YMMV / Joey Styles

• Harsher in Hindsight: During a match featuring Mike Awesome against Masato Tanaka, Awesome dives from the ring onto Tanaka on the outside. Joey (who had a massive grudge against Awesome for leaving ECW for WCW) goes "Suicide dive by Mike Awesome, and it's a shame he didn't succeed in taking his own life!" while on commentary. Mike Awesome hanged himself in 2007.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • The time in ECW when two fans held up signs denouncing Joey and his commentary partner Joel Gertner, claiming they were no Mike Tenay or Larry Zbyszko, the WCW commentators. Unfortunately, they couldn't spell Zbyszko's name properly, and Joey unloaded on them:
    Joey Styles: First of all, I think I speak for Joel [Gertner] and myself, that we're thankful we'll never be Mike Tenay and Larry Zbyszko. Why don't you go sell whatever decrepit little motor home you live in, trade it in for a $.50 wrestling magazine and figure out how to spell his name? See, I remember you; you're the illiterate moron who spelled it wrong last time, six months ago. You're the best argument for not sending my kids to a public school I have ever seen!
  • When Eric Bischoff raided the broadcast booth at the first One-Night Stand PPV in 2005, Joey let loose with this gem:
    Joey Styles: By the way, you are the worst goddamn play-by-play man I've ever heard, and if you didn't run that company, you wouldn't have gotten a freakin' headset!
  • His "The Reason You Suck" Speech Worked Shoot, which is easily one of the best in the business. On the May 1 2006 edition of Raw, Joey Styles took then-announce partner Jerry Lawler, Jim Ross, Vince McMahon, WWE, and practically the entire American professional wrestling industry to task in his big "I Quit" speech before moving to the ECW announce position a few weeks later. See it here.
    Joey Styles: Six months ago, WWE called me! I didn't call this company because I was looking for a job; I didn't need a job. WWE called me! Because they had humiliated and fired — again! — Jim Ross. So I get JR's spot. And from week one, week after week, I got an ongoing lecture about the differences in professional wrestling and sports entertainment! I'm not allowed to say pro wrestling, I'm not allowed to say wrestlers. I have to say sports entertainment and refer to the wrestlers as Superstars. I'm told to deliberately ignore the moves and the holds during the matches so I can tell stories! Well, ignoring the moves and the holds is damn insulting to the athletes, the WRESTLERS - not the entertainers - who leave their families 300 days a year to apply their craft in that ring! And here's the best part: Because I'm not a "sports entertainment storyteller," I get pulled from WrestleMania, and the reason I'm given is, is because I don't sound like Jim Ross, who's the guy they fired in the first place, that makes sense, right? So I swallow the bitter pill, I'm a company guy. I get pulled from WrestleMania. Then I get bumped from Backlash? I'm not good enough to call Backlash!? In ECW, I called live pay-per-views on my own, solo. no color commentators dragging me down. Wasn't done before me, hasn't been done since! But I'm not good enough to call Backlash, because I'm not a "sports entertainment storyteller." Well, you know what? I am sick of sports entertainment. I am sick of male cheerleaders. I am of boogers, and bathroom humor, and semen, and I am sick of our Chairman, who likes to talk about his own semen, he mocks God - he MOCKS GOD! - and makes out with the Divas, all to feed his own insatiable ego! I am sick of sports entertainment. And most of all, I'm sick of you fans, who actually buy into that crap, this sports entertainment circus! I never needed this job, and I don't want this job anymore. (Takes the WWE logo off of his mic and tosses it aside) I quit!
  • Him punching out John "Bradshaw" Layfield, who has a reputation for being the locker room bully.
• Poor Man's Substitute: Averted; most of the IWC feels that Styles was more than a worthy successor to Jim Ross as play-by-play announcer of Raw. He's also, in fact, been the object of other Poor Man's Substitutes (Michael Cole and Josh Matthews in WWECW). This was generally the reason why Joey was chosen to replace JR in the first place; WWE failed to get UFC commentator Mike Goldberg, and the general consensus was that Joey was the only person that wasn't going to be seen as this.