Chris Cruise bashes Joey Styles

[Loss]

Guest Editorial

By Christopher Cruise

PWTorch.com reader

 

Editor's Note: Chris Cruise hosted WCW Worldwide, the top WCW syndicated TV show in the late 1980s. He was dubbed by his co-host Terry Funk "The Crispy Cruiser."

 

"I knew Jim Ross.

Jim Ross was a friend of mine.

You're no Jim Ross, Joey Styles."

 

...with apologies to Vice Presidential Candidate and Democratic US Senator from Texas Lloyd Bentsen

 

To be fair, Joey Styles has never claimed to be Jim Ross. In fact, Styles has always made it clear that he knows he is not in the same league as Ross (which proves Styles at least knows what he is not), but Styles's performance on Raw from his very first appearance has made it clear to even a casual observer that he is not even playing the same game as Ross.

 

Joey Styles is, in a word, terrible. This needs to be said, and needs to be said simply and without rancor. He is the wrong man for the job.

 

I come to this conclusion not just because I am comparing Styles to Ross; in fact, the comparison makes Styles look even worse than he is. Ross would be a tough act for anyone to follow, even if that someone were even marginally competent, but Styles's complete incompetence makes things all that much worse. I watch and listen to this guy and wonder how the heck anyone could have thought he could handle the job. I'm even more amazed that he is allowed to stay on, considering his abysmal performance. Then I realize that, if he gets the boot, it would involve McMahon and others admitting they were wrong, and we know how likely that is.

 

From everything I have ever heard of Joey Styles the man, he is humble, respectful, gracious, modest - with much to be modest about, I would add - approachable, and a genuinely nice guy. He is a huge Bruno Sammartino fan, and anyone who knows me knows I am one of the top five Bruno marks in the world, so any fan of Bruno Sammartino is automatically gonna get props from me. But, that having been said, it should also be said that Styles is waaaay out of his league on Raw, and I don't see or hear anything from him that shows he is ever going to get much better.

 

Some talent have raw abilities which can be molded, but I just don't see that in Styles, and I have a feeling - judging from a recent Raw - that McMahon and company don't either, but just don't know how to get out of this situation. Styles's performance is just so lacking that I don't see how anyone could hold out hope that he is going to improve. Talent has to have "it," whatever "it" is. Ross had "it," and always did. Styles doesn't, and never will. (Life can be unfair that way, but what are ya gonna do? Tom Cruise is a terrible actor, but a huge movie star. Is that fair to all of the highly trained, financially struggling actors out there? Ummmm, no, but what are you gonna do? Sue?)

 

On last night's edition of Raw, which I watched - and listened to - closely, in preparation for the fleshing out of this column (which I had been writing in my head for a few weeks), Styles seemed to be even more marginalized by Jerry Lawler and Jonathan Coachman - and even less necessary to the program - than ever before. It seemed to me that the organization had given up on Styles and was just running out the clock on his contract. He seemed weak, had the flavor of watered-down vanilla ice cream, and added absolutely nothing to the broadcast. His presence on the program was wholly unnecessary, and, whether intentional or not, Lawler and the Coach seemed to, by their actions, emphasize that very fact.

 

Styles looked to his team members for guidance rather than taking control of the broadcast as Ross did (and as any "host" should), and Lawler and the Coach were only too happy to take over. The few times the camera shot the team, little Joey (suggestion: drop the "Joey") seemed like he was frozen, as if he had won a local radio station's contest to call a match on Raw. He just doesn't belong - that is the inescapable conclusion. Will that change with time? Will he grow into his role? Of course such a thing is possible, but I don't think it is probable.

 

Witness Michael Cole: he has become, after a fair number of shaky years, a serviceable, steady, dependable presence on Smackdown, but he will never be a star, will never be able to transcend the broadcast, will never be able to elevate a wrestler in the way that Jim Ross - and only Ross - could - and can - do. Cole has reached, as the book "The Peter Principle" puts it, his "level of incompetence." He has been promoted and promoted until he can go no farther. This has also happened with Joey Styles. He was good - if overrated - in his ECW role, but by getting the Raw gig he was promoted one step too high. (This, in a nutshell, is the essence of the Peter Principle - that we are promoted until we reach the level where we are incompetent, and then we go no higher, Dan Quayle being the epitome of this concept.)

 

I find Styles to be a drag on the broadcast, more irritating than incisive. His overly nasal and whiny voice is jarring and his interjections are often off-topic or contrived. He is an insincere shill, completely lacking in credibility, which Ross seemed to have in abundance. One gets the sense that Styles is just spouting lines and needs to be constantly coached. In that respect, not much has changed since his ECW days, except that the voice in his headset is McMahon's and not Heyman's. This guy is in so far over his head its a surprise he can see daylight.

 

Styles's facial acting is embarrassingly bad and juvenile, as when he stared/gawked at the Candice Michelle GoDaddy.com television ad, tugging on his collar and claiming his glasses were "fogged up." This is something from Milton Berle and the 1950s. It was neither funny nor original and, as with so much with Styles, came across as contrived and unconvincing.

 

One never got the impression from Ross that he was acting; Ross had that rare ability to make a Raw program interesting even when the wrestling stunk, as it has in recent years; he had the ability to rise above his material in ways Styles simply cannot. I always knew this in the back of my mind, but never fully appreciated what Ross brought to the program until he was gone. I would have felt this way regardless of who replaced him (not that he can ever be truly replaced - he is the best play-by-play announcer pro wrestling has ever known, by far), but because Joey Styles is so bad, the comparison is even more stark.

 

Raw has on more occasions than not been abominable, but Ross actually made even the bad programs watchable, even the worst matches at least somewhat entertaining. He is a natural broadcaster, a true sports fan who just happens to be a play-by-play announcer for professional wrestling. I would put Ross in the broadcast booth for any major league sport and he would excel. The ability to elevate a performer via commentary is a very rare ability, one that Ross has, and one that Styles does not. No matter what drek McMahon and company threw at viewers, Ross made it watchable. Can that be said about any other English-language wrestling announcer?

 

On more than one occasion on the recent Raw, I felt Lawler and the Coach left Styles high and dry, twisting in the wind, out on a limb. He is subtly - and sometimes not so subtly - steamrollered by his partners. They allowed him to open and close a segment, note the location of the arena (way more times than necessary) and note, on what seemed like half-a-dozen occasions, that the arena was "jam-packed." These are tasks that could be performed by a chimpanzee with a voicebox.

 

Throughout the broadcast, it felt to me like Styles was lost, had nothing to add and nothing to say other than the painfully obvious, while Lawler and the Coach were forwarding the angles, discussing emotion, and engaging the viewer, trying to draw them in to the program. I can't believe I am writing this, but, at least compared to Styles, the Coach sounds good. Perhaps that is because the Coach, for all of his many faults, is a trained broadcaster. Styles is a guy Paul Heyman plucked from obscurity, whispered into his ear, talked him through the ECW broadcasts, and created - as Heyman has shown time and time he can do - something from nothing. But Styles' stint on Raw has exposed him for what he is - and, more importantly, for what he is not. He has talent at the ECW level; like many of the ECW wrestlers, he does not have the talent to make it in WWE. Styles was popular only because ECW was popular. It is the mistake wrestling tends to make a lot - assuming Billy Graham and Larry Zbyszko were good draws on their own when, in fact, they were only good draws when they were facing Bruno Sammartino.

 

I believe that Styles learned long ago from Heyman and, possibly, Ross that, whenever a wrestler was in a "pinning predicament," the play-by-play announcer should immediately and shrill-ly interrupt whoever else was talking and call the count, then say something like "ooooh, the referee (insert ref name here) got to two and a half." (Why is it always two and a half, by the way? Couldn't it sometimes be two and seven-eights?) This is old style play-by-play and should be stopped. It makes the announcer look stupid in the eyes of the fans, since the fans know a pin is not forthcoming. I'm sure Ross would disagree with me on this, but, just because he is the greatest play-by-play announcer professional wrestling has ever known doesn't mean he is right about everything.

 

Styles obtained his high profile in a number of ways - primarily by being the voice of an insurgent and underground-popular new-style wrestling promotion, but also by being fan-friendly and sheet-friendly and by maintaining a presence on the Internet. But that doesn't mean he has any broadcasting talent. All of this notoriety may have fooled Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn (I think they were sold a bill of goods, but that is their own fault), or perhaps they just had no other direction in which to go, but the Styles experiment is just not working and never will. But that the WWF/WWE made the wrong choice should be no surprise - the organization has been consistently wrong in the announcers it chooses; for some reason the organization doesn't have in its DNA the ability to make good choices when it comes to who would be a good wrestling play-by-play announcer. The only decent announcer the WWF/WWE had before Ross was Vince McMahon himself, and that was only after a few years of Bruno Sammartino and others telling him the names of the wrestling moves.

 

It is time for the WWE to cut its losses, admit the choice of Styles was a mistake, admit you got bamboozled by the Internet-based fans, thank him for his service, wish him the best in his future endeavors, and move on. WWE has to find or develop new broadcasting talent. Styles has so many bad habits and so few natural talents as a broadcaster that it is just not worth it to work with him in hopes he is going to get better. Perhaps there will be some incremental improvement, but Styles, for whatever reason, is simply never going to connect with the audience the way he needs to. He just doesn't have it, and never will, in my opinion.

 

So, what to do, what to do? The answer is clear. Its time for a new voice, just like the old voice.

 

Vince, there is a fat, middle-aged guy in a big black cowboy hat sitting in Oklahoma drooling over his stupid f---ing college football team, sucking up barbecue sauce by the gallon, and getting fatter by the hour. He is Babe Ruth coaching Little League, Jeff Gordon working as a parking-lot attendant, 50-Cent stuck in a studio, Karl Rove working on a city council race, Superman helping little old ladies cross the street, and John McCain looking in at the Oval Office. He is there, and that means he is not where he needs to be and where your organization and your wrestlers need him to be.

 

For cryin' out loud, you've done business with Jesse Ventura after he touched you for nearly a million bucks. You've brought back Steve Austin and Hulk Hogan. You are back on the USA Network after they sued you when you left for Spike TV. Your differences with all of them were much greater than any differences you may have or had with Jim Ross, who was nothing but a loyal employee (although apparently given to telling you uncomfortable truths, which is, we have learned, one sure way to fall out of favor with you), yet, when you felt it would be good for your organization, you welcomed them back, or decided to do business with them. But none of them can do for you now what Jim Ross can do for you now.

 

You have sidelined the greatest play-by-play announcer professional wrestling has ever known. This is bad for him, bad for you, bad for your business, bad for your wrestlers. You know what you have to do. So do it. Get things back to the way they need to be. Bring back, honorably, the one guy who can take your dish of chicken sh-- and turn it into chicken salad.

I think he's greatly overrating Ross, although I will admit that Styles is not at the level Ross was even at his worst. Cruise was a stiff as an announcer, and not one whose style I enjoyed all that much, so I'm not sure where he's coming from. I don't think Styles is doing that terrific of a job myself, but it's interesting that he's being criticized by Chris Cruise.

[Guest teke184]

I think Cruise gets some leverage to make those kinds of comments because he's worked with a lot of great announcers, including JR and Mike Tenay.

 

That being said, he REALLY seems to be overrating JR's abilities, which may be due to him remembering how good JR USED to be instead of seeing what he's become now, which is basically Oklahoma minus the Cruiser belt.

 

 

My choice to replace JR would be Mike Tenay but he'd never fit in with the WWE... too much of a sense of history and a refusal to just shill whatever Vince told him to shill.

[Guest Dangerous A]

Plus Tenay knows all the moves and their names and Vince is already giving Styles hell for calling the moves by their names instead of the way Vince used to...

 

 

"Oh, what a manuever by..."

 

 

Remember, there is only one way to do things in wrestling, the McMahon way. One way to work. one way to announce. Everything.Don't you guys know, there was no pro wrestling before the McMahon family?

[goodhelmet]

To be fair, Tenay would shill the shittiest of shit that WCW would throw out on TV each week. He could become a whore to McMahon's pimp without much coaching.

 

As for Styles, I don't care for him my self but the biggest problem I have noticed with the announce team is how crowded it is. Maybe if Styles was allowed to be play by play man with someone doing color, the vibe would be different. However, you can bet your ass that Lawler and Coach are going for the throat on this one because if the company can trash JR on the way out, they know they wouldn't hesitate to do it to them.

[Guest Some Guy]

Ross was very, very good in his day. His day has come and passed, though. Joey Styles is a pretty decent doing what he's doing now and would greatly benefit from WWE dropping Coach from Raw. The three man broadcast only works when you have one guy calling the match, a heel promoting the heel and a face promoting the face and when all three are willing to let the other talk. Styles sounds like a video game anouncer who just spouts out the occasional description of a certain move of spot. If he were allowed to talk, call the action, and get the angles over than I think he would do a fine job. But, he's been hamstrung by having to deal with Coach's hotdogging and Lawler's year's old jokes and refusal to actually provide the insight that he must be able to if he cared. Lawler was far too good of a worker and ring psychologist to not be able to provide any insight into it if he so chose.

 

I think that Ross/Heymen was the best broadcast team that Vince has had since Gorrilla and Ventura. They had definde face/heel roles and one was willing to play the straight man for the other. And both put the matches over. Going back to Lawler made Ross lazy again and the whole show suffered as a result.

[Guest savagerulz]

My choice to replace JR would be Mike Tenay but he'd never fit in with the WWE... too much of a sense of history and a refusal to just shill whatever Vince told him to shill.

I like Tenay too, and I agree with you that he wouldn't fit in...for different reasons. The announcers' job is to - regardless if it sucks or not - get the product over and add to the build. Tenay knows his shit - that isn't up for debate - but he doesn't convey with the same emotion Ross does. In fact, he comes off rather wooden and too boring for a company whose focus is "entertainment." Tenay's strength is being best used where he is - calling spots/matches for a company that mostly focuses on in-ring.

 

They'll never find the next JR, nor should they be looking for the next "JR." They should find....whoever can do the job at a high-level. And I don't know what's wrong with Styles, as he was never this bad (or uninspired). I did notice that he called RVD's match on Raw this week with more enthusiasm than anything else he's done lately. Who knows.

[sek69]

What grates me more than anything is how Vince is in Coach's headset and you end up with Coach doing his best Announcer Vince impression while Joey and Lawler try to call whatever the hell's going on. Sometimes it sounds like Coach is watching another channel on his monitor and is commenting on that instead. They need to get rid of Coach (which isn't fair, he's really not bad when he's not being Vince's sock puppet) and leave Lawler and Joey to call the show.

[World's Worst Man]

Tenay is a color guy, not a PBP guy. That's why he's pretty awful as TNA's PBP guy when he was pretty good in WCW.

[kjh]

He seemed weak, had the flavor of watered-down vanilla ice cream, and added absolutely nothing to the broadcast.

But isn't that what WWE wants in all their announcers? The problem isn't so much with Styles, as it is with management's mindset. They strip away what he can be good at, calling matches and moves, partly because they don't understand the importance of doing that, but also because they are petty and vindictive and have this stupid desire to break down anyone who was a success in WCW and ECW and rebuild them in their vision. Joey's currently paying for every cheap shot he took at WWE online in his effort to fleece the smarks into paying for the elite content on his shoddy website. He's just lucky that he's hated less than the person he replaced.

 

And really any friend of Jim Ross should hope he has the self respect to tell Vince to stick his announcing job where the sun don't shine if Vince ever came crawling back to him offering his old job back.

[Guest Famous Mortimer]

So Jim Ross is now god. After months of people saying "he should quit, he's old and no good" to, when he did quit, crying their eyes out, to when Joey Styles started out well "Ross sucks, Styles is the man" to now, with one man too many in the announce booth saying "Styles sucks, JR is gold".

 

Whoever subscribes to the Torch, give me this Cruise guy's email address. He needs a talking to.

[goodhelmet]

Mort, JR did suck and did need to go.... but that was more of a reflection of being burned out and having to get over a shitty product more than it had to do with him not being capable. Also, it isn't that JR left but rather how he left.

[Guest Famous Mortimer]

I was ranting a little. People's opinion of his ability changes as often as most people change their socks- it's like this Cruise guy is wanting to be the first on a new bandwagon.

[kjh]

I don't think people's opinions of Ross' ability really has changed that much. There has always been a quite vocal "Ross is still God" faction (people like Meltzer, Mitchell and Wahlers come to mind), just like there has been an outspoken "Ross sucks and Styles does too" faction. Personally I find it funny that people who are friends of his like Cruise are clamouring for him to be brought back as if Vince wouldn't publicly humiliate him again.

[Mad Dog]

I'm not a fan of Styles either. He's ok but his quirks as an announcer get really tiring after awhile. Ross was pretty bad but I blame Lawler for dragging him down for the last 8 years. Notice how much stronger he was with Heyman and the instant improvements he made when working with Tazz or when Bischoff sat down for a bit.

 

If I really had to pick an announce team for Raw I'd do Jim Cornette as PBP and Michael Hayes as the color guy. I think you'd have a very strong team with them.

[Guest teke184]

I'm not a fan of Styles either. He's ok but his quirks as an announcer get really tiring after awhile. Ross was pretty bad but I blame Lawler for dragging him down for the last 8 years. Notice how much stronger he was with Heyman and the instant improvements he made when working with Tazz or when Bischoff sat down for a bit.

 

If I really had to pick an announce team for Raw I'd do Jim Cornette as PBP and Michael Hayes as the color guy. I think you'd have a very strong team with them.

Dream combination-

 

Cornette and Paul Heyman, possibly with someone like Mike Tenay in the middle to play referee.

[Loss]

Or Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone, during a WCW versus WWF feud, with a bottle of hard liquor between them.