10 Worst Actors In WWE History
These actors won't be winning any Academy Awards, ever.
Transcript
00:00 Trying to explain pro wrestling to a non-fan is a pretty tricky affair.
00:03 It's not all Greco-Roman headlocks and flips, and whilst great matches and athletic displays
00:08 are the centrepiece of the wrestling meal, you need a good story to get there in order
00:12 to make those payoffs worthwhile.
00:15 Acting is an important part of telling a story, and thus pro wrestling.
00:19 Most wrestlers aren't going to be winning an Emmy anytime soon, but if they can do just
00:23 enough to get their audience invested, then they're golden.
00:26 The men and women on this list aren't golden, silver or bronze, in fact, they'd be much
00:30 more at home with the nominations you see for the annual Razzies.
00:33 I'm Scytheforwhatculture.com and these are the 10 worst actors in WWE.
00:38 10.
00:39 The Bella Twins Hey, starting off with a two-for-one deal.
00:43 Nikki gets a special mention here because while she certainly has improved over time,
00:47 she had the honour of the infamous "I wish you died in the womb" zinger that may just
00:51 go down as the Bella Twins' single most remembered moment.
00:55 That being said, Brie Bella was always the most awkward when it came to the acting part
00:58 of the pro wrestling business.
01:00 For one thing, the aforementioned promo cut against her by her sister produces one of
01:04 many examples of wrestlers contorting their face in horrible ways to make it look as though
01:08 they're crying.
01:09 But even beyond that, Brie just always felt permanently uncomfortable.
01:13 Even when yelling her own catchphrase "Brie Mode", she never felt like she was putting
01:16 all of her effort into it, and who could forget the constant calls of "Come on Nikki"
01:21 from outside the ring during tag matches.
01:24 If her husband Daniel Bryan didn't have to drop the WWE Championship, one has to wonder
01:28 what would have happened to his perception considering after winning the big one he was
01:31 paired up with his wife on screen.
01:34 This culminated in a segment where Kane appears in the couple's car and Brie screams for
01:38 about 90 seconds straight like a foghorn.
01:41 If their heel antics didn't make you hate them, Brie's acting certainly did the trick.
01:45 9.
01:46 The Great Khali The Great Khali once put his foot on the chest
01:49 of the Phenom Undertaker to pin him like it was nothing.
01:52 He also struggled to sing Deck the Halls on a Christmas episode and just started belting
01:56 out "Fa la la la la la" without a hint of irony.
01:59 Now you have to be lenient here as America wasn't the Great Khali's home country,
02:03 nor was English his first language, and he always, always looked uncomfortable.
02:07 Acting isn't just about the emotion, it's about making every moment look genuine.
02:11 Khali, no matter what he was doing, could never do anything without it being obvious
02:15 that he was thinking it all over very carefully.
02:18 Whether it was routinely looking for his mark, or waiting for his moment to speak lines that
02:22 looked like they were physically painful for the big guy to memorise.
02:25 As is often the case with characters that start off as brooding giants, Great Khali
02:29 made the leap to comedy pretty quickly and it was definitely a better fit for him.
02:33 Whilst his inability to speak coherently was played for laughs, Khali did it with a smile.
02:38 We can only hope he was actually enjoying himself because this borders on very wrong
02:41 if he wasn't.
02:42 8.
02:43 Steve Blackman The Lethal Weapon was a popular mid-card wrestler
02:46 with a great look and was a legitimate tough guy.
02:49 I mean, heck, he's a real-life bounty hunter, but he never ascended any higher than the
02:53 WWF Hardcore Championship.
02:56 Blackman couldn't talk, and in any other era he would have been given a manager to
02:59 help him with that, but in the late 90s the WWE had moved away from personal mouthpieces
03:04 and everyone had to speak for themselves.
03:06 It worked great for stars like the most electrifying man in the biz, The Rock, of course, but Steve
03:10 Blackman's own brand of electricity stopped as soon as he opened his mouth.
03:14 Promos can be found of him intently staring at and yelling in the face of Terry Taylor
03:18 instead of looking down the camera to address his opponent, emphasising the wrong words
03:22 and stumbling over others.
03:24 For a time, Blackman's lack of personality was so noticeable that it became his gimmick
03:28 and he was paired with the fun-loving Al Snow to form Head Cheese.
03:31 Whilst there's humour to be had here, it's still very clear that Blackman is struggling.
03:35 Everything he says sounds like he's reading off of a cue card out of shot.
03:38 I wouldn't say any of this to his face though, because, you know, he's terrifying.
03:43 7.
03:44 Torrie Wilson For all of the parts of the Attitude era that
03:46 have aged poorly, its treatment of the women's division is one that we'd surely all rather
03:50 forget.
03:51 WWE audiences nor the company cared for female wrestling, and it wasn't uncommon for ladies
03:56 with zero experience to get hired by the corporation and thrown out on live television just because
04:01 they looked good.
04:02 If you watch any Torrie Wilson backstage or promo segment, you'll see how even the most
04:06 basic emotions seem to escape Torrie's performances.
04:09 Infamously, Torrie Wilson was slapped across the face on an episode of WCW Monday Nitro
04:13 by Randy Savage for laughing when she shouldn't be (admittedly, Randy was going off script
04:18 at the time) but Torrie's inability to keep a straight face set a precedent for her acting
04:22 career in pro wrestling.
04:23 It is as plain as day that she was never going to be one of the company's best actors, and
04:27 that kind of skill clearly didn't run in the family.
04:30 When Torrie clashed with Dawn Marie over her relationship with her father, Al Wilson was
04:34 just as painfully awkward.
04:36 In fact, all three of them were awful, which is what makes the feud even more memorable.
04:40 A car crash storyline featuring some unbelievably questionable moments, all played out by cardboard
04:46 cutouts instead of actors.
04:48 6.
04:49 Rob Van Dam Some might say that the best wrestlers are
04:52 those who can play both sides of the fence.
04:54 Adored, babyface and abhorrent heel.
04:56 It's not an easy thing to do though, not in equal measure especially, and it's the
05:00 case for many that they find their niche and stay there.
05:03 The Miz, Mr Kennedy and Bobby Lashley, just great examples of guys who struggle to play
05:07 a convincing good guy.
05:09 Rob Van Dam was special in that his lack of acting chops pretty much made him the polar
05:13 opposite.
05:14 After the conclusion of the Invasion angle, RVD never played a heel during his tenure
05:18 with the WWE.
05:19 In all fairness, it's difficult to picture such a thing working.
05:23 Now I'm not here to actually cuss out Van Dam for his promo ability.
05:26 Unlike most on this list, the guy can actually speak when given a microphone.
05:30 His range is very limited though, and all the emotion he brings can hardly be called
05:34 acting.
05:35 RVD's incredibly laid back character is no character at all.
05:39 That's just the real guy you're seeing.
05:40 Luckily, RVD has never really been asked to do anything that exposes his lack of acting
05:45 experience.
05:46 Instead, the character has remained completely consistent for 20 years, and it needn't
05:50 be more complicated than pointing to his own shoulders.
05:53 5.
05:54 Rusev's Lawyer
05:55 WWE has a history of appearances of one-off characters inserted to move a storyline along.
06:01 Some are great - shout out to you, Dr Shelby - some are functional, and then there are
06:05 others.
06:06 We've all heard the stories of Vince McMahon rewriting TV up until the 11th hour, and it
06:11 may have been a lack of pre-planning that caused this segment in question to go horribly
06:15 wrong.
06:16 The company put out a call on March 16th, 2015 for someone available later that day
06:20 to play the lawyer of Bulgarian brute Rusev.
06:24 Local stand-up Doug Stone was chosen for the part, and since the feud was not only over
06:28 the United States title, but also against all-American hero John Cena, the bewildered
06:33 comedian was tasked with healing it up with an over-the-top Russian accent.
06:37 So over-the-top, in fact, that it fell flat immediately.
06:40 Not only were audiences at home laughing at the character, Vince McMahon, it appears,
06:44 took to instructing his commentary team to do the same.
06:47 JBL rips the guy a new one, turning the planned serious segment into something that paints
06:51 the lawyer as a liar and a phony, and Booker T exclaims "Did you hear that accent?
06:56 That guy's from Texas!"
06:57 Doug Stone, we wish you all the best in your comedy career, just don't try doing any
07:01 more impressions.
07:02 4.
07:03 Kelly Kelly
07:04 Tori Wilson's previously mentioned hiring was no way an isolated incident, and it wasn't
07:08 the kind of thing that stopped in the Attitude Era.
07:11 In fact, in the grand scheme of things, it's only really recently that the WWE have treated
07:15 the women's division with even a modicum of respect.
07:18 Kelly Kelly signed with the company in 2006 when she was just 19 years old.
07:22 She didn't have any wrestling experience, but she had studied broadcast journalism at
07:26 college with hopes of becoming a television actor.
07:28 It seems she wasn't really given much of a chance to get her feet under her when it
07:32 came to ring work, but that's okay, because she couldn't act her way out of a paper
07:35 bag either.
07:37 Consistently robotic in every segment she was in, Kelly was largely used as the character
07:40 of girlfriend or quite simply eye candy for a long period of time.
07:45 One particularly awful example of her acting came when she was pleading for an emotional
07:48 connection from Randy Orton, of all people, after an apparent one night stand.
07:52 It's not just her flat delivery, but her desire to speed through every line without
07:56 taking a breath that hurts.
07:59 In a particularly hilarious moment in 2010, Kelly was sent to NXT to become a mentor for
08:03 the rookie Naomi, who, naturally, wrestled and talked circles around her.
08:08 3.
08:09 Kalisto Reading a script is fine and all, but when
08:11 it comes to acting, you sometimes need to be able to improvise.
08:14 After all, anything can happen in the World Wrestling Federation, and this is doubly true
08:18 with its live programming.
08:20 Kalisto was never much of a talker, either as part of the Lucha House Party or as a solo
08:23 star, but he does have one particular microphone moment that stands out.
08:27 I'm not quite sure what it was about getting drafted to SmackDown in 2016 that made Kalisto
08:31 so excited, but a brief backstage cutaway to the Luchador saw him so amped that he could
08:35 barely speak.
08:36 Announcer Greg Hamilton asked him what fans could expect, and Kalisto's brain just stopped
08:40 dead in its tracks.
08:42 You can visibly see him realising he's not able to dig himself out of this hole after
08:46 he mispronounces Baron Corbin's name and promises the fans he's here to make a good
08:50 lucha… a good lucha thing.
08:54 He concludes the segment by whooping and running out of frame, presumably to go and hide in
08:58 the locker room for the rest of the evening.
09:00 Two years later, in a WWE YouTube video, the company celebrated the botch, which only made
09:04 it more likely to be the thing that most people remember about Kalisto's long but uneventful
09:09 WWE run.
09:10 2.
09:11 Rikishi One of the Attitude Era's most simple but
09:14 beautiful gimmicks was Too Cool, combining the tag team efforts of Scotty Too Hotty and
09:18 Grandmaster Sexe with Rikishi, who for years had struggled to find his place in the company
09:23 after a string of unsuccessful gimmick changes.
09:26 It couldn't last forever though, and sure enough, Rikishi left the group to partake
09:30 in an experimental heel turn.
09:32 Rikishi admitting he himself ran down Stone Cold Steve Austin is remembered for the line
09:36 "I did it for Da Rock", and that's probably for very good reason.
09:40 Not that the story wasn't silly, but Rikishi's delivery of his version of the event was meandering
09:45 and unconvincing.
09:46 The future "bad man" kept fidgeting around on the spot, struggling to look anyone in
09:50 the ring in the eyes.
09:52 Rikishi's only heel run in the WWE lasted for about four months before he had to take
09:56 time off with injury and unsurprisingly came back as a babyface.
10:00 It wasn't just that his previous revelation had gone down like a lead balloon, but he
10:03 just wasn't believable nor interesting as a bad guy.
10:07 Audiences liked Rikishi a lot better when he said very little and danced a whole lot
10:11 more.
10:12 1.
10:13 Linda McMahon Never a legitimate competitor, Linda McMahon
10:16 was nonetheless an on and off character on WWE TV who always managed to get the right
10:21 reactions during her big moments.
10:23 To be fair, it's probably the diabolical storylines that led to those huge pops.
10:27 Vince parading around kissing Trish Stratus in front of his temporarily wheelchair user
10:31 wife until she finally rises to her feet and hoofs him in the proverbial grapefruits.
10:36 You can kind of understand why fans gave her the loud babyface reaction.
10:39 It wasn't anything to do with her acting chops.
10:42 And to be fair, she wasn't an actor, just a part of Vince's world drawn onto TV by
10:46 the man's strange obsession with playing scripted family drama out in front of an international
10:50 audience.
10:51 Linda's flat microphone work was shocking and any time she had to reveal major upcoming
10:56 matches she put absolutely no pomp or circumstance into them.
11:00 Announcing that The Rock, Undertaker and Kane would team up to get their hands on Triple
11:03 H, Shane and Vince at King of the Ring 2000 should have been shouted from the rooftops,
11:08 not mumbled out by the boss's wife.
11:10 Did she get a massive cheer for telling Vince she wanted a divorce?
11:13 Yes of course.
11:15 Did she sound less like a human and more like a cyborg asking for an oil change?
11:19 Also yes.
11:20 And that's the list.
11:21 Let us know what you thought down in those comments below and let us know any other terrible
11:25 actors in the WWE system past or present.
11:28 Don't forget to like this video, subscribe, share it with your friends and hit the notification
11:33 bell.
11:34 I've been Si from WhatCulture and have a good week.
11:36 (upbeat music)
11:39 (upbeat music)