6 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE Payback 2016
7. These Are The Announcers Kept?
Last week, WWE fired two announcers Rich Brennan and Kyle Edwards. Given that WWE still has Mauro Ranallo, Tom Phillips and Scott Stanford, its understandable that the company might have needed to thin the herd a bit.
But when those are the two let go and Byron Saxton still has a job? The announce team for Payback squabbled with each other, called moves by the wrong name on multiple occasions and got completely upstaged by Kevin Owens on commentary. KO spent much of the IC title match telling Saxton to shut up (at one point, he told him to sit there and look pretty because it was all he did well, then noted that he stunk at that too) and correcting Michael Cole. Saxton, as usual, added little to nothing to the broadcast as a whole.
Cole, by the way, miscalled a Sami Zayn Michinoku slam as a Blue Thunder Bomb, then called the real move moments later a traditional Blue Thunder Bomb. He also called a cross-armbreaker an armbar at one point.
None of this is to say that Cole or Saxton (or JBL) should outright be fired. But when two announcers are fired, you tend to look at those who were retained and see if they were better than those let go. And in this case, youd have a case to make otherwise.