Look, I had to do 20 because the achievement of whittling down an industry full of some of the charismatic sumbitches in entertainment history to a lean 10 is just not worth all the comments of how did [x] not make the list, 6 question marks.
See, wrestling matches are all well and good, but for a match to have true substance you need to have compelling characters, an invested audience, and something, be it professional or personal, on the line.
At the centre of that triforce is a microphone and these are the best to ever wield one in a wrestling ring. The best english-speakers I mean, sorry, I don’t feel qualified to judge the quality of non-english promos, sorry Mexico, sorry Japan. Sorry.
20. Kevin Owens
It’s insane that KO is as good on the stick as he is considering that English is his second language. C’est incroyable.
Owens has mastered a style of promo, which appears to be so easy, yet eludes 95% of wrestlers, which is the ability to make it look like he is just talking.
That sounds super dumb but it’s true, he talks like a person, which in a generational of tightly scripted promos, is super rare. Also he’s one of the funniest men alive. That helps.
Watch his interviews with Michael Cole, they’re amazing.
19. Arn Anderson
Good ol’ AA has always looked like a 40 year old Dad who’s having a difficult time getting the lawn mower to start, but like most dads, if you get him talking about something he really loves, he can tell a story that spellbinds you.
Case in point, anytime you ask Arn Anderson to talk about the horsemen he’s unbelievably compelling, a proper southern poet, infinitely more articulate than he looks, watch his promo introducing a previously fired Ric Flair when he returned to Nitro in September 98.
It’s phenomenal.
18. Becky Lynch
It took a while for the Man to come around, but the detour was worth it, because by the time Becky Lynch arrived at the persona that would catapult to the top of women’s wrestling, she’d arrive with battle scars, a swagger in her step and an authentic bass in her voice.
Finally getting to hear Becky Lynch be as cool as she could be, to speak with the unabashed bravado that we knew she was capable of, it harkened us back to the dripping anti-heroic charm of Steve Austin.
I miss Becky Lynch.
17. John Cena
Oh man, John Cena has delivered some of the worst promos in wrestling history.
Not because he’s a bad talker, he’s the furthest thing from it, but because he was the poster child for the flip, goofball, corporate babyface that dominated WWE for a decade.
Some fans will never forgive him for the days of mocking wrestler’s nips (I mean who’d do that) but you can’t deny that when Cena gets rolling on something serious he’s one of the most magnetic men on television.
His worked shoot promos on Styles, Bryan, Rock, Reigns, Miz, and they’re masterclasses to a man.
16. Mick Foley
Mrs Foley’s baby boy is a man of split personalities, and amazingly, all of them were good on the mic in different ways.
Cactus Jack’s unhinged Cane Dewey promo is different to Dude Love’s cheesy swagger, is different to Mankind’s dangerous manchild, is different to the Commish’s easy charm, is different to anyone else in wrestling.
Foley’s always been more than a punching bag. His falls may have made him famous, but his personality on the stick made him beloved.
15. Bray Wyatt
And talk about a lunatic of many faces.
It seems that for the longest time fans have been upset with the way WWE treats Bray Wyatt, and not because he’s the best in-ring wrestler, but because he’s one of the most inventive and original voices of his generation, and WWE keep getting in the way of his stories.
From the children’s tv presenter, to the southern gothic poetry, to the Funhouse, which is the best movie WWE ever made, he has a hypnotic, smokey cadence and new thoughts to express and those things are diamond’s in WWE’s rough.
14. Bobby Heenan
Wrestling managers have provided us with some of the best talkers of all time, which makes sense because that’s what they’re there to do, talk for the guys who can’t, or shouldn’t.
Jim Cornette was amazing, Sensational Sherri was, well, sensational, but few could hold a candle to the weasel, one of the sharpest, quickest minds in pro wrestling history.
Hilarious when he needed to be, diabolical when he needed to be, Heenan was a master of promo mechanics, he’d put over the match, the date, the heel, the face, the story without feeling like a salesman.
13. Hulk Hogan
Like Cena, Hogan’s star has been dimmed by the sheer wealth of crapola he’s been a part of during his career.
His current persona as the huckster, the bloated ego-driven nonsense of late-stage nWo, the Dungeon of Doom cheeseball tosh, he’s dropped a whole bunch of mic-amplified turds on us over the years, but even then it’s hard to deny that when Hogan got a promo head of steam going, when that Terry boulder rolled down the hill, nothing could stop it and during the golden era you simply couldn’t resist being caught up in his eye-popping, sweat-drenched furore.
12. Randy Savage
This is Ricky Steamboat’s cup of coffee in the big time, F**K YEAH Randy Savage, no one talked like him, no one has ever since talked like him.
He was fluent in gravel jazz, he was a demented beat poet and the beat goes on. Did everything that Randy Savage said make sense, no, was it impossible to forget his signature barks and growls, those crazy eyes and unsettling rolling tempo, oh hell yes.
11. Chris Jericho
Y2J can do everything on the mic, from dorky comedy, to braggadocious rock’n’rolla, to quiet intensity, to the festival of friendship, to whatever he was with the hat and the spikes on his shoulders, I want to say, if the tyrant from resident evil 2 did cabaret, he made them all work.
That’s because he’s got one of the most lucrative brains in the sport. He’s a catchphrase machine, is brilliant at working the room, and his endless career speaks for itself
10. Vince McMahon
The mad man who says mad things.
I think the saddest thing about Vince McMahon today is not just those eyebrows, those mad thin eyebrows, what’s going on there, it’s that Vince can’t go on the mic like he used to, because honestly in his prime, he was the best promo on his own roster.
The sheer tonnage of madness that Vince has said, and said with such demented relish that you can’t help but enjoy it, whether he was cussing out Austin, the fans, or god himself.
I miss that insanity, I really do.
9. Jake Roberts
Everyone shouted in the 80s. But in a land of sound and fury signifying nothing, Jake Roberts whispered louder than anyone.
He spoke with such careful deliberation, such poise and such precise menace and the fact that in an era of flag-waving, insane ramblings and screamed catchphrases, the fact that there were also wrestlers dropping bombs like, “you will be a victim of your own greed, wallowing in the muck of avarice.”
8. Eddie Kingston
Eddie Kingston might just be the best promo currently wrestling.
We’ve talked about Kevin Owens and his natural delivery, but Kingston has supernatural delivery. I believe Eddie Kingston, I believe every single thing he says, one mouthful of glass at a time.
He’s made Jon Moxley better than he ever was before, he dismantles wrestling promo etiquette and lots of people can make a crowd yell, it takes a special talent to make them silent.
He’s wrestling’s Al Pacino and he scares me.
7. Dusty Rhodes
The dad of the grandson of a plumber, Dusty Rhodes has ascended to promo godhood.
He became the gatekeeper for WWE’s next generation of storytellers, the engineer tinkering with the finest generation of characters NXT ever saw, because Dusty knew how to make that connection, that ability to reach out, and take the hand of those watching, and make them follow him.
When you talk about a wrestling promo as poetry, Dusty was the king of knitting fragments of the working class American story into something touching, real, and that galloped at bewitching speed.
6. Roddy Piper
Hotrod was charisma in a kilt.
He was able to delicately tread the line between funny and scary, ready to switch on you at any moment.
That unpredictability is what made him such a fantastic promo, made Piper’s pit the best, and never-ever-topped wrestler interview segment and also explains why he’s one of the best wrestler-turned-actors ever, with They Live and his role as The Maniac in Always Sunny being works of genius.
So many great piper soundbites, he was the best.
5. Steve Austin
F**k the what chant, though.
Steve Austin is low-key one of the funniest promos of all time. The dude’s comic timing and the ability to pop a crowd is insane, but that’s probably not the reason that people herald stone cold as one of the all-time greats.
It’s because he was quite simply, very cool, all the time. He commanded the room, the strut, the head tilt, from the moment 3:16 was born at King of the Ring, to the bottom line and all the hell yeahs in between, Austin’s a master of crowdwork.
4. CM Punk
You can dispute a lot of reasons that CM Punk used to proclaim himself the best in the world, but one thing you can’t is that he’s one of the best mic workers ever.
When you can drop a promo that single-handedly sparks the most interest in wrestling that there’s been in years, when one promo escapes the WWE echo chamber and starts bringing lapsed fans BACK.
When you can hang with the rock in a promo and still walk away with a split decision, that’s a once in a lifetime talent, no arguments.
3. Ric Flair
Talk about wonderful free-wheeling nonsense.
On paper, Ric Flair really should be a good promo. He screams incoherently like a man with sunstroke chasing kids off his lawn, but he also just has that incalculable charisma, it’s borderline alien.
He’s just so there, so right there and meaning every single thing that he says with total, if overpowering, emotion that you can’t help but get excited when Ric Flair talks.
And way back at the start we mentioned that episode of Nitro where the nature boy returned. Watch Flair’s promo from that segment. It’s a world-beater. Fire me. I’m already fired.
2. Paul Heyman
A good promo is designed to sell you something. Even indirectly it’s designed to sell you a match, a story, a concept, a place in time that you need to be.
Paul Heyman is the greatest salesman in wrestling history, and the fact that he has been for over 20 years, and maintained consistent quality, it’s miracle work.
Whether selling Brock Lesnar, selling Roman Reigns, selling the dangerous alliance, or being part of the all-time great WWE commentary team of Heyman and JR, how can one man be so good for so long?
1. The Rock
Yeah. Obvious almost to the point of anti-climax, but he is. He is, isn’t he?
A man so good at trash talk that he’s killed pushes dead, sorry about that Billy Gunn, and the man who’s launched a thousand disparaging catchphrases.
You know those promos that wrestlers do directly before a match, when they’re hopped up on adrenaline and ready to go? The Rock is the greatest person at those promos that has ever lived. He called Goldberg a whisker-biscuit bald-headed bitch, so yeah. He’s number 1.
End of.
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