With Jim Ross’ long, storied WWE tenure coming to an end this week, we’ve been doing plenty celebrating of Jim Ross’ legendary commentating career around here, but JR also stepped out from behind the commentary desk more than a few times during his 30+ years in the business.

Unfortunately a lot of Jim Ross’ non-commentary moments are best left forgotten as embarrassing one of their most valuable employees became a borderline fetish for WWE, but JR had his moving, memorable and downright kickass moments too. Here are a few of my favorite Jim Ross in-ring moments…

JR Candy Jars Tazz

Back in 2000, watching the once unstoppable ECW champion Taz (now with an extra Z and 30 additional pounds) feuding with Jerry Lawler and Jim Ross seemed like an egregious misuse of talent, but looking back, well, it was still an egregious misuse of talent, but it’s easier to appreciate the story for what it was. Tazz was fantastic as the bully who sets his sights on what he thinks is a soft target after finding he can’t push his weight around in the big pond. Also, check out those couple minutes of wrestling before JR gets involved — let it never be forgotten that Jerry Lawer was the f*cking best in the ring before becoming the hollowed out husk he currently is.

But Tazz wasn’t a complete clown yet in mid-2000, so he gets Lawler in the Tazzmission and all looks bleak until JR deploys the jar of hard candy that was a ringside staple during his tenure. JR casually checking out his lacerated hand and shouting about how Tazz DAMN WELL DESERVED IT is pretty badass stuff, but it’s really only scratching the surface of how cold Jim Ross could be.

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JR Sics Dr. Death On Bart Gunn

This is about the closest you’re ever going to get to maybe, sort of, feeling like you want to boo good ol’ JR, which is an accomplishment in and of itself — when you’re as beloved as Jim Ross, getting people to dislike you takes some serious talent. This was from ’99 when JR returned from another bout with Bell’s Palsy, and WWE tried to do the heel thing with him again. JR getting all up in the tragically derpy Bart Gunn’s face is wonderfully uncomfortable, and then Bart steps out of line and JR summons Dr. Death Steve Williams and his beautiful musk-soaked beard to ANNIHILATE HIS ASS. The fact that the Jim Ross/Dr. Death combo only lasted a couple weeks is something I’ll forever be sad about.

JR Boots Michael Cole In The Balls

Speaking of Jim Ross’ brief ’99 heel run, it also involved JR kicking a very young, 120-pound, entirely denim-clad Michael Cole square in the nuts. To give you an idea of why the ’99 Ross heel turn didn’t work — WWF thought Jim Ross kicking Michael Cole in the balls would make people boo Jim Ross. Yeah.

While we’re on the subject of Jim Ross inflicting sudden violence on shitty announcers, here he is giving Jonathan Coachman a stunner…

JR Tries To Keep The Train On The Rails In The Midst Of So Much WCW Dumbness

I’ll admit, I wasn’t a NWA/WCW kid during the 80s and early-90s when JR worked for them, so this is going to be a WWE/F-heavy list, but I kind of love this clip. Everything awful about early-90s WCW is there — surfer Sting bellowing a promo, Sid Vicious and The muthaflippin’ Black Scorpion. Amongst all this legendary stupidity, JR valiantly tries to keep his pointless interview segment under control.

“Black Scorpion tried to attack Sting from behind! Let’s get outta here!”

YES, LET’S.

JR Debuts Fake Razor

People often talk about fake Diesel and Razor Ramon as some shameful low-point in WWE/F history, as if the company was legitimately trying to pass off Kane and, uh, some other guy, as the real Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, which they weren’t. The point, from second one, was that these were obvious impostors being presented by evil head of talent relations Jim Ross. It was a great concept and one of the earliest instances of SHOOTIN’ BROTHER on a big stage. It was this f*cking scorcher of a promo, delivered by mild mannered old Jim Ross that first outed Vince McMahon as the real owner of the company and lit the first embers of the Attitude Era.

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JR Get Destroyed By Stone Cold

JR has been beat up a lot. A lot. It was all-too-rare for JR to escape an Oklahoma Raw without eating somebody’s fist (or Vince McMahon’s b-hole). Most of these segments were sad and uncomfortable and have no place here, but there was at least one good JR beatdown segment. Hell, it was more than good — it might have been JR’s best in-ring performance ever, and was definitely one of the most harrowing, emotional segments in WWE/F history.

It was the Smackdown after Wrestlemania X7 — Stone Cold had just viciously turned on the Rock and aligned himself with Vince McMahon, and Austin’s best friend Jim Ross was out to get answers. First of all, yes, this calibre of stuff used to happen on Smackdown. Sigh. Jim Ross sounds like he’s on the verge of tears the entire time — hell, his bit about how he’s lost his best friend puts me on the verge of tears every time. Austin on the other hand is pure f*cking evil. None or the smirking or easy capitulation of today’s heels, just pure, unfiltered, irrational hatred. Stone Cold is just downright mean, and you spend the entire segment squirming in your seat like you’re watching a Quentin Tarantino movie. Then the violence errupts, and it’s awful and graphic, but it doesn’t go on forever and is punctuated by RIDICULOUS PIMP SUIT VINCE MCMAHON coming out and telling Austin to OPEN HEEM UP. Ah, man, tingles. So good.

The only thing that tarnishes the segment is that there aren’t two JRs — one to get beat up in the ring, and one to lose his shit about it at ringside. DAMMIT I’VE HAD ENOUGH! GAWD AS MY WITNESS, HE’S BROKEN ME IN HALF!

So, those are a few of my favorite Jim Ross in-ring moments. Of course, I’ve really only scratched the surface, so feel free to hit the comments and share your own favorite memories of Jim Ross away from the commentator’s table.