Throughout the history of professional wrestling, what a performer can do on the mic is often just as important as what they do in the ring. Each afternoon, Smark Attack will highlight a wrestling promo that shows off the best, and sometimes the worst, in pro wrestling microphone work.

And we're not just looking for classic promos. If you're a local wrestler or if you've always wanted to be a pro wrestler and want to show off your mic skills send your best promo: 45 seconds or less to [email protected]. If we end up running it on the blog, we'll give you a City Paper t-shirt.

There's a pretty good chance that you have never heard of today's guest on Promo of the day, but Thunderbolt Patterson is known for more than just his wrestling ability and his mic skills. He was the guy back in the 1970s and 1980s who spoke out against the low wages and crappy treatment that the performers suffered through. He spoke out against the racism in pro wrestling, a topic we will be discussing in the coming weeks in this spot. He tried to unionize pro wrestlers and was blackballed by a lot of promoters for his efforts. His later years, in fact, were spent as an organizer for the labor union, SEIU.

Patterson was a great worker known mainly for his tag team work, capturing scores of titles over the course of his career. One of his most well-known partners was Ole Anderson until the two had a Kayfabe fall out in the mid-1980s. In this video Anderson and Patterson weren't scheduled to wrestle each other, rather they would each be ringside to make sure the other didn't interfere in the match. In this clip, Patterson has a stern warning for Anderson, even though it's not entirely clear what that is and that's what makes it great.