WWE Vault Appreciation Thread

[tiger_rick]

1 hour ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

Watching the Tajiri video reminds me how much I loved Cyrus and Joey Styles on commentary too.

I thought the exact opposite. Every rewatch of ECW makes me hate Joey Styles's commentating more and more.

[BomberPat]

yeah, a lot of things about ECW have aged horribly, and I think Joey Styles' commentary is one of the biggest - now, admittedly, when I was doing commentary I've stolen a whole bunch of lines from him, but he basically got a lot of credit for being a great announcer because he actually called moves by name, but half of the time he got them wrong (and move names are arguably the least important part of wrestling commentary), and the rest of the time he's insufferably smug. 

[Chris B]

While I agree, and think he's aged badly, I also think there's a reason he was popular at the time. He had to bring energy and do a few different jobs at the same time - and he was enough of a brand ambassador as well that it really did help make it feel like ECW was both important and must-see. However, since then, he failed to evolve.

His first performance as WWE commentator was, I thought, pretty good - but he couldn't adapt into anything else. It may be that this is a Vince-ism, and he didn't make a better commentator for the same reasons Mick Foley didn't. But there's also the problem that other people were doing what he did better - as an alternative to Vince and Lawler and the WCW team at the time, Styles was a breath of fresh air. But then JR was having his best years at the tail end of Joey Styles having any relevancy. When WWE got worse quickly, the TNA commentary team got genuinely good at times, and in recent years, Excalibur does everything Styles did at a far better level and with more professionalism.

I wonder if going into the WWE system and politics really caused Styles's downfall, and if he'd have become a better team player in a less pressured environment like ROH or TNA over the years. I suspect not, but I think WWE was definitely the wrong call at the wrong time for him.

[BomberPat]

16 minutes ago, Chris B said:

I wonder if going into the WWE system and politics really caused Styles's downfall, and if he'd have become a better team player in a less pressured environment like ROH or TNA over the years. I suspect not, but I think WWE was definitely the wrong call at the wrong time for him.

He did some indie dates after leaving WWE - him doing comms for CHIKARA was interesting, because you could see how he was a mechanically good commentator navigating a product he wasn't familiar with - and he lost pretty much every booking because he couldn't keep from crowbarring in right-wing politics, and even after he was asked not to, just making Donald Trump gags and generally being a misogynist weirdo. In a lot of ways I think he was always a better fit for WWE than he would have admitted, and it was ego rather than politics that got in his way - he believed his own hype, and put far too much stock in his reputation as this great commentator who could be trusted to call a whole show on his own; fair enough, he was good enough to do that, but I think it says a lot more about Paul Heyman not wanting to pay two commentators than it did about Joey's ability.

I think he's the counterpoint to Gorilla Monsoon always winning "worst announcer" in the Observer Awards; "smart" fans and newsletter types disliked Gorilla because he didn't call the moves, and loved Joey because he did. It's kind of the equivalent of thinking that wrestlers who do more moves and flashier bumps are "better" than those who do fewer, when in reality the better wrestlers and announcers are the ones who realise that it's a matter of picking and choosing when the moves matter most.

He was definitely a good fit for ECW at the time, but ECW as a whole has aged horribly, and I say that as someone who has an inordinate amount of love for ECW.

[Chris B]

5 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

He was definitely a good fit for ECW at the time, but ECW as a whole has aged horribly, and I say that as someone who has an inordinate amount of love for ECW.

Same. At the time, it was a very-much needed alternative, and it definitely succeeded for a reason. But it really has aged badly and almost everyone involved with it has as well (I thought Heyman was a genius for a while, and now find him to be an unpleasant grifter). 

[Chili]

Good in ECW when he was at his best (always struck me as someone that if something hit him he'd rise to a good performance) as @BomberPatsaid he was mechanically a good announcer, but could veer so wildly into being shit. He's not someone I ever really loved, but I appreciated the ability to call a show solo and not become boring. However he's someone that when he had to do anything that wasn't announcing or conducting an interview one of the worst wrestling 'actors' you'll ever see. A pathetically poor and hammy performer when he had to sell something as real, because it never ever felt in cadence, his quitening of his voice or delivery that it was. One of those people that you can feel the Heyman direction in his voice trying to sell some angles, without the skill Heyman had at being an adept and vaguely real seller. Very much of his time without becoming timeless in a way that the previously mentioned Monsoon was. His politics ramblings back when make him sound fucking unbearable too.

Though, even if the man was absolutely shitfaced and it was a lucky shot, him knocking JBL on his arse is extremely funny and he can throw that one out to St. Peter as a barter when he's no longer around.

Edited December 15, 2025 by Chili

[BomberPat]

8 minutes ago, Chili said:

A pathetically poor and hammy performer when he had to sell something as real, because it never ever felt in cadence, his quitening of his voice or delivery that it was.

My message history with a wrestling mate of mine is almost entirely us finding different excuses to reference "BACKLASH?!" and "HE MOCKS GOD"

[BarryOVega]

Joey Styles had 95 skill rating on EWR, which reminds me the ratings on EWR were mostly a pile of wank

I enjoyed him in ECW though I only caught the last year or so, him and Callis were decent when they weren’t weighed down with the terrible Network shite

if he’d joined WWE and not been on Raw (replacing JR) and stuck with an at least 5 years past his best Lawler he might’ve lasted a lot longer, by the time ECW started again you could tell he’d lost interest

[davertfnewman]

I can stick wrestling on with Gorilla and Bobby or Gorilla and Alfred on commentary as background noise and not even watch the match because it's so good.

Joey Styles is the man who killed a promotion for me because I can't watch any of their shows and listen to his fake, shrill voice.

[Supremo]

Not good enough to call Backlash.

[The King Of Swing]

 

The former Johnny Polo and Tommy Dreamer basically feuding over their summer camp crush has always been hilarious. 

Good brawls. Probably the only positive thing I will ever remember Dreamer for. 

[Dai]

Didn't Joey get demoted to being in charge of WWE.com too? How many years was he doing that for. Must have been a fairly nice job, but for someone who clearly thought he was the bees knees, it must have been a hell of a comedown for him. 

[SpiritOfTheForest]

Returning to the topic of Tajiri, any excuse to share what is probably one of my favourite pieces of wrestling content from the last decade. Featuring one of the all-time great Regal facial expressions. 

[air_raid]

16 hours ago, BomberPat said:

he basically got a lot of credit for being a great announcer because he actually called moves by name, but half of the time he got them wrong

Boy, did Mauro land me onto the opposite side of this debate. I’m much happier just hearing a reaction to the impact these days than someone screaming “tope con hilo” for every dive regardless.

17 hours ago, BomberPat said:

and the rest of the time he's insufferably smug. 

I think “insufferably smug” was part of ECWs DNA to be honest, especially when the Apter mags started giving the shows plaudits. Everyone involved thought they were better than the Big Two (Styles obviously took every shot he could in that respect), their fans thought they were better than other fans for ECW being their show of choice, and so on. Shane Douglas’ speech about “the task is much easier up North or down South” in the buildup to (IIRC) Guilty As Charged 1999 while he was World Heavyweight Champion of Philadelphia And Sometimes The Elks Lodge in Queens NY was particularly glaring in terms of delusions of grandeur.

[BomberPat]

Absolutely, and I think that smugness was a necessary part of its DNA, as a plucky outsider brand that was doing and saying things that the big leagues couldn't get away with. They needed their fans to think they were part of something, that they were smarter than other fans, and that their favourite promotion was something special. It worked for the time, but is all pretty cringeworthy in retrospect - and I think Styles is the worst of it, because he's not a babyface wrestler rallying his audience, or a delusional heel who thinks he's a bigger star than he is, he's the neutral announcer taking potshots at bigger names and bigger companies that, presumably, never cared enough about him to offer him a job. That's before you get to the misogyny and casual bigotries baked into a lot of ECW (and everything else at the time; there's a lot to be said for "alternative" culture in the '90s thinking that every social and cultural battle had been won so they were free to play around with "ironic" racism and sexism, and open homophobia and transphobia), and how stuff like Styles openly wishing death on Mike Awesome at One Night Stand wasn't really that different from the sort of thing he'd been saying on TV and PPV for years.
 

I didn't dislike Mauro as much as many on here, though he can be grating. My golden rule for wrestling commentary is that your job is to translate what's happening into something the audience can understand, and calling move names is rarely the best way to go about that - another ECW thing, and I don't know if it was coming from Styles, Heyman, or the wrestlers, but every wrestler had a dozen signature moves, all with gimmick names, which is great if you're playing Create-A-Wrestler on a video game, but pretty meaningless otherwise. It's far more important that you communicate what a move is intended to do, rather than its name - I'd sooner say "OH, THAT DROPPED HIM RIGHT ON HIS HEAD" then accurately call a niche variation on a Tiger Driver, because the intent is what matters.