Bruce Prichard Says Michael Cole Is The Most Underrated Commentator In History

On the latest episode of Something To Wrestle With, Bruce Prichard talked about the period in 2005 when WWE sought to move on from Jim Ross as the lead voice of Raw. He noted that Vince McMahon was committed to a change in the look and feel of the broadcast team.

This eventually led to the recruitment of Mike Goldberg from UFC and the eventual hiring of Joey Styles. He also praised Michael Cole. You can check out some highlights below:

On WWE Trying To Replace Ross:

“It was absolutely all the above. It was the look and — not JR’s fault, but he suffered from Bill’s palsy. And sometimes doing a show starting at nine o’clock at night, he’s tired. It’s more extreme. And you look at JR, and people would say, ‘Oh, man, this guy suffered a stroke or something.’ And I don’t care who you are, there’s a portion of the audience that makes them uncomfortable.

“And Jim could slur his words, and he wasn’t the Jim Ross of old. But he was good old JR. Then for the Mike Goldberg’s, there were a lot of young people in the studio who knew of him, who thought he was great. And Vince listened to them and thought, ‘Okay, great. Let’s try this. Let’s do something drastically different.’ And when he fell out, Well, who else? And people were fans of Joey Styles. And it became Joey.”

On Cole Being the Most Underrated Commentator:

“100%. I don’t think that people really realize what a hard worker and how prepared Michael Cole is, and how much he puts into his gig, no matter what he’s doing. He — from day one, always wanted to learn, willing to do anything and everything. And thrived to — he didn’t want to replace anybody. He didn’t want to be anybody else, he just wanted to be Michael Cole doing what he was asked to do.

“And Michael, because of doing that, has his own identity now. But I think Michael has always been very well prepared, and he’s good at his job. And he’s done it for a long, long, long time.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Something To Wrestle With an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.