10 Fascinating WWE Royal Rumble 2008 Facts
9. It Was The Debut Of Mike Adamle
At first, when my friends and I saw 1970s NFL running back-turned-broadcaster Adamle pop up that night in the Garden, we were kinda optimistic. He was a decent host of American Gladiators in the day, and he wasn't one of those young catalog model-turned-wooden interviewers that WWE hires for aesthetic's sake. Perhaps veteran Adamle could bring some gravitas to the shows.
But man, when he said "Jeff Harvey", it was over. As time passed, it was clear just how little product knowledge Adamle possessed, and his cheerful cluelessness turned into a potent running gag. WWE went with the flow and made him one of the biggest meta-jokes in company history.
It stopped being amusing in 2017, when Adamle retired from all broadcasting, after revealing diagnoses of dementia and CTE. Both conditions are likely related to harsh blows to the head he endured as a football player. At the time, Adamle also revealed that he had been suffering from epileptic seizures for close to twenty years.