Before I begin, I'm gonna wish you luck, Steve. Hopefully we can have ourselves a good debate.
--------------------------
Considering the question, I'm gonna define 'recent' times as the past 5-10 years. I don't know if Steve is going the same way, but that is my perspective of the question: the past 10 years.
In the past ten years, there's been only a handful of Color Commentators in both the WWE and TNA combined. Jerry Lawler, Tazz, Paul Heyman, Mick Foley, JBL, Coachman, Striker and Don West, among others. In order to be a successful color commentator, you have to be, in my opinion, two things:
-Entertaining
-Informative
Only a few guys have been able to pull off the color commentator role perfectly over the past few years. Two, in fact:
Lawler (pre-face turn)
JBL
I know a lot of people's darling commentator now, in the IWC, is Striker, because of his wide variety of moves, while Lawler has pretty much been scoffed at for years now. However, from his run with JR between 02-early 05, Lawler was informative and entertaining, being the perfect heel sympathizer to JR's face loving antics. Lawler isn't the guy I'm going to primarily focus on, as I believe JBL is the best commentator of the past decade.
Despite JBL only being a commentator for a year and a half, he provided the perfect mix of both entertainment and information towards the viewer. He could piss you off by laughing at a dirty tactic by a heel, or inform you why a wrestler would be doing what he is doing inside of the ring. When I watched Smackdown I always got a kick out of JBL belittling Cole every chance he got, and I think it was a fair argument that they were the best commentating team at the time.
As for why Striker isn't the best, it's simple: he doesn't add entertainment to a match. Commentary isn't critical at all to a match's quality, but boring commentary can draw you away from a match. Striker's stuff, while very informative, doesn't get you to love him or hate him. Whenever JBL was commentating, he was both informative and easy to hate with his banter with Cole and his sympathizing or excusing heels. King, the same way when he was heel. Striker seems to focused on explaining moves that he doesn't focus on the wrestlers inside of thering. JBL always seemed to cheer whenever a heel cheated his way to victory, which pissed me off because obviously that wasn't the way a match should've been won, yet he seemed ecstatic that he won. Striker will explain what the moves are and why they're doing it, but he's never showing his true colors on who he's rooting for, which all of the great commentators used to do.
Striker, he's good. But, in the past decade, Heel-King and JBL were far, far more entertaining and informative enough, that they're better then Striker.