WWF announcing debate mega-thread

[Loss]

I'll eventually move everything into this thread from anytime this topic has come up, but there has been new stuff from Dave at the F4W board that I wanted to post.

 

Yes, kids who grow up now in 20 years will be looking back saying that all the people who voted on Michael Cole for worst announcer were stupid, that he's the standard for announcers, he was so funny, witty, his insults were great, and that Mason Ryan was really a fantastic in-ring worker and the guys like Dolph Ziggler who diss him in shoot interviews were just bitter old overrated hacks.

 

It's called the circle of life.

As I said, you didn't get phone calls from WWE wrestlers all the time after seeing how their match was called and their psychology was completely undercut.

 

For all the faults of Vince, he built the psychology of their match. Gorilla squashed it. Gorilla was great as Heenan's foil, but if you were a heel trying to get heat using legitimate moves and Gorilla made fun of you by saying the babyface would never submit, why even bother, and if you were going for the pin, and the style didn't allow you to hook the leg, so you didn't, and he got himself over by talking about it all the time, you wondered why you even bothered with a near fall. And those are just some of the examples.

 

Look, this is no different from the Calgary people who to this day think Ed Whalen is the god of wrestling announcers, but try and be a wrestler or booker when Ed was announcing and get over, or a fan who didn't have blind eyes to Ed as your childhood announcer, and it's a different story.

 

Like I said, circle of life. Guys who are total shit today will be remembered in 25 years as being classic great performers. I already get people who talk about 1999 and 2000 WCW as this great era of wrestling.

Yeah, I think WWF heels would know the context of what they were trying to get across in their match and the style they are told to work.

 

It's not like it was WCW wrestlers watching saying how Monsoon was botching the match by the call, it was the guys who were working the match based on the parameters they were told to work by the promotion, for the audience there, and then getting undercut to the television viewer because the announcer wanted to get himself over as being smart instead of the match and the talent over.

 

At least that was the perception of the people in the context in the ring trying to get over at the time.

 

Whalen was worse. Try being a heel in Calgary or a booker trying to get heat when he treated angles as comedy. Try drawing money with an angle when he edited the angle off TV (he botched the entire Dynamite Kid vs. Davey Boy Smith desperation angle needed to save the promotion because he didn't like the idea of them feuding). But today, anyone who grew up in Calgary believes Ed was the greatest wrestling announcer there ever was.

Then Bill Mercer was the best announcer of his era, because nobody on television came across more over than the Von Erichs, including Hogan.

 

And Cole was as good as Ross, because Austin & Rock were just as over coming out when Ross announced as they were when Cole announced.

 

Vince was the lead announcer on the A show that most of the angles and personalities were sold on during that era. Gorilla did the B show which replayed the angles that had already been taped on the A show.

My God. Guys who knew the story of the match they were trying to tell were too stupid to know that the psychology of the match they were trying to tell wasn't really the psychology of the match they were trying to tell.

 

Does anyone think here.

 

I've been through generations. People now think Honky Tonk Man was the greatest Intercontinental champion of all-time and guys like Ted DiBiase and Bobby Heenan were bitter old men because they said Warrior was a shitty wrestler on that DVD.

 

I know people who grew up here who think the studio wrestling show in front of 75 people where they did two angles a year and piped in worse fake crowd noise than Impact was better than Raw and Nitro at their peaks.

 

Nothing wrong with it. It's the circle of life. You'll understand it years later when people on message boards get mad at people who said Edge vs Kane sucked as a program and didn't draw, when you grew up and thought it was classic wrestling for the era and you're just a bitter person who didn't know what you were watching.

 

But please, when you say that the guys in the ring calling the match telling the story mad at the announcer for ruining their story, giving valid points as examples, didn't understand their own match, think for a second.

 

And Vince called those same matches completely differently, in fact, Vince went too far in the other direction, always putting over the near falls so strongly that you also knew they weren't the finish, but at least you have to learn Vince's psychology before figuring that out.

 

And when it comes to submissions, what gets a match over:

 

"I can't believe he hasn't submitted to that abdominal stretch, that tears your back and sides out"

 

or

 

"You'll never get a guy like Mike Rotundo would never submit, why is he putting that hold on him."

[Gregor]

Yes, kids who grow up now in 20 years will be looking back saying that all the people who voted on Michael Cole for worst announcer were stupid, that he's the standard for announcers, he was so funny, witty, his insults were great, and that Mason Ryan was really a fantastic in-ring worker and the guys like Dolph Ziggler who diss him in shoot interviews were just bitter old overrated hacks.

Has there ever been a positive word said about the announcing of Duke Doherty? That of Superstar Billy Graham? That of Larry Zbyszko or Rob Bartlett? Are there people today who claim that Sid or Giant Gonzalez was really underrated?

 

Looking back at stuff you first saw a while ago doesn't mean that you're flip-flopping your opinion on it. Plenty of times it results in saying, "Oh, yeah, now I remember why I hated that."

[JerryvonKramer]

The "circle of life" stuff is interesting.

 

The stuff about Gorilla is deeply, deeply flawed. Why? Because WWF's guys from the 80s boom period were some of the most over guys in history -- so the empiricial evidence is against the idea he buried everyone and is against whichever old wrestlers have bitched and moaned about him.

[Bix]

They can still be over even if Gorilla buried them to try to put himself over.

[JerryvonKramer]

That seems a counter intuitive argument. If it's true that Gorilla did that then:

 

1. Why did McMahon keep him on air and on his most important PPV show of the year?

 

2. Why don't you hear your DiBiases and Races and so on bitching and moaning about him? Seems to me the same people who rag on him are your same assholes who rag on everyone.

 

Also:

 

It's far FAR too reductive to say that because he criticised little things he only ever got himself over.

 

People here have praised Jim Ross for being like a legit sports announcer. Well in real sports, aren't they critical of stuff? Don't they pick up on mistakes and whatnot?

 

Your standard Gorillia-isms:

 

"He didn't hook the leg"

 

(after heel puts head down for backbody drop) "that was a cardinal mistake for a pro"

 

and so on, are designed to get the illusion of this being a legit sports contest over.

 

I don't think that him saying those things EVER BURIED ANYONE.

 

I don't care if I'm the only guy on this board who'll stand up for Gorilla, the idea he only got himself over or that he was only good as a foil for Heenan and nothing else are absolute nonsense.

 

Gorilla's influence spread so far that Tony Schiavone was still using his phrases years after he'd died over in another promotion.

 

How can anyone say he didn't do an effective job of getting the talent over? I don't get this at all.

 

I'm not buying this "full circle" argument either because there are PLENTY of guys from that time who I'd be happy to tell you were totally shit. But Gorilla isn't one of them.

[Loss]

That seems a counter intuitive argument. If it's true that Gorilla did that then:

 

1. Why did McMahon keep him on air and on his most important PPV show of the year?

Because he's a McMahon family friend and he's dead.

 

2. Why don't you hear your DiBiases and Races and so on bitching and moaning about him? Seems to me the same people who rag on him are your same assholes who rag on everyone.

Because he's a McMahon family friend and he's dead.

[Ricky Jackson]

But today, anyone who grew up in Calgary believes Ed was the greatest wrestling announcer there ever was.

I don't. I didn't in the 80s, but I didn't hate Ed either. Of course I was too young to understand why he would be considered bad. Ed was mostly seen by my friends and I as a corny comedy figure, with his catch phrases and goofy appearance. But he was a Calgary icon in a way that may be hard to grasp if you didn't grow up there during a certain time, an ubiquitous presence on Ch. 7 TV as the NHL Flames announcer, sports guy on the 6:00 news, and involved in many charities and causes in the community, in addition to being the long-time voice of Stampede. His death was front page news, a big deal.

 

All that said, I can totally understand why fans loathe his commentary.

[jdw]

1. Why did McMahon keep him on air and on his most important PPV show of the year?

I'm pretty sure this has been explained to you in the past:

 

Vince was backstage running those live shows and making sure they didn't completely blow up.

 

SNME was taped. Superstars was taped. Vince could be "on the air" and still actually run the shows, and also have the knowledge that if anything got screwed up they could redo it and/or edit it. Christ... I was at a TV taping with a rather famous screw up where they simply told the guys to do it over again. On TV there was no screw up.

 

Gorilla doing pbp on the PPV's didn't mean that he was the #1 announcer in the WWF. Vince was.

 

John

[JerryvonKramer]

I didn't say Vince wasn't the number 1 commentator, I asked why he kept Gorilla in the spot he was in,

 

Do you think there weren't 101 guys who wanted that spot in the hottest promotion in wrestling?

 

Gorilla was most often used on B shows and pre-taped / studio-based stuff right? Prime-time was Gorillla's show, Superstars was Vince's show.

 

I don't see how your point changes anything. If he sucked, why did Vince keep him on the air?

[ohtani's jacket]

Gorilla was great as a foil for Heenan and Ventura as well as the various managers he used to interact with at ringside, but if the Tito project has taught me anything it's that he was unbelievably shitty as a play-by-play announcer.

[jdw]

If he sucked, why did Vince keep him on the air?

 

Vince kept any number of people who sucked around. Your icon picture is one example. No one ever said that Vince had 100% perfect taste in what does and does not suck in pro wrestling.

 

John

[JerryvonKramer]

Oh man, that's cheap. Taking pot-shots at Mooney now! lol

 

I think with Monsoon that he was probably on auto pilot about 90% of the time. He had a stock phrase for every occassion, he treated almost everything as if he'd seen it before.

 

BUT he was able to do things that JR, Vince, Solie and Schiavone couldn't.

 

I will save the rest of this post for my HoF case in a few days

[jdw]

I'm pretty sure I said in another thread that I thought Mooney sucked as much at Todd P (another fine example of Vince keeping shitty guys for a while).

 

I disagree that Gorilla was on autopilot. I think he knew what he wanted to do, and did it. Drunk Heenan during stretches of Nitro was autopilot: just a fat paycheck calling stuff he thought sucked.

 

John

[Ditch]

A lot of Dave's rant is just a matter of giving too much weight to off-hand/rare/uninformed comments. 'HTM was the greatest IC champ' = someone who almost certainly never saw the HTM title reign but heard it repeated enough by WWF that they're willing to parrot it; and it's not like any IC reigns stand out in hindsight as notably great. Lots of great wrestlers involved to be sure but too many switches and too few multi-time champs for 'HTM was the best' to be handily swatted down. As opposed to someone saying Mutoh or Minoru Suzuki or Suwama was the best Triple Crown champion, which is a simple matter to refute.

 

In other instances you'll have mitigating factors surrounding it. Gorilla was good at some announcer aspects and bad at others; Whelan was a big media figure, etc. Some people are overrated. That does not mean EVERYONE eventually gets overrated.

 

The stuff about "some people say '99-'00 WCW was great"... well, there's someone who's willing to back any position. The question is whether that's a belief held by a substantial number of people. If not, no reason to get worked up about it. The biggest sports radio host in Rochester NY gets obsessed with subsets of people who hold minority opinions and it ruins shows.

[Blehschmidt]

Yes, kids who grow up now in 20 years will be looking back saying that all the people who voted on Michael Cole for worst announcer were stupid, that he's the standard for announcers, he was so funny, witty, his insults were great, and that Mason Ryan was really a fantastic in-ring worker and the guys like Dolph Ziggler who diss him in shoot interviews were just bitter old overrated hacks.

Has there ever been a positive word said about the announcing of Duke Doherty? That of Superstar Billy Graham? That of Larry Zbyszko or Rob Bartlett? Are there people today who claim that Sid or Giant Gonzalez was really underrated?

 

Looking back at stuff you first saw a while ago doesn't mean that you're flip-flopping your opinion on it. Plenty of times it results in saying, "Oh, yeah, now I remember why I hated that."

 

I actually have a friend who ranks Larry as one of his two favorite announcers. He also likes late 90's WCW.

 

I also wanted to bring up Joey Styles, who seemed to be universally loved during the time ECW was around, but now seems to have a fair amount of detractors.

[Ricky Jackson]

Gorilla was by far my favorite announcer as a young fan in the 80s. I couldn't tell you why exactly, kind of like my Tito obsession. Now...well, I won't lie and say he isn't a bit grating the more I listen to him. I especially can't stand his pairings with Lord Al. But I still think he was a good announcer for the time and the product he was selling. Jesse too. Actually, I've come to really like 80s/early-90s Vince a lot, maybe more so than any of them.

[ohtani's jacket]

I always liked Larry Z as an announcer, pre-Nitro era and all that Bischoff bullshit. He had a good voice.

[Loss]

Saying that the announcers must have done something right because the WWF was successful is like saying Uncle Elmer must have been better than Ric Flair since he was part of a more successful company.

[Victator]

I can't think of an instance of Gorilla hurting a match that had any hope of being good. But I can remember him making plenty of Boris Zhuchov/Young Stallions matches tolerable.

 

Yes, kids who grow up now in 20 years will be looking back saying that all the people who voted on Michael Cole for worst announcer were stupid, that he's the standard for announcers, he was so funny, witty, his insults were great, and that Mason Ryan was really a fantastic in-ring worker and the guys like Dolph Ziggler who diss him in shoot interviews were just bitter old overrated hacks.

 

It's called the circle of life.

"Hey all you people who formed differing opinions on old stuff. I'm gonna put you in the nostalgia pile. I mean why else would anybody disagree with me?"

[ohtani's jacket]

Saying that the announcers must have done something right because the WWF was successful is like saying Uncle Elmer must have been better than Ric Flair since he was part of a more successful company.

I think that's stretching things a bit.

 

Gorilla Monsoon, Gene Okerlund, Jesse Ventura, Bobby Heenan, Vince McMahon and Howard Finkel were a large part of what people enjoyed about WWF during that era. Some of the praise they receive may be due to nostalgia, but I don't see how anyone can honestly argue that they weren't good at what they did and that their own screen personas were merely byproducts of the WWF's success. Monsoon was a crappy play-by-play announcer but his strength was insulting people and he was at least good at that. There is enough 80s footage available where those men are not involved to know that the alternatives were poor and that the overall product would've suffered without their involvement. Having said that, Nitro & WCW had some of the worst announcing in the history of professional wrestling and was for a time highly successful, so we can't give the frontmen too much credit. Instead, I would argue that those 80s WWF guys were simply talented performers and good at their jobs.

[Dooley]

I don't see how Gorilla buried people with the examples given.

 

The "he's not going to make him submit with that move" - when was the last time you saw anyone submit to a rear chinlock? Since when is stating the obvious burying someone? Plus the heel commentator would often bring up the effectiveness as a wear-down hold etc.

 

"He didn't hook the leg" - I'd argue that actually protects the heel as it implies the heel may have won had he not made a mental mistake with the pin. It doesn't undercut his value as a wrestler. I'd think people like Loss who want their announcing to be more "serious" would actually be in favour of stuff like that.

[Loss]

I don't think in a traditional sense it does hurt anything. I do think when the wrestlers are deliberately being told not to do things the announcers are criticizing them for in the booth, I can see how some wrestlers would interpret that as the announcer trying to make himself seem smarter than everyone in the ring, whether that was the intent or not. That's the point here -- that the company produced them not to do certain things in the ring, yet the announcer spotlighted those things to draw attention to them.

 

In fairness, I suppose there's an argument that hooking the leg was intended to be a key thing, so Gorilla was putting that over as the key to victory, but we all know the WWF didn't think about wrestling action in such a granular way, and it's foolish to pretend they did.

[Log]

I also wanted to bring up Joey Styles, who seemed to be universally loved during the time ECW was around, but now seems to have a fair amount of detractors.

I think with Styles, it was just this, "Hey! He actually knows the names of moves and drops little smarky comments sometimes!" It was a novelty at the time, and it just wore off. All you were left with was a shitty play-by-play guy.

[Dooley]

But who *watching* the program knew what the WWF's in-house working rules were? To the people watching at home it made perfect sense. That should count more than someone who views it through the eyes of "well Gorilla knew X was told not to hold the leg, what a douche".

[Loss]

But who *watching* the program knew what the WWF's in-house working rules were? To the people watching at home it made perfect sense. That should count more than someone who views it through the eyes of "well Gorilla knew X was told not to hold the leg, what a douche".

Sure, it made sense to those watching at home, as long as they're not thinking, "Wow, the Red Rooster is an idiot. No wonder he can't beat Mr. Perfect. I would remember to do that if I was in the ring, why can't this goofball?"