MAJOR Changes Coming To WWE's Raw Announce Team
A big shake-up is coming to the WWE Raw commentary booth next week...
The current WWE Raw announce team is being split up.
Per Wrestling Inc.'s Raj Giri, former ESPN sportscaster Adnan Virk will replace Tom Phillips as Raw play-by-play commentator from the 12 April episode. There is currently no word on what this means for Phillips' role in the company.
Elsewhere, Andrew Zarian of the Mat Men podcast reports that Virk will be joined by Corey Graves and Byron Saxton in the booth:-
I can confirm the report by @RajGiri_303 that Raw is getting a change-up for the announce team
Corey, Byron, and Adnan Virk are headed to Raw.
Advertisement— Andrew Zarian (@AndrewZarian) April 10, 2021
The lack of Samoa Joe would be the biggest story here. The former NXT and United States Champion had sat alongside Phillips and Saxton since April 2020, having been sidelined by injury problems, but dipped out for the 29 March episode, with MVP temporarily taking his spot.
Graves, meanwhile, currently forms part of the SmackDown team with Michael Cole.
Phillips' removal means he'll be off Raw for the first time since January 2020, when he replaced Vic Joseph on play-by-play. His replacement, Virk, left ESPN in 2019, when the network fired him for allegedly leaking information to the media. Virk later told the Washington Post that while he had "made a mistake," he felt that ESPN had let him go to make an example out of him.