10 Biggest Missed Opportunities From WWE Draft 2016
3. Getting The New Announce Teams Wrong
Mauro Ranallo has been a revelation on SmackDown, and his play-by-play skills have gone a long way to revitalising commentary in WWE. His incisiveness, pitch perfect delivery, and years of experience calling live sports made him a perfect choice for the blue brand’s lead announcer, and his presence even appeared to be pulling Jerry Lawler back to his Attitude Era best.
Raw’s much-maligned team of Michael Cole, JBL, and Byron Saxton, however, continued to be one of the Monday night flagship’s major bugbears. Their interactions had become tiresome, they did little to explain or sell the action before them, and more often than not their contributions descended into little more than a series of finely-chosen soundbites, Maggle.
Corey Graves, on the other hand, has been so strong in his role as NXT’s color commentary that he’s already been compared to the great Bobby Heenan. It was announced late last night that he would be joining the Raw announce team, but it’s a bittersweet promotion.
For all Graves’ talents, he’s going to be working alongside Cole and Saxton. He’s a huge upgrade on JBL, but given Cole’s regression and Saxton’s complete lack of anything, it’s worthy of caution. Besides, how is Graves going to fare with Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn feeding him lines all night? SmackDown, meanwhile, will retain Ranallo, and “gain” JBL and David Otunga on a full-time basis.
WWE were right to promote Graves, but the balance is all wrong. As the company’s best color commentary, it would’ve made a lot more sense to place him alongside Ranallo, WWE’s best play-by-play guy.