WWE Raw Commentary

[Coffey]

In this day and age, how much does the commentary even matter? WCW had bad commentary, especially when Stevie Ray and Ed Ferrera were doing it. Ring of Honor has always had bad commentary. The commentary in XPW was the shits. So, how much does it even matter anymore?

 

Obviously Jerry "The King" Lawler doesn't bring a lot to the table. He just acts like a horny old man and switches between heel and face at the drop of a hat. The only thing consistant about him is his friendship with Jim Ross. His jokes are well beyond stale.

 

Jim Ross just isn't himself anymore. He's obviously a shell of his former self and I believe that he should've been replaced a long time ago. He can hardly talk and all of his catchphrases, if you can call them that, are played out. He seems to have only two moods these days: apathetic & super hard sell mode.

 

When commentary is good it helps add to the product and sell matches. When commentary is bad people seem to be apathetic towards it.

 

The commentary in WWE, at least on the Raw side, has been bad for a long time. So, do you guys think it's time for a change? If so, who could get the job done? Do you still think that Ross & Lawler can add something to the product?

[sek69]

My main beef with Jim Ross is that it's becoming too obvious which guys he doesn't think much of. They kind of made this part of the angle with Edge. If the announcers can't get behind a guy, why would the fans?

[Loss]

I voted yes, and maybe I'm clinging to false hope, but I think a large part of Ross's problem is Lawler. From what I understand, his commentary at the Royal Rumble in '04 was really good because he was working with Tazz, and in '01, he was much better than he is now working with Paul Heyman. The chemistry that used to be there just isn't anymore, and I think they need a new color guy. Why they brought Lawler back after the Stacy Carter debacle I'll never know.

 

There are times, like at WM XX, where Eddy and Benoit were doing their post-match celebration and Ross killed the moment in some ways by screaming instead of just staying quiet and letting Benoit and Eddy tell the story themselves. I think a good announcer knows when to talk and when to shut up.

 

Cole and Tazz, on all the 2004 WWE I've watched so far, have been more than adequate. I don't think Cole would be as good without Tazz, who does color, but he does it in more the Jesse Ventura style where he also explains the psychology and acts like he knows something about wrestling. It's not like Lawler doesn't have the wrestling knowledge to do the job. I don't know what his problem is.

[Guest Hunter's Torn Quad]

Lawler does infinitely more harm than Ross. I can only guess that the reason Chester the Molester stays on is because Vince gets off on his horny old man routine. Lawler is a terrible color guy, because he very rarely ever tries to get anything over as serious or meaningful, and is totally useless when it comes to getting over the new wrestlers or the more modern moves. When he did commentary during the Bret v Shawn Iron Man match at WM XII he almost single-handedly killed the drama of the match dead by burying moves left and right, and trying to crack jokes all throughout what was meant to be a major wrestling match for a major title. Lawler adds absolutely nothing to the matches, and he really should be replaced, with the only problem being who to replace him.

 

As far as Jim Ross goes, while he has generally lost a step since his heyday, when it comes to selling a major angle or a major emotional moment, there is nobody better when Ross is at his peak, which he can still reach on occasion.

[MyOwnSummer]

I personally enjoyed Coach and Lawler on commentary last week more than I do JR and Lawler. Coach should be doing commentary with JR in my opinion.

[Guest Hunter's Torn Quad]

The one person JR should never do commentary with is Coach. When Coach and JR do commentary, Vince, who is on the headset, invariably feeds Coach lines to say purely to rile up JR for no real reason, and it takes away from JR trying to get the matches over.

[Guest Some Guy]

I think they should do JR and Tazz on Raw and Heymen and Cole on SD!. Tazz is still trying to improve and with a younger guy pushing I think JR will do better. Heymen was great at getting angles over when he was on commentary in 2001 and he would be better at carrying Cole than Tazz is. This could easily be accomplished with the draft and they can drop Lawler down to Heat with Coach.

 

JR and King are terrible together at this point, neither one seems to give a shit about the product because I son;t think either guy likes the product. Ross is a Watts mark and Lawler is a mark for himself. There is nothing on Raw that reflects either of those two styles, so they just don't care. King was much better in 94/95 when the cartoon era was still in full effect and JR was great in 96, 97, and 98 when the product was more to his liking, 97 in particular.

[Strummer]

Lawler was hired back because Vince loves the guy. Vince's idea is that Lawler is speaking for or representing the young horny teenager watching the show. He's saying what they are thinking.

 

I enjoyed Lawler up until about late 99 when he started to turn face and go gaga over the women (mainly Debra and Terri). He was a commentator in the mold of Heenan, where he would make fun of the faces and praise the heels instead of getting over moves, psychology and the like. There has been debate whether that can be effective or not, but I believe in can be useful in getting wrestlers over. Heenan proved that. Lawler has stated several times that he would rather wrestle than commentate, but Vince thinks he's too old to work full time. Like I said earlier, it boils down to Vince loving the guy.

[Guest Dazed]

Ross has an irritating habit of both downplaying and overplaying things. Hearing him screaming over things could put things over huge, but it happens far, far too often for him to be taken seriously. Name me one sport (it may be different in America, now I think about it) where the commentator acts like that. Really, it's embarassing to hear him acting like that, and certainly puts me off watching with non-fans.

 

On the other hand, he sometimes just doesn't show an interest and downplays things. When Tomko beat the shit out of Benoit with a ladder before Mania, JR was just like not bothered.

 

Lawler is an all round joke, his constant cracks about the divas is tiresome, especially since following the brand split, RAw has traditionally been about women's wrestling, rather than the SmackDown T&A shit. It means that a female wrestler can't put over a serious angle (like Kane threatening to rape Lita on their wedding night, which Lawler declared "hot".) He tries too hard to be like Heenan too, and his jokes generally fall flat. This happens at the expense of discussing the actual match.

[Guest Cam Chaos]

Ross screams too much. Lawler jokes too much. Cole too an extent tries to hard to be professional but it works at times and fails at others. Tazz I think adds the right amount of salacious attitude and informed commentary. I actually like Tazz and Cole more if only because Tazz is not a complete heel supporter and both guys remember continuity. I thought Ross and Tazz at the Rumble was quite tolerable.

[sek69]

Kevin Nash is tailor made for the kind of commentary role Jesse Ventura used to provide back in the 80s. The only problem is that these days they like to have guys beat up announcers to get quick heel heat and there's no way Nash would work in that role.

 

I think Coach and a full face Lawler would be a good team for RAW, since Coach is probably the best announcer on that side now.

[Coffey]

I actually like the idea of Ross/Tazz & Josh/Heyman. Coach/Lawler on Heat though? They're both color, it wouldn't work. When the new USA deal comes up, since Velocity is going bye-bye, one would think that WWE would want to utilize Heat again.

 

Then again, they don't really utilize Raw & Smackdown, so maybe not.

 

I would actually prefer if Ross and Lawler were both gone from commentary. I don't care if someone could make Ross better or not, he's played out to me.

[goodhelmet]

I agree with you Coffey but who whould replace them?

[Coffey]

No clue. That's the problem. I like Heyman on color and I like Josh on play-by-play. Actually, Josh isn't even good, I just like him more than Ross and Cole.

 

Coach is coming into his own as well.

 

So, either Coach or Heyman on color and preferably a new play-by-play man.

 

Then you have to worry about Smackdown too.

[Loss]

I agree that Kevin Nash coming in as a color guy would be the only way I could really tolerate him being in the company at all. I'd be worried that he'd bury guys, though -- Konnan was funny in 2000 as well, but he took the opportunity to throw shoot comments at everyone he didn't like. I think Nash would do the same.

 

Nothing beats Juvi's run in late 1999 as a color guy, though.

 

"I see they found a new gimmick for the worst wrestler in the company." -- Juvi, on Prince Iaukea debuting the "Prince" gimmick

 

Tenay: "Lex Luger is an amazing physical specimen."

Juvi: "Big deal! I could look like that in two weeks."

Tenay: "Two weeks?"

Juvi: "The juice is on the juice! The juice is on the juice!"

 

Juvi: "Never cheer Vampiro or you will die. He stole my finisher. It's called a Juvi Driver, jackass!"

[Coffey]

I see that the current vote count is 9-0. Does ANYONE like the Raw commentary?

[Guest Danny Dubya v 2.0]

I personally enjoyed Coach and Lawler on commentary last week more than I do JR and Lawler. Coach should be doing commentary with JR in my opinion.

Ditto. Although Coach would be too focused on ripping on JR and distract from the match, as was already pointed out, at least that'd be an improvement over JR and King.

 

I'm perfectly content with the Tazz & Cole pairing, though I wish Heyman was a commentator at least somewhere.

[Guest Cam Chaos]

I think Tazz-Heyman would be pretty awesome but may end up having way too many inside jokes. Ross-Heyman was great, shame Ross pulled rank to get him removed. I remember they got into a serious argument once and I was like "FANTASTIC."