10 Wrestlers That Love Their Lives Too Much To Retire
4. Jim Ross
Is Jim Ross in the middle of the industry's most unlikely reinvention thanks to his role with AEW?
Once celebrated as the business' best ever announcer, JR's later years seemed to highlight a rather inconvenient truth - he just didn't have it anymore. Moving between part-time gigs with WWE and NJPW, the action might have been entirely different but the audio was frustratingly familiar - Ross wasn't the era-defining firecracker he once was. Unimaginable pain his personal life - his beloved wife Jan was killed in an auto accident in 2017 - had to contribute to a gentle professional decline, but voice of multiple generations at long last found his way back to the front of the queue when All Elite Wrestling put their faith in him from launch.
Ross was ropey at Double Or Nothing, but the improvement has been steep, sharp and sensational. Mere weeks into TNT's Dynamite and Ross, Tony Schiavone and Excalibur are the most dynamic team in wrestling television. Furthermore, this is no carry-job - Ross adds gravitas to everything and smartly links together the generations separating his partners.
Brilliantly, his primary value is still his voice. Keen to catch channel-hoppers and keep them, Ross' tones have been trusted by Cody, The Young Bucks et al to do just that.