Erik Watts

[0.0] "horrible. got way, way further than he should've based on his last name alone. fortunately for us, that still wasn't very far once his daddy stopped booking the show. my favorite kind of erik watts match is a tag team match, preferably one where he doesn't get tagged in and his partner gets his shit kicked in."

[0.0] "My least favorite wrestler of all-time. I was first exposed to Erik Watts while doing a watch-through of old TNA. My first two thoughts were 'who is this man' and 'I hate this man'. Everything he does is so disinteresting and made me want to watch something else. Every time I come across him when watching older stuff, no matter what company, my opinion of him just gets worse. The only time I wasn't completely turned off by him was his tag match in the WXO where he at least attempted to have some personality, but that was probably just John Zandig rubbing off on him. I don't blame him for his very early stuff, I put that on Bill Watts, but I put the full weight of everything else on Erik Watts' awkward, uncharismatic shoulders."

[1.0] "This guy absolutely sucks - the worst case of nepo hire I've seen. No personality, trash promo and in-ring... Oh man he is awful. Crowds don't care and commentators have had to work so hard to work around the fact he is just pure ass for ages."

[0.0] "The worst case of nepotism in professional wrestling, no one compares to Erik Watts. As an in ring talent, he wasn't good at all, he's so bad that he can't even do a dropkick properly, he makes John Cena's dropkick look like Kazuchika Okada's by comparison. Not a memorable personality or promo for that matter, he offered absolutely nothing despite being the son of Bill Watts, his tag team Tekno Team 2000 was also terrible, one of the worst aspects of WWF in 1995, do I need to keep going? For my money, THE worst second/third generation wrestler of all time, no one compares."

[3.0] "I always thought his early stuff in WCW where Bill Watts ushed him was his best wrestling of his career. His few with Arn Anderson was decent, but he went downhill quick. His time in the WWF was cringeworthy and his re-debut in WCW late 90's wasn't much better."

[0.0] "Some second gens have it, and well some don't... Erik Watts was a very untalented wrestler who pretty much never really accomplished in his career. The only thing he had going was that he was the son of Bill Watts and he had size, that's all I could say about Erik Watts. No ring or mic skills."

[1.0] "Another failed Gen 2 experiment. Gawky, awkward, and sloppy in the ring. Some people just don't have it."

[2.0] "WCW was usually a lot of fun to watch until Bill Watts came around and thrust-shoved THIS up our collective asses, down our unanimous throats and deep into our eye sockets- no matter who begged him not to, no matter what logic tried it's best to intervene. Because of him and his moron father, The Steiner Brothers left WCW... no small feat and something that shouldn't be ignored even all of these decades later! Interviews in recent times have proven it wasn't just his in ring work that was total ass-butt. Erik Watts is one of the worst things to ever disgrace Ted Turner television. Zero redeeming qualities. ZERO. (Edit: *sigh* I begrudgingly give him a 1.5 rounded up. In a post Watts WCW, there is perverse pleasure in hearing the WCW Saturday Night crowd audibly boo him and Ventura make jokes about it - I cackle with sadistic glee every time.)"

[2.0] "For a guy who was the son of a legendary wrestler and promoter, he never had much in the way of talent. It seemed like the talent gene skipped a generation."

[2.0] "Never a fan of Bill Watts as a booker. And Erik was terrible in his early years. A 0 for sure. In his later years he was a 4 and terribly generic, so I'm rounding it up to 2"

[0.0] "Beyond terrible. Every move this guy did looked awkward. For someone who was born in the business, it sure as hell wasn't natural to him. Poor Erik was lost everytime he was inside the ring. Maybe he was thrown to the wolves on worldwide TV way too soon. Maybe. Still, that doesn't change the fact that he sucked real bad."

[5.0] "I enjoyed his work in TNA. Outside of that, he was an enhancement talent. He did some indy work for Great Championship Wrestling here and was entertaining."

[4.0] "As many others have said about Erik Watts, he was pushed far too fast and far too soon. This, together with is limited improvement in the ring meant that he was someone who took a spot that many more talented men deserved ahead of him."

[2.0] "My take on Erik Watts is different from the usual "pushed too high and too soon": he simply lacked the talent, and at times it really seemed like his heart was not into what he was doing. In short he was in a wrestling ring merely because his father's name and influence ensured him more or less steady bookings and hence paychecks: as proof of this his later career, after Cowboy Bill Watts' influence had waned, mostly consisted of a few random bookings here and there, including a very short and highly forgettable stint in TNA. At that time it seemed Erik Watts finally realized pro-wrestling was not his calling and to move on to other and hopefully better things."

[4.0] "Erik Watts was inexperienced, his in-ring skills were horrible like he can't even perform a simple dropkick correctly. However, it isn't his fault that Bill Watts wanted to push him to the top. Sadly, that caused a lot of hate on Erik Watts. His runs in the WWF and ECW are forgettable but his TNA run was decent after learning the ropes and gaining experience."

[7.0] "I thought he was great. He had an excellent start at the beginning of his career. His best was his first stint in WCW 1992-1994. In WWF Tekno Team 2000 it did not go anywhere. His return to WCW in 1999 was bland and cheesy storylines in TNA. Yes he was part of nepotism and that's how he got the job. He had too many hiatuses in his career from 1997-1998 and 2001-2002."

[3.0] "Often considered a poster-child for nepotism in wrestling, Erik Watts - son of then-WCW booker Bill Watts - debuted well before he was ready for prime time, and the crowd quickly turned against him. He later found some limited success in the WWF as half of Tekno Team 2000, and later bounced around the lower cards of WCW and ECW in the late '90s. His last run, in a fledgling TNA, ended up being his best - there he was able to show himself to be a good mic-worker, and was able to parlay that into a role as an on-air authority before calling it a career."

[0.0] "Erik Watts was pushed far too hard far too soon. He should have spent the first year or more of his career working opening matches, going to fifteen-minute draws with veterans who could teach him how to be, at the very least, a competent worker. But with daddy running the show, Watts got the super push right out of the gate and whatever career he might have had was flushed down the toilet because you could never take him seriously again. Watts was embarrassing at times, looking like a guy who was still in hi first week of wrestling training. Erik may have been a nice guy, and nobody seems to have had anything bad to say about him as a person, but Erik had no business being a wrestler."

"Watching Watts, a gangly, wirey, stringy, lumpy kid on WCW on Saturday Afternoon prior to the Monday Night War Era was painful. It was just awful. After some development time he became a moderate talent on TNA and was able to at least garner some interest. A true case of pushed too far too fast, and I would rate him among the lowest on the flops list. His STF was about the thing I recall about him besides that he did not look in ring shape very often early on."

[4.0] "You know, it's hard to blame the guy. He was rushed into wrestling before he'd even been properly trained. He did get a lot better once he'd had some time in the ring but by then it was too late. It's rather sad because he could've been something great if his old man hadn't rushed him into the business."