The Great One! The People's Champion!
Let's see some WWEF recaps on this bloody legend.
In-ring skills very average if not even below average. I mean, the guy didn't even know how to perform a sharpshotter - the move that Canadian wrestlers master on the first week of training. He was sloppy in-ring, quite an amount of inproperly performed moves. His moveset was also too simple but he compensated for it with the charisma factor. The People's Elbow in reality is just an elbow, but Rocky makes it glorious because of charisma, taunting, performance etc. The same thing he did with most of the other moves, so they actually looked good. Surpisingly enough, he had a shit tone of 5 star matches. He had average in-ring skill ability and the absolutely phenomenal non-wrestling set of skills that made him unique as an in-ring talent.
What can we even say about mic skills? Charisma? Well, I think that there is not a drop of doubt that this man is the GOAT of both. Best charisma and best mic skills this industry has ever seen, and will ever see. He was, still is, simply phenomenal. Textbook example of perfect mix performance isn't as good as his, you just can't possibly go any better. He never botches when he cuts a promo, cuts it so stylishly, beautifully and humourusly that you just start caring about matches and be like "let this man talk, just give 'im that mic". His promos are both funny and quality dense and charisma is just off the limits. Nobody ever got a cheer pop that was even similar to Rocky's. You can compare it to Cena, Stone Cold or Punk but he just overshadows them SIGNIFICANTLY. Consistency is the word here too, this man gets that same pop every time he walks to the wrestling ring in the last 20 years. Remember when Jeff Hardy aka The Charismatic Enigma returned this last time? Crowd was passive. But every time The Rock gets near the ring, to hell with it - even the video of The Rock, crowd goes nuts. Character work and presence also class A. He basically broke the scale in non-wrestling abilities.
My verdict here is 9/10. Grade is just a number and you actually can't take anything away from him. This is not a Benoit case. Benoit was 10/10 in-ring while being shit at nearly everything else, therefore he got an 8. While The Rock was AVERAGE in-ring, which doesn't mean bad btw, and had 5 star matches, in every single non-wrestling ability he broke the scale. Benoit didn't have average promos, all were plain shit. His charisma was below average too, character work good but didn't compensate enough. So yeah, in theory and practics you can be better than a Benoit while being average in-ring. It appears so and I hold no bias here.
Tell uncle Crow what do you think and please don't bash me for not making it a 10.
