Jimmy Smith On Triple H’s Reaction To His WWE RAW Debut, Having Vince McMahon & Others In His Ear

In a recent interview on Busted Open Radio, Jimmy Smith discussed Triple H’s reaction to his WWE RAW debut, being produced by Vince McMahon and others, and much more. You can read Jimmy Smith’s comments below.

Jimmy Smith on Triple H’s reaction to his RAW commentary debut: “Triple H texted me this morning and said, ‘Great job.’ That’s what matters. Keeping your gig depends on four or five key people. If they are all happy this morning, that’s what matters.”

On the biggest differences between WWE and MMA commentary: “What WWE does with play-by-play and analysis is very, very different from any other broadcast I’ve ever been on. In MMA, play-by-play and analyst are really well-defined roles and one doesn’t do what the other does. That’s not the case in WWE where they do a lot of package stuff and do a lot of ins and outs with commercials, which is never done by analysts in other sports. Also, I was told in the beginning before we started, ‘Joint locks are all you.’ You take that. A play-by-play guy would never do that in an MMA context, but they respect my MMA ability. The lines are way blurrier than any other sport I’ve done. So, to hear I did a good job was amazing because it was difficult to keep those lines straight while I was doing it.”

On being produced by Vince McMahon and others during RAW: “I had Bjorn Rebney yelling at me in Bellator. It happens. Dana [White] didn’t really do it in UFC, but I’ve dealt with people yelling at me or multiple people talking to me. That wasn’t new at all. When Vince hopped on, it was about things that were specific to WWE that I need to learn that I found very helpful. Whenever we’d say, ‘WWE fans’ it’s ‘our fans.’ There’s verbiage specific to the WWE. They specifically want certain things. Every time Vince jumped on, it was, ‘In WWE, we say this.’ Got it. It was all helpful. Three people were never talking at the same time. Even though it was three different voices, they all jumped on at different times. I had [Michael] Cole in my ear because he was producing, and I had Kevin [Dunn] and occasionally Vince. Vince, not that much, and Kevin and Cole were good at not stepping on each other. So, their on-air traffic was great and Kevin gave me plenty of time. The countdowns were shorter, I have to get used to that. It’s just the nature of the way wrestling works.”

On the advice he received backstage before his debut: “On the inside, the advice for me, from everyone from the beginning was, ‘You may screw up moves…’ They were surprised at all the moves I knew. Byron was like, ‘I stepped on you because I didn’t think you’d know the name of the move and you did.’ A big part of it was, they said, ‘You have energy. Just have energy. Tell people they should be excited to be here and be excited to be seeing what you’re seeing.’ That was the advice from like four people. Have energy during the match.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit Busted Open Radio with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.