10 Things You Learn Binge Watching Every WWE Raw From 2008
3. Mike Adamle As Raw GM Was A Trip
Who's your favourite GM in WWE history? Teddy Long? Mick Foley as Commissioner? Ask any number of fans to name their fave authority figure of all time and you probably won't have the name Mike Adamle volleyed back at you. Some might not even recall that this happened in the first place.
A beaming Shane McMahon announced Adamle as the new General Manager of WWE’s flagship on the 28 July 2008 Raw. The bumbling announcer eventually left the position voluntarily on the 3 November Raw after slapping Randy Orton the previous week - Orton demanded that Adamle be fired or he’d walk out, so Mike told Shane and Stephanie McMahon that he appreciated their support but he had to go.
It was all a gigantic waste of time, really.
Nobody had wanted Adamle in this kind of role to begin with, which is exactly why WWE did it. Swerve, bro! Vince Russo would be proud of it. Mike was a ‘C’ tier announcer from ECW, and he’d been out of his depth there, so it's astonishing that Vince and his writing staff believed Adamle could thrive in the pressure cooker of multiple segments on Monday nights.
This is a dude who didn't know Jeff Hardy's name, forgot what the ring ropes were called, and had been thoroughly unwanted on ECW after replacing Joey Styles alongside Tazz. Sticking him a mini-feud with Randy was brave, but the entire escapade boiled down to a failed experiment that was never going to work the way WWE wanted it to.
Episodes with Adamle at the helm were interesting, if nothing else.