Wrestlers as Announcers

[Guest razazteca]

I think it is about time for the WWF to rotate the announcer teams once again.  It is about time to get TAZZ, Cole, Coach away from the announcer tables.  Now this concept has worked before and could be successful today if the right talent is choosen.

 

If Venture and Heenan were the most successful heel announcers in the business, why not use this formula again?  Since Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels are not in good health make them announcers.  Now Ric Flair has proven himself as the best promo/interview man in the WWF in his short program against Vince McMahon.  Michaels has experience as an announcer when he ran the TWA promotion at San Antonio, which is not great but still better than Tazz, Cole and Coach combined.  Both Flair and Michaels could be charishmatic heel announcers giving a little insight on the action in the ring.  Maybe something more than just the usual joke by the King or "What a move" type of stuff that is now on the air.

[Guest Tony149]

I don't think Flair would make a good announcer. Guys who are great talkers don't always do well announcing ie. Arn Anderson. HBK isn't great either, but he can throw out a funny one-liner here and there.

[Guest converge241]

I dont think flair would work either. He's good in limited doses cause he probably has it all planned what he could say. His character would probably tire out real quick on commentary, if he was in character.

I think Michaels would be passable.

Al Snow and Raven strike me as good choices.

I still think a great idea to get some energy into the commentary and get some good publicity for The WWF would be to have a Tough Enough like open invitation for commentators.

Sure they might suck at first but they would have fans in there who are unabashedly excited about the product, and would get better over time.

Seriously would you rather have someone from this board doing commentary or Michael Cole?

wait that might not be the best example(anybody from this board)

well you know what i mean.

[Guest BaronVonStevie]

JR is about due for a rest. We can't have him replaced by Cole. I've always wanted to see Joey Styles and Dusty Rhodes call a match but I doubt we'll ever see that. For right now Shawn Michaels would definately be cool but I wouldn't mind seeing Hogan in the booth either.

[Guest Kahran Ramsus]

Michaels was good when he was the color man on RAW in 1994-1995.

[Guest Army Eye]

I don't know how far they intend on pushing him as a wrestler, but Hennig would be a good color man too

[Guest BaronVonStevie]

Perfect was great in the booth. I loved how he and McMahon played off one another. Like Vince McMahon is the worst play by play man ever and Perfect is a good color man. Perfect played a smart heel so well because Vince was the dumbest straight man in history.

[Guest Some Guy]

HBK would probably get himself over rather than get the wrestlers over.  Flair just wouldn't be that good IMO.  Perfect was pretty good in 95, they could do the Larry Z. thing with him, where he announces and a wrestler starts a fight with him and he has a comeback match.  Raven might be ok, I think Arn Anderson got caught off guard by being asked to announce on such short notice, he might be good.  

They should bring back Paul E. for Smackdown after the split.

[Guest BaronVonStevie]

good lord you'd rather see Raven call than HBK?

[Guest DEEP THOUGHT]

Raven is a pretty annoucer from what I've hear from him. Have you heard any of his announcing from 1993-1994 when he was portraying the Johnny Polo character in the WWF? He worked great with Vince McMahoin and Gorilla Monsoon on superstars.

[Guest Tony149]

Raven was pretty good announcing back in his early WWF run in the '90s. I doubt Heyman announces again. He'd rather stay behind the scenes.

[Guest BaronVonStevie]

you didn't say smart ass Johnny Polo, you said nihilistic Cobain mark Raven. Scotty as Raven has never been the best conversationalist. If he was Raven in the booth it'd be a snore, if he was Johnny Polo it'd be even more ridiculous.

 

But I suppose stranger things have happened >*cough*< Tazz >*cough*<

[Guest Some Guy]

"you didn't say smart ass Johnny Polo, you said nihilistic Cobain mark Raven. Scotty as Raven has never been the best conversationalist. If he was Raven in the booth it'd be a snore, if he was Johnny Polo it'd be even more ridiculous."

 

The WWF has changed the Raven character so much that it wouldn't be that much of a strech for him to become more glib.  As you alluded to Tazz went from all curses and insults to a decent announcer, so the more articulate Scott Levy would be able to make the adjustment better, especially given he has a few years of experience.

[Guest BaronVonStevie]

Tazz is working on a couple years too come to think of it. He IS an announcer. Man I hate VKM.

 

but back to Raven, he's more use to us on TV than off so yes I'll concede that with a goofy ass character change Levy could make a good color guy. It'd have to suck though like a "grunge is so 5 minutes ago" kinda hook. Raven behind an announcer's desk instead of in a ring would just be one more drop in the bucket of the recent WWF creative disasters. If you want to give the job to a wash up go with Al Snow IMO. Snow tried out on Heat for a while and ran circles around Cole.

 

Still say Styles/Rhodes would own.

[Guest razazteca]

Flair could be a decent announcer if he would call it straight, maybe doing a Prof Mike Tenay gimmick or Flair could be a heel similiar to Cyrus, either way Flair would be "The Man of Announcing" wooooooooooooo!

 

What about DDP as an announcer?  He started in the business as an announcer, why not try it again?  Just as long he does not do the Positive Paige gimmick.

[Guest BaronVonStevie]

Flair could get by with sort of a "Bobby Heenan on ecstasy" gimmick. Like he could be this smart ass heel who still thinks he's the classiest son of a bitch alive. He'd hit on anything with a skirt(Pat Paterson excluded) and screw around with JR. I'd dig it I guess.

[Guest razazteca]

I would prefer the Ric Flair announcer character that is anti-McMahon/anti-Sports Entertainment, rather than the "I'll take you to Space Mountain" character, but Flair putting Stephanie in her place would make some entertaining tv.....hmmmm errr may not.  And this would set up the David vs Shane PPV match-up.

[Guest Loss4Words]

Ric Flair has that weird lisp when he speaks low-key, so I don't think it would work.

 

I thought Shawn was great in '94 and early '95 and also was solid during the summer of '98. Raven was pretty awesome too.

 

Hearing Chris Jericho do guest commentary the last few weeks has made me want him to start broadcasting when he retires.

 

Hennig was good at one point too.

 

Oh my God, anyone else remember when Jim Neidhart and Hillbilly Jim used to work the broadcast booth? What a horrible LSD flashback that is.

 

And in all honesty, Nash would mean more to the WWF as a color guy than a wrestler.

[Guest Kahran Ramsus]

"Hearing Chris Jericho do guest commentary the last few weeks has made me want him to start broadcasting when he retires."

 

Jericho would be awesome as an announcer.  I just don't want him to retire anytime soon.

[Guest The Vanilla Midget]

i dunno how well he would hold up with commentating stories where he isnt really involved.  at the moment he is great, but then the conversations are about or link to him in some way.  it would be interesting to see if he would unequivocably put somebody else over on commentary, but i imagine we will have to wait until his wrestling career is over.

[Guest Mystery Eskimo]

I'd go for Nash or Hennig. Did someone really suggest Hogan?

[Guest Human Fly]

I thought Cyrus was great too bad there is probably no chance of him coming back though. A shakeup would be nice, Michael Cole is getting old, and maybe they could let Tazz actually wrestle a little more.

[Guest areacode212]

I also enjoyed Shawn a lot when he took over Savage's color position in '94-'95 (while recovering from the hand injury). He had some pretty funny lines, and made some pretty cool shoot-like comments, like how Luger hadn't really amounted to anything in the WWF, or talking about how boring the match was (I seem to recall this was some tag team match involving IRS). Yeah, in hindsight, it may have been obnoxious and didn't exactly endear him to the guys in the back, but it was still pretty cool hearing someone actually say stuff like that on the air in 1995. I was PISSED when he was replaced by Cornette, who was inexplicably popular with the 'net crowd at the time. I found Jim's color to be really hard to listen to (like Lawler is now), and thought his jokes were extremely lame.

 

But when HBK returned to do it a couple of years later, he would speak with that Hogan-esque growl which got VERY annoying very quickly. But since he's not really doing anything right now, I think he would be a good heel color man, as long as he went back to his old style of talking. He's over as a babyface with the crowd, but a superkick to Rock/Austin would probably take care of that.

 

Scott Levy (in any character) would also be interesting, but I'd rather see him wrestle. It would be nice to hear him slip in a few comic book references, though.