My take is that the problem is the WWE in particular is overly scripted. The best promo men and characters to me were where they took the real personality of a guy, and it morphed over time into.....like the old Spinal Tap joke......Turned up to 11....this one goes to 11. So Stone Cold and the Rock aren't exactly like they.....but they took a part of their personality that is a 6 and turned it up to 11.
Because of that, you can riff on the mic and with experience it can be good most of the time. You get BULLET POINTS to hit, but you fill in the blanks.
This is just an example of what I'm getting at....Now TNA has horribly executed a lot of things, but they were really close to having something interesting and they blew it IMO. Bully Ray had turned himself into this kind of character......the real him up to 11.....and James Storm was the real him up to 11. Those two if they had a feud where Bully Raw was all New Yawk Bully and Storm was Nashville Cowboy....and let them loose on the mic....that could have been good. But they failed in another way. Its not about whether you like those two guys in particular. Take any two guys with a real personality and visualize their bullet point feud and it could be better than a script. They might not all work, but that is where GREATNESS comes from.
Punk, love him or hate him had that going on. Its not about whether you like or don't like a particular guy, its about whether that guy carries a personality. I'm sure they could do that with a lot of the guys in WWE now, but how many of them are doing anything even remotely in the ball park of their real personality? Ambrose could work but he is so cartoony scripted IMO. But WWE, even if they have that personality OVERLY SCRIPTS them. Brock is great, but Heyman is boring and repetitive now as his mouthpiece. One reason this Shane thing is so hot is that it feels so real...an aspect of the real feelings personality....turned up to 11. Not that it IS real, but it is harnessed versions of real. And back in the day, those guys could make it feel real because they became that guy in some ways....`
Those epic Flair, Dusty promos........can you imagine of some goofy sitcom writer wrote out their promos? And its not really the writers' fault either. They are writing for a character. If you are going to go that way, you almost should hire actors and train them to fake fight. I personally prefer wrestlers who have a real personality that get shaped over time.
