Over the Top, Even for Wrestling

In the world of Professional Wrestling, it’s not just your skill in the ring that counts, you haves to work the stick as well.  Part of that is having a great catch phrase. If you’re talented like The Nature Boy Ric Flair, you’re going to have about a hundred of them. But not every wrestler is lucky enough to come up with his own version of “To Be The Man, You’ve Got To Beat The Man” or even a “Whoooo!”. But some wrestlers, on that never ending search for a catch phrase that catches on with the crowds, go too far.

“Feed Me More”

Ryback.  Remakes don’t just happen in the movies. Ryback is a remake of the Goldberg gimmick. Unbeatable and unstoppable and he wanted a catchphrase to match.  But he couldn’t yell “Who’s Next?” after destroying an opponent, like Goldberg did. He went with “Feed Me More”. Hmmm, not quite the scary wrestling killing machine he was going for;  it’s more hungry seal at Sea World.

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“The Big Bad Booty Daddy” 

Scott Steiner.  Scott Steiner was bad-catch-phrase gold– never at a loss for something over the top that make no sense. “The Big Bad Booty Daddy”  would also say things like “A Hard Man Is Good to Find. If You Got the Booty I Got The Time” and of course he would usually wrap things up with “Holla, If You Hear Me”. Well, we all better “holla” because, yes, we did hear you talking about booties for the past 3 minutes.

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“I’m Buff. I’m the Stuff. And The Girls Just Can’t Get Enough”.

Buff Bagwell.  It’s true.  One syllable rhyming is a turn on to the ladies. You might call him the Dr. Seuss of wrestling promos.  It’s surprising that somehow he forgot to work the word “tough” in there as well. But Buff didn’t even need to rely on great catch phrases– he had cool sunglasses, a mean looking goatee and a really huge top hat. That should have been plenty for the WCW crowds.

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“That’s Double J. J-E-Double F. J-A-Double R-E-Double T. Double J. Jeff Jarrett”

Double J Jeff Jarrett.  The catch phrase that went on forever. During Double J promos, we would get to hear him spelling his own name, not once, but twice. Double J eventually abandoned the spelling bee and went on to something much more classy, and much less time consuming when he told opponents “Choke On That, Slap Nuts”.

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“You Can’t See Me”

John Cena.  It’s a great catch phrase.  Except for the fact that yes John, we can see you. Of course we know that it’s suppose to mean that Cena is so much better than his opponents that they can’t even get close to seeing what he’s doing in the ring. But it kind of reminds us of a baby playing peek-a-boo, which takes a little bit of the bravado out of it John.

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“I will not die.”

Matt Hardy.  Talk about confidence in the ring.   With these words, fans can sit back and be assured that while watching Matt Hardy wrestle, he’s not going to pass away before the bell rings.   Where he missed the boat was, not building on that whole “things-I-won’t-do-in-the-ring” concept with other promises like I’m Matt Hardy. I will not crap myself during my match. I’m Matt Hardy. I will not forget where I parked.

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“Really??”

The Miz. Oh Miz, it’s a fun catch phrase but it’s also an Amy Poehler – Seth Meyers bit from “Saturday Night Live”.  Even if you think you had thought of it first you probably should have moved on when it became associated with the Amy Poehler cute factor.   Maybe he could have tried something else from SNL that wasn’t as well know…maybe “I’m Brian Fellows!” would have worked better?

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“Ta Ta For Now”

Joker Sting. Sting has always been more of an “homage” guy than an original when it came to catch phrases. His first wrestling tag team was called “The Blade Runners”. The he saw a Brandon Lee movie and became Sting The Crow.   Last year, Sting became Joker Sting, wearing Joker make up and doing a Heath Ledger impression in the ring. This brought his already bizarre catch phrase “Ta Ta For Now” to a new level of crazy.

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“We’ll Be Deviatin’ Septums And Rippin’ Out Goozles”

The Road Warriors. These guys had some truly great catch phrases like “What a Rush!” and “We Snack On Danger and Dine On Death”. But they also loved to cross the line into the ridiculous.  All the scariness of the spikes and make up and mohawks really disappears when a man uses the word “goozles”.

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Crowing

The Red Rooster.   Terry Taylor was the Red Rooster and he really wanted to make that gimmick work. He had a mohawk and said things like he was trying to “claw” his way into the competition in the WWF. But it went way over the top when he asked his fans, the Rooster Boosters, to crow him on to victory. He would stick his head in the air and do a rooster crow as loud as he could.

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