If you want to talk about guys with everyman bodies being able to work a crowd, a great more current example is Bubba Ray Dudley in ECW. He could get a crowd almost to the point of a riot with his mic work and he was a complete fatass at that point.

Mick Foley may be the greatest example of this... Foley could make multiple personas work and whether it was the Undertaker or some spare jobber, he could make that match work and get the crowd into a frenzy.

Forget physical look or match style, if there's anything turning viewers off at this point, it's 5 hours of wrestling on Monday and Tuesday and several months each with 2 major shows. They've completely oversaturated the airwaves with their own product, to the point that very little feels special or can't miss. And that's without even going into anything on the network. There's just too much.

I know this personally because I regularly tune out for weeks or month at a time, come back and it's like I missed absolutely nothing. They've done a good job sparking interest with their push of women's wrestling, but that's only going to last so long as a novelty (I'm not saying women's wrestling is a novelty, I'm saying the so-called '(re)volution' in women's wrestling is a novelty; the newness will wear off).

At this point I watch Raw and/or Smackdown when the recaps make it sound interesting, and I watch very few of the ppv's outside of the big 4. This from someone that actually has the network....

I don't follow wrestling anymore, but I used to love it. I had to google the folks you listed here. Bray Wyatt if Mike Rotunda's kid and Blackjack Mulligan's Grandson. Those guys were popular when I was watching.

I remember watching those guys too.

Very true. Bulldog was the same in his day (he never had a body), but he'd have the crowd spitting on him, trying to stab him and the like. I never watched ECW (which I now regret), but much of their roster were smaller, more ordinary, weren't they?

Eh to some degree but guys like Benoit, Guerrero, Jericho and Raven went through there they gave Mysterio and other mexican dudes exposure but for the most part they weren't a promotion full of little guys.

Thanks, I didn't know. I've watched a few documentaries about them, but otherwise didn't know. I know that Mikey Whipwreck isn't very big, but I'm not too familiar with their roster other than him and a few others.

They had a mix, but if you were a smaller guy, you had a much better chance of making it in ECW as opposed to WWF or WCW at the time. Some of the examples of "littler" guys that did really well in ECW were:

Justin Credible
Lance Storm (borderline, he was Jericho size)
Spike Dudley
Stevie Richards (tall but skinny)
Jerry Lynn
Taz
Sabu

I am sure there are tons that I was missing. They also had WWF-sized wrestlers like Shane Douglas, Chris Candido, Bam Bam Bigelow, Balls Mahoney, Dudley Boys, Pitbulls, Rhino, Steve Corino, etc.

" we got a mother in the front row who taught her daughter how to suck dick"

Tajiri and Super Crazy as well. Their series of matches were fantastic.

Hell yea dude I got to see one of their matches live. Was in Jacksonville. Supposed to be on tnn but paul said the building looked like shit

That is definitely the best one. Here is the video. Go to the 2:45 mark for the good stuff to start.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UkrjcWMbrno" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

For your viewing pleasure, highlights from the 4-way at Wrestle Kingdom for the Jr Heavyweight belt.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eh95bA-jS8Q" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Wrestlemania season is almost in full swing. Struggling to get excited. Too predictable.