsune on Jan 24, 2024 14:55:31 GMT -5
Matt Striker and Kris Kloss would be my worst two.
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Post by James Fabiano on Jan 24, 2024 15:44:32 GMT -5
Motormouth Mike Morgan from the original GLOW.
Too caricature-y and didn't get who he was supposed to put over. Either that or they had him body shame faces and heels alike for shits and giggles.
Jerry Lawler when he stopped being pure heel and began being the Puppies Lover.
David Webb when he started being Elvis, though I appreciate the GWF camp element of it. Doyle King had a good voice but could get out there too.
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dav
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 6,037
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Post by dav on Jan 24, 2024 15:51:02 GMT -5
Joey Styles was always awful.
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Post by cornettesracket on Jan 24, 2024 16:04:32 GMT -5
Superstar billy graham was awful in the times I’ve watched matches with monsoon as his partner. Good thing I wasn’t playing the “brother, monsoon, brother” drinking game I’d have been an ex parrot. He made f*** all sense. Nick bockwinkel I seem to recall was very poor on commentary, which was a surprise given how eloquent he was on promos.
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chazraps
Wade Wilson
Better have my money when I come-a collect!
Posts: 27,988
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Post by chazraps on Jan 24, 2024 16:10:37 GMT -5
All time worst for me has to be Chris Cruise. Such a shame that such a cool voice (he was great narrating the WCW video packages on the weekend shows) was wasted on someone who was so unbelievably dreadful on a national platform who, for YEARS, never got any better even with Dusty Rhodes carrying him and coaching.
Like, I can put up with some very low quality picture and audio quality when enjoying my 90s WCW deep cuts - but any time Cruise is on the play I just can't watch it.
He and Madden are like the two sides of aggressively bad. Madden would always try to get himself over at the expense of everything else on air and fail, whereas Cruise was just always lost without anything of any remote compelling substance to say to match his delivery.
I think people also remember Larry Zybscko as being better than he was because of how over Scott Hall and Eric Bischoff got him over for their feuds, but he'd actively take away from what was onscreen at every turn.
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Post by Stone Coke Miami Watson 🥃 on Jan 24, 2024 16:11:38 GMT -5
Jerry Lawler and his cringy-as-f*** commentary during the attitude era.
It unfortunately makes many RAW episodes from that era unlistenable to me.
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Post by Jacy Jayne Atomic Dog AMV on Jan 24, 2024 16:13:38 GMT -5
Dude wrestling: *accidentally lets his penis flop out and starts pissing everywhere* Matt Striker: this is to gain a tactical advantage and freedom of movement...
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chazraps
Wade Wilson
Better have my money when I come-a collect!
Posts: 27,988
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Post by chazraps on Jan 24, 2024 16:13:46 GMT -5
But the single unparalleled worst wrestling commentary of all time was on the 1980s womens wrestling stateside release 'S****-E*** Slaughter' you can tell the announcers have barely an idea what wrestling or Japan even is.
I can't link to it because, among many reasons, it's an AJW tape repacked with the name being a slur but it's out there on archive dot org if you wanted to give it a view and forever have you gauge for bad wrestling commentary skewed.
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Post by Psicofreak667 on Jan 24, 2024 16:18:21 GMT -5
The Coach/Lita team on Sunday Night Heat amplified each other's worst qualities and was the single most intolerable commentary team I ever remember. Plus their terribleness was more insidious. They both clearly hadn't enough knowledge of pro wrestling to actually call a pro wrestling match, so they'd go from recapping whatever the Main Guy was doing at the time to awkward silences and back to recapping the same angle that they'd just got done recapping 20 seconds ago. If they even paid enough attention to the match to say "oh, nice dropkick", it was better than they usually did.
There was another guy, not a mainstream guy, he commentated some SoCal stuff back in the early 2000s. His gimmick was fanboying for all the faces and burying the heels, like a mark stereotype turned up to 11. And I think he was supposed to be terrible because when Super Dragon lost a match (I think against TARO), he got on the house microphone to gloat and rile up the fans. But it wasn't good heeling, it was awful.
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Post by Aceorton on Jan 24, 2024 16:25:25 GMT -5
Superstar billy graham was awful in the times I’ve watched matches with the monsoon as his partner. Good thing I wasn’t playing the “brother, monsoon, brother” drinking game I’d have been an ex parrot. He made f*** all sense. Nick bockwinkel I seem to recall was very poor on commentary, which was a surprise given how eloquent he was on promos. Bockwinkel on commentary in the WWF felt like a substitute teacher who tries to actually teach the class instead of just putting on a video like everybody wants.
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Post by I'm Team Bayley and Indi on Jan 24, 2024 16:29:51 GMT -5
of current, I know he's been said countless times but Matt Striker, he actively detracts from me wanting to watch any of MLW, and know if in any wrestlers I like there have a match I want to see I have to tolerate him.
literal commentary from Maki Itoh vs Janai Kai, late last year - "blah blah blah", which was also a match he failed to grasp any of the Itoh character
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Post by Denny Zen is Cooking™ on Jan 24, 2024 16:42:36 GMT -5
Michael Cole, even today, is the physical embodiment of WWE's modern buzzword-centric, overpolished, overproduced, overly scripted presentation that was the primary catalyst in driving me away as a fan. He's my absolute least favorite ever by a country mile.
Notwithstanding other, well-known, objectively terrible commentary runs like Rob Bartlett and Mike Adamle, Mark Henry's stint as a commentator for AEW was pretty putrid. He always seemed disinterested, clearly didn't know anything about the wrestlers or their storylines, and would always go off on bizarre non-sequiturs and tangents that, I guess, were supposed to be funny but tended to just come across as weird.
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jb80
AC Slater
Enter your message here...
Posts: 141
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Post by jb80 on Jan 24, 2024 16:57:13 GMT -5
Most of these dudes suck nowadays. Bring back the late 80s/90s style of announcing, at least the bad announcers from that era were usually endearing.
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salz4life
Grimlock
Prichard is a guy who gets that his job is to service his boss.
Posts: 14,007
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Post by salz4life on Jan 24, 2024 17:01:38 GMT -5
Excalibur is awful. His forced excitement and announcer voice for lack of a better term (you all know exactly what voice I'm talking about) while he's calling nonsensical horse shit is grating. And him screaming random Japanese and Spanish words while referencing feuds and histories between people that even the most in the bubble wrestling fans like myself have never heard of makes him sound like the most basement dwelling of Neckbeards. THANK YOU!!! I'm always worried I'll be crucified for saying I hate Excalibur. Hate is probably I strong word, but I just don't get the praise he gets from the IWC. He just comes off as insanely fake to me. As much as a love Booker T for being a legend... he's like fingers on a chalkboard during NXT. I'm just not a fan at all. I think his schtick is fine on the preshows... but it just doesn't work for me on the actual shows during matches.
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Post by Super Nintenjoe KBD on Jan 24, 2024 17:08:09 GMT -5
Michael Cole. When unemployed in 2009 I would stay up to watch Raw at 2am, and often after hearing his voice for a literally few seconds it would single-handed have me like "Aww f this" and turn the whole thing off and listen to music.
JBL, didn't really hate him at the time but the more I've learned of who he is I would never want to hear him again now.
Corey Graves, mostly based off reading about him on this forum, when originally as Sterling James Keenan I had like the idea of him.
Weird one is Mike Tenay, probably "can't stand" is the wrong phrase but looking back on some clips of old TNA recently (which I was watching at the time) and some amazing spots were happening and he barely reacting, like "um, is he actually watching?" Just took the life out of it. Although I get he was probably better as non-play-by-play, but I know watching those back would annoy me now.
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MrElijah
Crow T. Robot
Posts: 43,133
Member is Online
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Post by MrElijah on Jan 24, 2024 17:21:14 GMT -5
-Matt Striker pisses me off because he CAN be good but he f***s it up 90% of the time by trying to be too cute with references. There was a couple of times I wanted Vampiro to slap him on LU. -Mark Madden: f*** 'em. Obnoxious Jackass. -David Crockett is loud and probably the worse face-sided announcer ever.
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Post by Instant Classic on Jan 24, 2024 17:40:57 GMT -5
Kevin Patrick! A good backstage interviewer, terrible announcer.
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