IN ADDITION TO our big interview with WWE Superstar The Miz to preview the “Extreme Rules” pay per view in Baltimore on April 25, we spoke to three wrestling journalists about the Miz’s skills on the mic and in the ring. Plus, we asked them who are the best talkers in the history of sports entertainment.
Weighing in are Wade Keller, editor of PWTorch.com; Bryan Alvarez from WrestlingObserver.com and Figure Four Weekly; and Vinny Verhei, co-host of “The Bryan and Vinny Show” on WrestlingObserver.com.
If all this talking isn’t enough, WWE Classics will feature “Pass the Mic” in May. It’s a showcase of the greatest talkers of all time.
» WADE KELLER, PWTorch.com
» EXPRESS: Where does the Miz rank among today’s best promo cutters?
» KELLER: I think Miz is rocketing to the top. I’ve liked Miz’s promos for a while; I’ve been a backer of him getting a push. I liked him last year saying he wanted to be a main eventer. I think sometimes you’ve got to set your sites high and let people know you’re not settling. I think if Shelton Benjamin, five years ago, had said, “I want to headline pay per views, and I want to do what it takes to get there,” I think management would have taken him more seriously and looked to him to step up and do that. I think Miz has stepped up. He changes his ring gear,he changed his look, but he’s great on the mic. He’s quick-witted; I don’t know he much he prepares ahead of time versus home much just comes out of him naturally. I think he’s growing into one of the top promo guys in the industry, and I think that he is opening some eyes. I don’t know if it will be in the next 12 months, but I think when we start looking at mid-2011, if WWE portrays him well and let shim work his way to the top with some credible in-ring work I think fans will take him seriously with his mouth and his in-ring work combined as a potential pay per view main eventer.
» EXPRESS: Do you think he’ll be a main-eventer soon?
» KELLER: There’s a danger in pushing him too hard, too fast. I think people see him not a clown but as a comic — somebody’s who’s good with one liners. But he hasn’t been portrayed — nor has I think he portrayed himself enough — as being really tough and having a real strong in-ring game. I don’t think he’s in the negative side of things; I think he’s on the positive side of being looked as a tough wrestler. … I think to be a main eventer, with the mouth that he has, in order to be a Roddy Piper-type guy — who’s got a great mouth but he can deliver in the ring and he’s tough — I think he has to work his credibility up a couple notches. I think he has the athletic ability and drive to do it; that’s why I say I think a year from now, if they handle him right, we’ll be talking about him reaching that level.
» EXPRESS: Where does the Miz rank on the all-time talkers list, or is it too early to tell?
» KELLER: I think it’s too early to put him on an all-time list; that’s a discussion we have in three to five years. He and Morrison had some good promos … when they were a tag-team; he’s broken out as a singles wrestler over the past year or so, delivered some great promos, but I’m not ready to start having a discussion among all-time greats because I don’t think he’s been in a position to draw money with his promos yet. He’s been put in a position to fill TV time in an entertaining fashion. But I don’t think until you’ve been put in a position to draw as a main event opponent on a semi-consistent or long-term basis can you enter the discussion of the all-time best. I mean, Santino Marella is really entertaining, but you don’t compare him to Roddy Piper because Roddy Piper was a main-card draw and Santino Marella was a mid-card comedy act. Miz was endanger of becoming that and he stepped up his game and made sure that he would not be perceived as somebody who was there to tell funny jokes and then do a job. He’s trying to emerge.
It’s a tough discussion to have — all time great talkers. Nick Bockwinkel was great at promos, but he wasn’t entertaining in the way Roddy Piper or Jim Cornette — one of the all-time great talkers — or Ric Flair was. There are different types of really effective talkers. I think Batista, as a heel, has done some phenomenal heel promos — but they’re not that outlandish, “Did you see that?” type of promo that a JBL has done, or even Edge at his peak doing heel promos, or that Chris Jericho has done.
» BRYAN ALVAREZ & VINNY VERHEI from “The Bryan and Vinny Show” on WrestlingObserver.com
» EXPRESS: Who are the best talkers of all time?
» ALVAREZ: The best promo men of all time have been guys like Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Superstar Billy Graham, Hulk Hogan, even Vince McMahon. It would be impossible to list all of then. But the one thing all of them have in common is that they were able to talk people into buying tickets to come see them either beat someone up or get their ass kicked. A great promo guy is basically just a salesman.
» VERHEI: It’s kind of hard to say, because the standards for what makes a good promo have changed. It used to be that the promos were just that, promotional tools to build a product, which were the matches. Now the promos are, to an extent, the product themselves. Back in the day, it wasn’t enough to be entertaining, you had to convince fans to buy tickets to see matches. You didn’t want fans thinking “That was funny,” you wanted them thinking “I cannot wait to see that fight.” Now, as long as you’re entertaining enough that fans are convinced to tune in to your TV show, you’ve done your job. Steve Austin once went to the ring and recited the lyrics to the “Beverly Hillbillies” theme song. It accomplished nothing other than giving the crowd a chance to shout “WHAT?” after each line, but that’s what they wanted to do, so it worked.
It’s also hard to judge because for the past five years or so, promos are scripted word-for-word for the wrestlers. Guys are going out there and not speaking from the heart, they’re reciting dialogue. It’s a totally different skill-set. Plenty of guys who were great at the former struggle with the latter, and vice versa.
From an entertainment standpoint, the best was The Rock. I don’t think there’s any question there. If I remember right, Mike Mizanin started calling himself The Miz when he was on “Real World” because it was a one-syllable name like The Rock, and he would steal all of Rock’s lines.
Other great promos, for various reasons: Jake Roberts, Mick Foley and Terry Funk convinced you they were crazy and might really kill someone. Randy Savage was kind of like that too. Ole Anderson convinced you he really hated his opponents. Dusty Rhodes would make people laugh, and at the same time connect with them as just another blue-collar American. Steve Austin was kind of the same way, except angrier. Hulk Hogan convinced you that he himself was not great, but he was a conduit for the greatness of his fans. … Ric Flair and Superstar Billy Graham convinced you they were unreal larger-than-life personalities, to the point you’d watch them do anything — talk, wrestle, shop, eat, golf, whatever. Jim Cornette, Bobby Heenan and Paul Heyman were entertaining, but at the same time so obnoxious that you’d pay money just on the possibility that somebody might punch them in the mouth.
» EXPRESS: Which wrestlers are giving the best promos today and why?
» ALVAREZ: Things have to be judged differently today because there aren’t really a lot of singular draws. People usually don’t buy tickets to see one guy beat another guy up at their local house show, they buy tickets to see the big show come to town. But with that said, guys who are able to draw a lot of emotion from fans with their words include Miz, Edge, Chris Jericho, John Cena, Shawn Michaels before he retired, and even Dave Batista has really come into his own. Ric Flair is still really good, and Abyss is one of my favorite promo guys in TNA.
» VERHEI: I think CM Punk is way ahead of everyone else. He speaks with such gravity, like he really believes everything he’s saying, and it’s very important to him. He gets the emotion of whatever he’s involved in across so well. He also has fantastic comic timing. I’m writing this right after watching NXT, and his backstage bit with Darren Young and Luke Gallows had me howling. I watched it about nine times in a row, crying with laughter.
Chris Jericho and Miz have great delivery, emotion, and intensity. I’d put them in the next level. In TNA, the best guys are DeAngelo Dinero and Abyss. (Well, the best guys are Flair and Hogan, but we talked about them already.) Dinero’s promos are sort of a cross between Billy Graham and The Rock. Abyss has great intensity in his stuff. I think the TNA guys are given more leeway to come up with their own material.
» EXPRESS: Where does the Miz rank among today’s top guys on the mic and what makes his mic skills special?d?
» ALVAREZ: He is a throwback to the old days where he talks and you want to see someone come out and shut him up. He’s very smooth on the mic, very poised, and he comes off as someone extremely unlikeable.
» VERHEI: Like I said, about even with Jericho and below Punk, but probably better than everyone else. He has great delivery and confidence. Miz has what they call in wrestling “the it factor.” You could use a lot of words you here — charisma, stage presence, star power — but it means that when Miz is on TV, it’s almost impossible to look away. The best example I ever saw of this was an old, old Randy Savage promo from Memphis I was watching on a very old, very worn down VHS tape. The copy was so terrible that I couldn’t understand a word Savage was saying, but he was acting so paranoid and intense and crazy that I couldn’t miss a single second.
» EXPRESS: Do you think his mic skills and general charisma is what lifted him to the WWE before his wrestling skills were polished? And how do you think he’s improved?
» ALVAREZ: He’s gotten a lot better in the ring. The thing in WWE is that most of the guys are solid in the ring, so the thing that is going to set you apart is either a really good look or the ability to cut great promos. His promos are his strong suit and so that’s what’s allowed him to break out of the pack, far more than the wrestling.
» VERHEI: He was always a better talker than wrestler, but he used to be pretty horrible on the mic. Go back and watch his stuff during the original “Diva Search,” when he was reading off note cards and still botching lines. He’s improved leaps and bounds in the ring and on the mic. It helps a lot that he’s a heel now. They brought him in as a babyface first, thinking people would like him because he was on MTV. This was stupid. He has a real-life smugness and arrogance about him that makes him so automatically and eminently unlikeable. He used to work against that. Now he works with it.
