Looking at Five Potential WWE Commentators

Fans of SmackDown Live that had gotten used to John “Bradshaw” Layfield commentating on the show were undoubtedly shocked to hear over the weekend that he was resigning from the show effective immediately. No drawn-out goodbye. No JBL getting written out by being beat up by some young up & comer or getting kicked out of the building by Gorilla Monsoon. Just a social media post explaining that he’s stepping away to devote more time to charitable work. Good for him.

JBL leaving opened up a slot at the announce table. We know two people isn’t an option these days, so somebody would have to join Tom Phillips & Byron Saxton. It’s always fun to speculate who might be joining the announce team. Would Jerry Lawler make yet another comeback? How about somebody on the NXT announce team? Nigel McGuinness? Percy Watson? Maybe Mauro Ranallo? Mauro taking JBL’s job would have been fitting. Renee Young got a lot of talk on Twitter. A female addition to the booth would have been interesting. Peter Rosenberg & Sam Roberts seem popular with WWE brass. Daniel Bryan did pretty well on the Cruiserweight Classic shows & doesn’t get to host Talking Smack anymore. How about Good ol’ JR, Jim Ross?

It was a little underwhelming when WWE announced on Monday afternoon that Corey Graves got the gig.

I like Corey. He’s done a good job with whatever they’ve given him, whether it be Raw, 205 Live, NXT, PPV work or random stuff on WWE Network. His addition of SmackDown to his Raw duties means two things:

-WWE really likes Corey Graves
-WWE doesn’t like anybody else they have in the announcing pipeline

To be fair, McGuinness got a promotion too. He’s adding 205 Live & Main Event to his NXT duties. It goes to show how little faith they have in anybody else that Graves gets to be like John Cena and appear on any show he feels like. The fact that Lawler, Ross, Booker T & JBL keep making returns shows that there isn’t a ton of positive development in WWE’s announcer pool.

Is it surprising? Not really. WWE is one of the tougher places to announce for, with one of the most demanding bosses in the history of the workplace. If you don’t have thick skin, you don’t last long with Vince McMahon. I don’t think its an impossible gig though, and I think there are plenty of worthy options currently woorking for the company. Now seems as good a time as any to consider some people currently under contract to WWE that could prove to be effective commentators if given the chance.

I’m throwing out a couple of people that I think would be great at it but have too many other things going on or don’t have any interest in it. Chris Jericho would be awesome, but he’s not making six-month comebacks to sit behind a table. He wants to wrestle & be creative in the ring. Paul Heyman is happy being Brock Lesnar’s mouthpiece and has shown no interest in doing anything else. Mick Foley never wants to be anywhere near a headset again. Here are five people that I think would be up for the gig.

Goldust

The Bizarre One was set to unveil a masterpiece at SummerSlam. That never happened, and he’s been awfully quiet ever since. Goldust is getting pretty close to his fifth decade and has been active in wrestling for three of them, so it wouldn’t be terribly surprising if he winds down his in-ring career soon. Why not try him out in the booth? Perhaps wrestling commentary is something else that runs in the family.

I imagine Goldust would sound a little different on commentary than Big Dust though. Maybe not as much talk about clubberin, the pay window or the mothership, but he’d be creepy enough to make things interesting.

Titus O’Neil

It’s no secret that WWE values diversity in its announcers. They really wanted David Otunga to do well, and when that didn’t work they brought back Booker T. Byron Saxton & Percy Watson are doing their thing too. I think Titus would be much better at announcing than anybody I’ve mentioned in this paragraph. He’s great at getting talent over on the microphone, as he’s been doing lately with Akira Tozawa and the rest of the cruiserweights. He’s very excitable and is good at projecting that.

Plus, he has no problem standing up to Vince.

You think he’s gonna put up with that dude yelling things I can’t print here in his ear? No chance in hell.

Kevin Owens

Owens has spent much of his WWE run preoccupied with how terribly he’s treated by various announcers. Everytime he appears as a guest on commentary he talks about how terrible the people calling the matches are. He was one of PWG’s regular guest commentators a few years ago and got good reviews back then. WWE trusts him with the microphone as he seems to talk as often and as much as anybody else on the roster. Maybe KO will bring back the tuxedo t-shirt and make the move to the booth one of these days. If he wants to complain so much about Michael Cole, Tom Phillips & everybody else, he can prove that he can do better.

Dolph Ziggler

I remember when most of us had hopes for Ziggler. Many of us thought he was underutilized & underappreciated. There’s still some of that out there, but it seems pretty obvious that he’s reached his peak in the ring. He’s had a solid career…maybe it hasn’t lived up to some folks’ expectations, but when your name is “Dolph Ziggler” and people take it seriously now, you’ve done pretty well. Maybe it’s time for Dolph to step out of the ring & serve WWE in a different capacity. He’s been on all kinds of talking head shows, so he should be used to bloviating by now. At least wrestling is something he knows about.

The Miz

If you’re old like I am, you’ll recall Mike Mizanin starting his WWE main roster career in 2006 as the host of SmackDown. The common thought at the time was that he was annoying, but to me he was just kinda there. He moved on to other things and is doing quite well, so there’s no rush for him to find another job within WWE. However, it would make sense for him to come full circle and return to the WWE broadcast team at the end of his career. He’s a smooth talker that’s great at getting himself & his opponents over. He also has the demeanor of a classic heel. He talks a big game, he gets some big wins…but more often than not the top super duper star shuts him up. Once Miz gets behind the microphone he won’t have to worry about that quite as often.

Are there other individuals currently on the WWE payroll do you think would make a great announcer on SmackDown or other WWE shows? Let us know in the comment section!