Here is your bracket for the Greatest Talker of All Time tournament:



Flame away about my seeding choices. It's a difficult thing to do and I can't please everyone.

A quick rundown:
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1. Voting will take place in this thread from the time a matchup is posted until its deadline comes up. I will post eight matchups at a time this round, and will do so once every 24 hours.

Please vote in the format of bolding your choice. So, for instance,
Mike Adamle over Vince McMahon

2. Voters must either have 100 posts on 2p2 (anywhere on 2p2) or ask permission to vote. Voting without permission automatically invalidates the vote that was cast. Note: I'll almost certainly grant permission to all who ask. I'm just trying to keep gimmicks from unduly influencing the results.

3. Voters are strongly asked to have some knowledge of the promo work of both workers in the matchup they're voting on. This isn't a rule or anything as it's certainly unenforceable.

4. Advocacy for the side you take is perfectly welcome and even encouraged.

5. I will try to post links to promos of each competitor when I post the matchups. I definitely encourage people posting more clips than just the ones I post in honor of these great talkers and the awesome promos they cut. I ask you kindly to post links instead of embeds because it does **** with page-loading time for some of us.
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I will work on posting the initial matchups as soon as I post this OP.

I don't think I have any arguments over the seeding other than the fact that you had Jericho as one of the 1st seed and Austin as one of the 2nd seed.

Also, that's kinda funny that you pitted Dusty Rhodes and Dustin Rhodes in the first round.

Yeah, I had Jericho as the bottom 1 seed and Austin as the top 2 seed. Just ends up with them being destined to face off for their region if they don't get upset first.

Dusty/Dustin made me chuckle too, as it was totally unintentional. I power-ranked the whole field and then just put the matchups together robotically...that one just turned out that way.

Anyway, still in the middle of writing up the first eight matchups. They'll be up soon.

First batch of matchups...

Ric Flair

With a tear in my eye
Snaps on Carlito
Flair just lost the WWF Title to Randy Savage...

vs.

"Road Dogg" Jesse James

New Age Outlaws classic entrance
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Rowdy Roddy Piper

Piper shoots on Russo
Piper's Pit with Jimmy Snuka

vs.

John Laurinaitis

Wishing John Morrison the best
Laurinaitis/Punk confrontation (Johnny Ace enters as Punk)
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Jim Cornette

Jim Cornette roasts the idiots in WCW
Cornette cuts a promo on Jimmy Valiant and Billy Graham

vs.

Sting

Sting cuts a promo on Hogan
Sting, now with the Wolfpack, starts talking again
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CM Punk

Promo on Jeff Hardy
Straight edge means I'm better than you
The shoot

vs.

William Regal

Regal slaps Sting and calls him sunshine
Promo on Goldust
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Freddie Blassie

Promo with Stan Hansen
Promo with Nikolai Volkoff

vs.

Sgt. Slaughter

Promo on Tito Santana
Promo on Ultimate Warrior
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JBL

Promo at ECW One Night Stand
JBL rescues us from the US Title spinner belt

vs.

Daniel Bryan

Renames his finisher to be the Yes Lock
Daniel Bryan is a great lover
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Harley Race

I am not going to allow any human being to insult me or (my title)
Promo on Bob Backlund
Race interrupts Ron Simmons

vs.

Ultimate Warrior

The "crash the plane" promo
Goes off on Mean Gene
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Bret Hart

Bret tells the American wrestling fans to kiss his ass
Bret snaps after a match
Who is Mean Gene to doubt El Dandy?

vs.

Curt Hennig

Mr. Perfect and Randy Savage at Survivor Series '92
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8Jh_dN-7_I
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Voting is open NOW, and for the next 24 hours.

My votes...
Flair over Road Dogg
Piper over Laurinaitis
Cornette over Sting
Punk over Regal
Slaughter over Blassie
Bryan over JBL
Race over Warrior
Bret over Hennig

Toughest ones to me in this batch are Slaughter/Blassie and Bryan/JBL. I've seen a lot more of JBL and it's unquestionable tha the has the longevity edge at this point, but honestly Bryan is cutting such amazing promos right now that if he could keep this up for a decade he'd be in the argument for greatest ever.

My Slaughter vote is probably a bit of recency bias. Their promos on tape look very similar in quality, but I'm just a bit more attached to Sarge, and that's probably because I watched him growing up and only know Blassie from the archives.

I paused briefly at Race/Warrior, but just think Race was the more skilled talker. I love that subtle, understated "I'm not going to let any human being insult me" promo I linked above. I suppose I paused briefly at Punk/Regal too, only because I have such great love for Regal. That's still not a very close matchup IMO.

The other four were extremely easy votes for me.

Flair over Road Dogg
Piper over Laurinaitis
Cornette over Sting
Punk over Regal (Man, this should be so obvious, but Regal is so damn subtly entertaining. I just saw that sunshine promo, for the first time, and it was so good, especially with the slap. This decision somewhat hurts a bit.)
JBL over Bryan
Race over Warrior

Flair over Dogg
Piper over Ace
Cornette over Sting
Regal over Punk
Blassie over Slaughter
JBL over Bryan
Race over Warrior
Hennig over Hart

Not quite as huge on Regal as some here are, but Punk has been significantly below average on the majority of the promos I've seen him on. You don't get to be one of the greatest of all time by hitting a 500 foot home run one day, then not getting a hit at all your next 20 times up. Consistency is extremely huge on promos because the entire point of them, from one perspective, is to get people interested in the feuds and matches. The shoot promo got people interested in the feud he was in at the time, but doesn't exactly carry over well to the next feud. Punk seems like he doesn't even care about the feud he's in most of the time. Regal, on the other hand, has gone out there and put on one of the better segments of the show so many times.

Bret Hart had a couple good promos, but the majority of his promos are borderline unwatchable, and some are comically bad. Hennig generally was good on the mic, with a good delivery, voice, lack of botches, very good body language; his average promo is much better than Bret's average promo.

There are valid different ways to look at this, but I put a lot of value on the promo high spots, and I generally think that I'd probably prefer a guy who hits a few absolute grand slams and then is whatever the rest of the time to a guy who is solid and consistent but never has a memorable promo in his career.

It's not like Punk's shoot promo was just a moment of "OMG, this guy can actually talk?" His mic work during the preceding feuds with Jeff Hardy and Rey Mysterio was downright stellar too, and that's just speaking to his WWE work. Also the fact that he has shown himself to be excellent when doing commentary speaks to how witty he can be in speaking contemporaneously.

And while it's true that Hennig didn't generally botch in interviews, he did have a memorable one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ezVx...eature=related
I just value Bret's 1997 work too much to not put him over Hennig here.

Flair Dogg
Piper Ace (who nominated Big Johnny, lol)
Cornette Sting
Regal over Punk
Blassie Slaughter
JBL Bryan
Race Warrior
Hart Hennig

This is going to be some bizarro world thing where I'm going to be the newfound champion of recency bias and be the only one to vote for Daniel Bryan.

(Honestly my vote may have been incorrect. I did struggle with it. But it stands as voted.)

Fwiw Regal over Punk was the only close one. Regal is just an insanely consistent and completely amazing talker that Punk just cant compare even as an insanely consistent and completely amazing talker when he isnt in his current ****ty watered down PG face gimmick.

Id have voted the same way if we did this a day before HHH and friends which is probably the big turning point.

The problem with Bryan is we are talking greatest of all time and no one was talking him up as a great talker until around 6 months ago. If he keeps this quality for another year or two, esp if he changes gimmick and turns face, he would be a much much easier choice even against a guy like JBL who was an outstanding talker.

Dumb question. Are vignettes considered promos?

Flair over Road Dogg
Piper over Laurinaitis
Cornette over Sting
Punk over Regal
Slaughter over Blassie
JBL over Bryan
Race over Warrior
Hennig over Bret

I'm not really against Regal going over in that matchup either, but one thing he has benefited from between the two is that he's never really had to play the WWE babyface. I'd like to think that they could play up an angle of a young heel disrespecting him and causing him to be a sympathetic veteran that turns face as a result, and that he'd pull it off well (honestly, when they did Miz vs. Lawler for a month it should have been this instead for sure), but we've never gotten to see it. And we do know how modern-day WWE just takes great characters and obliterates them after face turns.

Punk's work of the past year is going to work against him, and in a backwards way he got put into a position of being pretty bad by singlehandedly causing an unplanned face turn by being so good. I'm pretty sure we haven't seen our last epic Punk promo.

But also part of his seeding was that I thought his stock would be high here and I try to seed according to actual strength in the tourney. After the ridiculous over-push that Cena/Punk got in the greatest matches tourney I didn't think I should have Punk in the bottom half of the seeds.