In his youth, Mike Adamle played for the NFL for seven years before he retired and settled into a career as a football announcer, both in the studio as a host and as a sideline reporter. He was also the co-host of American Gladiators for over five years, and was one of the two sideline reporters during the one season of XFL in 2001. Adamle joined WWE in 2008 as a backstage announcer and immediately set the tone by referring to Jeff Hardy as Jeff Harvey. He later took over from Joey Styles as the ECW commentator along with Tazz, where he was best known for lines such as the classic Jamaican Me Crazy pretty much any time that Kofi Kingston was on the screen. Reportedly WWE were paying Adamle a lot of money to be so terrible, so he might as well be terrible in a high profile role. He was made the General Manager of Raw by Shane McMahon and even when he carried his script around on camera, he made just as many mistakes as he did in any of his other roles. Frequent gaffes such as Cory Rhodes and Umaga: The Samoan Bulldog plagued Adamles role as the General Manager and he lacked the respect of the wrestlers and the fans. While crowds were often dead silent anytime he was onscreen, they popped hard for his resignation in 2008 and Adamle went back to announcing for football.
