Kane is not given enough lines to say to really determine how good he is. As for UT, well, he's not horrible.
Alot of the roster need acting lessons or speech therapy. For example, Lita/Matt and Jeff. I love lita, but none of them can carry themsleves "in character." Same with Hurricane. Nothing against the Confederacy, but to sound intelligent to the rest of us, the mushmouthed drawl must go.
"My parents said I could be anything, so I became an ASSHOLE!"
The Hardy's have a specific thing going on for them: They are good in the ring [fan-reaction wise], they do ACTION itself quite well, but they can't talk or act worth a wink. And that's ok, as long as they're not expected to...
---=---:---=--- [Look up a line] Wow, that belt looks like crap... I'll take it and carry it around for years and see if people can take it away from me... What? What was that? You mean even THIS belt doesn't matter! What? I'm insulted! Get away from me you... you... defiler!
Team Extreme hurts my ears pretty bad, but that might just be a Pavlovian reaction to the teenybopper screeches...
Stephanie is probably the worst for me to listen to, but thats because she talks in octaves only dogs are supposed to hear... and while I'm on the subject of dogs, Lawler's announcing skills make me cringe as well... I guess technically thats not mic skills, but its close enough for me to kvetch about it...
It always seems to me that Test is reading from cue cards whenever he talks... I like his ringwork but when he talks I just feel embarassed for him...
Ah, true, but Stephanie at least draws heat. Within moments of the Hardy's talking, silence sneaks into the picture from the crowd...
---=---:---=--- [Look up a line] Wow, that belt looks like crap... I'll take it and carry it around for years and see if people can take it away from me... What? What was that? You mean even THIS belt doesn't matter! What? I'm insulted! Get away from me you... you... defiler!
I'm not big on UT as a wrestler or as the hosscore champion or anything, but he has his moments on the microphone. Not so much the "this is mah yard and I'm the big dog in the yard and come into mah yard and yard" face thing he went through, but he sometimes breaks into these goofy phases with long stories about being in the desert, or threatening to stab people in the face, and I love it. He can also occassionally give Regal a run for his money with those Martian facial expressions he pulls out. UT is going to make a hell of a color commentator someday.
I think Kane gets a pass because he's stuck talking through the mask. Back before he talked, though, he was great at getting the character across with just head tilts.
The Hardys aren't great...and I can't take anything Billy Gunn says seriously. Especially when he was in that feud with Eddie and Chyna and said something like "now what do you think of THAT, etthay?" with an out-of-nowhere lisp. And he looks like Corbin Bernsen.
Rikishi was a nightmare back when they let him talk during the evil driver angle. All that "Hey, Stone Cold is your buddy...your buddy is Stone Cold...Stone Cold...buddy?" stuff to JR. I still kind of laugh anytime I think of "I did it...for The Rock!" or "I think...The Rock...would be cool with it."
I'm probably alone on this and will bring down hatred from on high, but I lose interest very quickly in HHH interviews. Too many 'uh's (though he seems to have cut down on that), doesn't go anywhere no matter how long he talks and he says his opponent's name too much.
I didn'like Shane in the last run he did on our tvs. He never made any sense. Worst was when he interupted Kurt's re-enacted Olympic medal ceremony. I know he has done better, but this was just terrible.
Linda obviously is bad. As far as wrestlers go, there are many who don't impress but they get little mic time so it looks extra bad when they do talk. The Hardyz are an example of that. (Though when they just talk to one another backstage it comes across allright to me.)
Trish can be rather annoying with her delivery at times. Mostly because she has to sound sexy or something while saying stuff like stratusfaction guaranteed. Her catchphrases sound so lame..
Im going to defend the Hardyz and say that I blame the writers for their problems. The dialogue is so unnatural to say the Hardyz cant help but to look dumb. The WWF should get some writers to write dialogue that plays to the strength of the performers.
But the WORST on the mic without a doubt is Stephanie. She is just awful most of the time, especially when she tries to be serious. And she IS a writer for the show supposedly.....ugh.
HHH has very poor mic skills. He exhibits no vocal range, other than a gruff-sounding bellows, and he sounds like he's talking through his schnozz. And he sounds like he's reciting dialogue from memory, much like a special-ed student trying to dredge up a few stanzas of Walt Whitman for his 5th grade English class. There's no real emoting or acting involved.
Last night's RAW was a good example. HHH gave his usual "I'm gonna kick your butt" speech and Rock retorted with something fresh and clever.
I think they're actually over-estimating HHH's popularity.. his pops have been down considerable since his big MSG return.
Actually, when HHH was in DX, his mic skills seemed not toooo bad, but then he was in pseudo-facedom, too. Now, I would have to agree with you, but wouldn't you be all gruff and have a face full of roid-rage if you were "married" to that and listend to her screehy-ass voice??????
"-He's Touching Me. Batman is touching me. I'm dead, aren't I?-"
To me, bad mic skills means you fail to convey a sense of your character and the current plot when talking. For instance, Kane, Ken Shamrock, and Chris Benoit might not be the smoothest talkers, but I would call their mic skills good because their characters aren't SUPPOSED to be good talkers. If Kane performed a flawless recital of Henry V from memory in the middle of the ring, I would say his mic skills are worse than they are now, because he wouldn't be conveying his character properly.
So by my definition, I would have to say that the worst on the mic right now is definitively Edge. Because when he talks, he just doesn't fit in with the rest of his character. He's got this kind of cool quasi-goth, hipster, little bit crazy gimmick going on until he opens his mouth. And then he's the class clown again. He definitely either needs to change his character back to fit in with what it was, or develop a different style on the mic.
Moe
"Excuse me, do you have any EuroDisney T-Shirts?" January 2nd, 2002. Paris, France. My proudest moment.
You've got a point. I think Edge suffers because his voice doesn't really fit the character. His tone almost has this clownish quality that doesn't convey seriousness well. Kinda like how Chyna sounded like a gay man on nitrous when she was trying to be this bad-ass, She-Hulk character.
I think Benoit and co. do a fair job in playing the serious type, but let's face it, that can only go so far. The fans are only going to respond to that kind of person so mucb before they get bored with him. And, quite frankly, I think it's sort of a fall-back character, to mask a lack of personality.
Like I told a friend last night, The Rock is so popular because he combines the body of an athlete with the soul of a class clown. Guys like HHH just seem like jerks who've bullied their way through life and have never bothered to develop personalities, though he DID seem to show flashes of one in his DX days.