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Promos are the backbone to any feud, rivalry or wrestler’s character. The way to win fans over and have them believe in your character is to cut a good promos. If you think of the greatest wrestlers and their feuds, most fans remember the promos more than the actual matches. However, promos often don’t go as smoothly as planned and many times blunders, mistakes, or just overall stupidity makes its way into a promo.
Many wrestlers on this list are considered bad promo cutters and have a compilation of bad promos that I had the honor of picking the worst ones from (not an easy task, but someone’s got to do it). Even Hall of Famers and historically good promo cutters found their way onto the list. Mistakes do happen, and fortunately for us we get to see them live.
This list consist of various wrestling promotions from wrestling giant WWE to independent circuits. It shows that no matter the quality of the promotion, wrestlers always find a way to mess up promos. Furthermore, in some cases it wasn’t the wrestler to be blamed but the promotion who spearheaded a terrible idea, leaving the performer out to dry while fans get to laugh at their misfortunes.
10. Ahmed Johnson Creates His Own Language
This was a promo for WWE War Zone, which was a video game for Playstation, Nintendo 64 and Game Boy. It still counts, as the WWE actually decided to run with these horrible promos, keep them in the video game, and make children everywhere very confused. It is so difficult to understand Johnson that subtitles are needed. I’m convinced that he isn’t speaking English in these promos and he’s created some new language that only Johnson understands.
9. Hulk Hogan Botches Promo
Even Hulkamania can’t run wild from this list. While cutting a promo against Vince McMahon, the Hulkster screwed up not once, but twice. The first slip was when Hogan was trying to say “if you think I was the right guy, at the right place, at the right time,” but instead said “wrong time.” Realizing his mistake, he then tried to correct himself and repeated his sentence. This is where the second mistake comes in, and instead of saying “right guy,” he said “right gay guy.” The fans caught on to both mistakes and what should have been a very good promo, was just awful.
8. Booker T Drops the N Bomb
Booker T is very good on the mic and has rarely made any mistakes during his successful Hall of Fame career. However, one big slip got him on this list. While cutting an intense promo in WCW, Booker was going off on a couple of superstars and the promo was going perfectly until he came to Hulk Hogan. Booker slipped and said “Hulk Hogan we coming for you N*****!”Right after he said this, you can see Booker put his hands on his head and its evident he is incredibly disappointed with himself. Booker has stated that he thought he was going to be fired after this slip up. Though, that wasn’t the case and the locker room had a good laugh along with the rest of us.
7. Lex Luger vs T-Shirt
While wrestling for an independent promotion, Lex Luger cut a very bad promo (which is the only way Luger knows how to cut promos). However, there was something special about this one, as Luger was struggling not only with his words but also to take off his shirt. Furthermore, Luger starts screaming and shows just how bad he is at cutting promos. To make matters worse, Luger confuses the name of the event he will be wrestling at. This one’s tough to watch, but you’ll probably want to show it to all your friends.
6. YEP!
YEP! You know it’s going to be a bad promo when someone starts off with “Yep.” Jumping Jeff Farmer decided this was the way to go. During this whole promo, Farmer looks very uncomfortable, like he’s nervously doing an oral presentation that he hasn’t prepared for. There are many hilarious moments in this promo, one being when Framer says “You got me….mad…now,” another when he insists “this time I’m going full force.” With Daniel Bryan out with injury, WWE should bring back Jumping Jeff and start a YEP movement. There’s money to be made here.
5. Scott Steiner Confuses Everyone
No list of this nature would be complete without at least one appearance from Scott Steiner. I’m not sure where to start with this promo, as it turned awful within a few seconds. Even with all the botches (and there are many of them), the worst part of this promo is when Steiner is referencing Hogan and "taking your vitamins." He then chooses to say “I wonder if they make vitamins for coordination” before weirdly walking in a circle like an idiot and making the whole promo very awkward and confusing to watch.
4. Sid Vicious Has Half the Brain We Do?
While cutting promos, one of the objectives is to insult your opponent, Sid, however, didn’t get the message and decided to insult himself. While in WCW, Sid was cutting a promo against Kevin Nash and Scott Hall when he screams that “you’re half the man that I am, and I have half the brain that you do.” Sid got “half” of this promo right and left wrestling fans with a memorable moment they would never forget. Sid’s had countless terrible promos (YouTube is full of them), but this one takes the cake.
3. Mustache Promo
The only memory anyone has of Eli Cottonwood is his disastrous promo on the second season of NXT. He had ten seconds to cut a promo about a mustache, which wasn’t an easy task. However, what he said was so bad that wrestling fans had no pity. He started off by saying he had no mustache, though he visibly had one. He then continued on and said no one else in the ring had one, when some of them obviously did. After all this, Cottonwood decided to change his strategy and say “from all the people here, I have the best mustache of them all.” I know it’s confusing, so let’s try to clarify it for you: he doesn’t have a mustache (in reality he does have one) and no one else in the ring has one (some also have one). Then he has one, along with the others in the ring, and he has the best mustache of them all…Well done, Eli.
2. Scott Steiner’s Math Lesson
Steiner finds himself on the list again and this time he’s giving us a math lesson. This whole promo is very confusing and even the woman interviewing Steiner can’t hold character and shows her confusion. For some odd reason, Steiner decided to start throwing out fractions and percentages to explain Samoa Joe’s chances of winning their next match. Sadly, Steiner’s math was horribly incorrect and made no sense whatsoever. Explaining what happened does not give this promo justice and you will have to watch the math lesson for yourselves.
1. Shockmaster
No surprise here, the whole idea of the Shockmaster was really bad to begin with and this seemed destined to fail from the start. For those of you who don’t already know about this promo, Shockmaster was making his debut after weeks of hype, and WCW decided to make it a memorable one. Shockmaster was supposed to break through a wall and reveal himself as a powerful competitor. Instead, he broke through the wall and fell on his face. What made this even more memorable was that his helmet fell of his head and he had to pick himself up, put on the helmet, and cut a promo. To top it all off, his promo was barely coherent and his voice was ridiculous. Who knows, maybe one day a promo will be worse than this one, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
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