6 Ups & 10 Downs From WWE Raw (6 Jan - Results & Review)

Downs…

10. Announcer Downgrade

The Raw announcers clearly were instructed to take into account an audience unfamiliar with the current WWE product, explaining storylines and the history of rivalries and characters. They dumbed it down a lot, which dragged the show down a good bit at times.

However, even if one looks past the “WWE 101” info-dumps, there was one crime that cannot be ignored: WWE bumped the Raw announce team of Joe Tessitore and Wade Barrett for Michael Cole and Pat McAfee. Cole has been tolerable for a while now, but losing Tessitore and gaining McAfee has to be one of the biggest downgrades since Mike Adamle replaced Joey Styles on ECW.

McAfee adds nothing except volume to the product. If fans like obnoxious yelling without any substance, Pat is your guy. What really stinks is that Tessitore and Barrett were doing a great job (and hopefully will continue to do so on SmackDown if that team is staying intact) and they seemingly were bumped because Cole is “the voice of WWE” and McAfee is a high-priced “name” announcer, and Raw on Netflix is a big deal.

Also, just a preference, but Alicia Taylor really gives off “try hard” vibes when she announces matches. It’s gravely yelling for the sake of it and again adds nothing to the product but noise.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.