Corey Graves On Michael Cole's WrestleMania 37 Commentary Botch
Graves wants you to lay off Cole after his botched call of Bianca Belair vs. Sasha Banks.
Corey Graves has offered his two cents on Michael Cole's WrestleMania 37 commentary botch, when WWE's lead announcer erroneously claimed that Sasha Banks had kicked out of Bianca Belair's KOD finisher as the bell rang on the night one main event.
Speaking on a recent episode of his After the Bell podcast, Graves said that the typically unshakeable Cole felt bad about the situation, noting that the pinfall wasn't clear from where they were sitting (h/t Wrestling Inc. for the transcriptions):-
“If there’s anybody that’s truly unshakable, it’s [Michael] Cole. Cole felt bad, he felt terrible but I can relate. I almost thought the same thing, from our vantage point, it was not crystal clear. I’m not making excuses cause it was what it is, it didn’t take anything away from the amazing moment, it was reality. It was a very genuine real reaction, take into consideration, yes we have the monitor, yes we have audio in our headphones, but we’re also in a stadium full of 20,000 people."
Graves continued, stressing the difficulty of calling live professional wrestling in a noisy stadium while asking the fans to lay off Cole:
“Any wrestler’s book that you have ever read says being in a stadium is very different than an arena because it takes a second, the sound has to leave and come back before anybody can truly register. I myself, wasn’t sure. Hey, it’s the main event of WrestleMania, people have kicked out of each others finishers 35 times already tonight, why wouldn’t this be any different? It was a genuine shock after that so everyone, leave Michael Cole alone.”
The Cole/Graves announcing partnership seemingly ended at WrestleMania 37, as Corey was sent to Raw to form a new team with Byron Saxton and Adnan Virk the night after the show. Cole now sits with Pat McAfee on SmackDown.