Retired, but commentating?

By Scott Keith on August 24, 2012

Hey Scott,

I’m sure this question has come up before, but I don’t recall seeing it in a good, long while:

Why don’t see more retired wrestlers becoming commentators? Say what you will about Tazz, but he’s not altogether horrible. The same for Booker T. But then I think about guys who have been amazing on the mic, but not picked up the headset. Mick Foley is the best example of this. Though I recall he couldn’t stand having Vince in his ear all the time.

I mean, you look back at at least two of the (arguably) best commentators back in the day – Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura – and they chose to don the headset. Others who couldn’t wrestle as actively also did, such as Dibiase and Mr. Perfect (both of whom were quite good in my opinion).

So, why do you think we don’t see it as often anymore? Aside from Booker T, JBL’s the last guy to really take the reigns. Do you think it all boils down to these greater mic workers not wanting to be yelled at by Vince for 2-3 hours about what to say? Who are some other guys that you think would be tailor made to replace JR or Lawler? You mentioned recently that Punk could be a road agent, but I think he’d be even better as a commentator.

Thanks,
Nick Piers

I think we don't see it for the reasons you mentioned — they don't want to get yelled at by Vince for hours on end, and I'd also say that Vince wants his commentators to look like Josh Matthews, not Mick Foley. Plus guys just aren't trained to be witty and off-the-cuff anymore in the age of scripted promos. I will say that one of the best I've ever heard was Johnny Polo and I'm continually disappointed that Scott Levy seemingly has no desire to pursue that particular retirement path because he was AWESOME. You'd think Jim Cornette would have been better than he was, but he was merely OK as a color guy, funny lines aside. He was only really effective when he was getting his own storylines over in SMW, I think.

Anyway, Punk is always great on commentary, although I don't think he'd ever go that route. Cody Rhodes is pretty fun when he's on commentary ("I made a huge error in judgment" was a tremendous deadpan line during that Big Show feud.) I think Big Show could pull it off, but the problem there is that you don't want your color guy overshadowing the talent in terms of size. Ideally for your heel commentator you want someone who can talk a lot of shit about the babyfaces, but someone who the fans "know" would get his ass kicked if they ever said it to their face. Bobby Heenan was of course the perfect example of this, but JBL was good at it as well because he ALWAYS backed down from a fight in that persona.

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