Throughout the weekend ahead of our live Great American Bash coverage on Sunday night, we’ll be posting our half-year awards, looking at the best and the worst of WWE in the first half of 2008.

Our first award is for the Worst in-ring performer in the WWE, and you can find more to follow from this evening onwards on the front page here at WWEPreview.com.

Worst in-ring performer in the WWE

Phil Lowe: JBL. I could tolerate his run as a main event guy on Smackdown a few years back, and even though you can easily argue he should never have been elevated to the position, he did a decent job with it. From there, he was great alongside Michael Cole calling Smackdown on a Friday night. But when he returned to the ring and moved over to Raw, his whole act just sucked. Yes we know he can talk on the mic, but ol’ Jumbo Bitchtits Layfield has been awful in the ring.

Perhaps his next energy drink should be something to benefit himself rather than golfers and old men who are too embarrassed to ask for viagra.

Mark Bright: Chavo Guerrero. Just so dull, so boring, to the point where you have to change the channel when he’s on screen. There’s no charisma, no spectacular moves, no interesting character work to keep you interested, yet unlike a Khali where he’s pushed as a freakshow element where you don’t really expect great matches, Chavo is put in positions on the card where you expect traditionally great workers to be put in there and he just sucks all the air out of the room.

Michael Campbell: JBL. Okay, so maybe the former WWE Champion isn’t literally, the “worst” performer. However, it’s been one of the most notable lacklustre performers to garner such a significant amount of air-time. Seriously, this guy has been all over our screens.

He helped dissolve the excitement over Chris Jericho’s return, he filled a spot at Mania that so many others would have better occupied, and he’s had fifty million snooze fests with John Cena. He’s been absolutely appalling, slowing the momentum of others, and generally falling into the Raven category of not being capable of doing as he says anymore.

What’s worse, is that he was so excellent on commentary!

Martin Smith: Mike Knox. Trust me, The Great Khali ran him close. However, at least Khali has a selling point (albeit a chokeslam and a headbutt) and although both Khali and Knox are poor, Knox wins it for me. Knox doesn’t have one move worth even remembering. Kelly Kelly’s old boyfriend? He wishes. Get to the indies, or a wrestling school. Now.

Steve McLaren: Snitsky. He manages to drag anyone - and I mean anyone - down to his quality of working…which isn’t any good.

James Mustoe: The Great Khali. Khali remains consistently poor, but during 2008 he has been further dogged by injuries, and has not had the surprisingly entertaining series with John Cena to redeem him somewhat that he had last year.

RESULTS:

JBL (2)
Chavo Guerrero (1)
Mike Knox (1)
Snitsky (1)
Great Khali (1)