Hi Scott, hope you are well.
With so much recent blog talk centered around announcers and commentators, it made me think about everybody's favourite whipping boy, Michael Cole. Now many comments regarding Cole can be summed up as, "Well, he's no Jim Ross." Well, duh. That's obvious. He's pretty horrid, which brings me to my point.
I think we need to lower the bar in how we compare the suckitude of Cole. For example, who would you rather hear in a commentating contest between Michael Cole and...
Ron Trongard- Trongard, pretty easily
Duke Doherty- Even I gotta give that one to Cole
David Crockett- Wow. Although some like David's extreme, let's say, exuberance, I'm not so crazy about his approach. We'll call that one a push.
There were numerous bad commentators over the years that Cole's qualilty could be compared to, such as Lee Marshall, Hillbilly Jim, or any number of late-era WCW announcers. Personally, I'd go with Superstar Billy Graham, as both interjected themselves horribly, pursued their own agendas, and were clearly on something (For Graham, any number of drugs. For Cole, Vince's voice). Let's properly quantify Cole's badness as something other than "no Jim Ross!"
Thoughts?
I don’t know how professional announcers do it. I’ve been making test runs of the Podcast Of Doom and people who know me in real life know I sound like an NPR radio host on the phone at the best of times, so it’s weird listening back to myself through the headset. Anyway, my current plan is to do a Monday night recording where I talk about RAW and read some e-mails, probably about 15-20 minutes worth of stuff total. Nothing too in-depth, unless someone more tech-savvy than I wants to co-host via Skype and do all the mixing work for me.
On the with topic at hand, however.
Cole v. Trongard: Trongard was TERRIBLE, man. Vince only hired him out of spite for Verne Gagne. He didn’t get people over, didn’t call moves properly, just terrible. I’d much rather listen to Michael Cole, who at least has a sense of humor.
Cole v. Duke. Duke is so terrible that the first time I heard him on commentary I thought it was Bruce Pritchard doing an extended parody as a rib on everyone. Michael Cole wins again.
Cole v. Crockett. David Crockett FTW. He got angles over bigtime, spoke with passion, put over the guys who needed to get over, all the things a good commentator should do. Yeah, he was hyper, but I’d rather someone get too into the product than approach everything with detached irony.
Cole’s problem is that he’s Gorilla Monsoon without a Bobby Heenan/Jesse Ventura figure to keep him in line. Cole and JBL was tremendous because JBL didn’t put up with Cole’s bullshit and would speak his mind. Sometimes too much, but we’re talking about Cole’s problems here. Everyone else MC is working with currently are babyfaces and not particularly strong personalities at that. Lawler is so mellow and toned-down now compared to the early 90s that he just lets Cole say whatever he wants and then tries to refute it well after the fact. What we need is a Jesse Ventura who is willing to say SHUT UP COLE when he gets started.
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