WWE And Impact Wrestling: 7 Worst Moments Of The Week (Mar 5)

3. CRAM IT JOSH!!!!

I’ve been pretty critical of Josh Matthews over the past few weeks. I guess I need to walk back some of it in one way. It appears he has been playing a character on Twitter, which was a prelude to what we would see from him on TV. It’s still stupid, but at least he hadn’t completely lost his mind as I had been fearing. Though telling a couple of podcast dudes to “shoot themselves” is still in poor taste in-or-out of character.

However, Josh performed his worst work ever on Thursday night (which is saying quite a bit since he was involved in the weekly trainwreck known as NXT along with Michael Cole back in the day). The guy still doesn’t grasp any of the finer points (or possibly any points) of announcing. On play-by-play, he misses obvious calls and doesn’t have the ability to make certain moments feel historic, like a Jim Ross can. On color commentary, he lacks any form of subtlety and won’t shut up about himself for more than two seconds. Guys like Jesse Ventura and Jerry Lawler would talk themselves up quite a bit, but still, their job was to make the wrestlers and storylines feel bigger than them, which they accomplished to great success.

Josh, though, couldn’t stop talking about Josh and how he’s better than Ross, how no announcer has ever been as tough as him, or how he was an amazing wrestler and how he’s friends with Cody Rhodes. It was way too much. It took 30 seconds of him doing the act to get what he was going for, but he hammered us over the head for two hours and brought down Impact in the process. Somehow I don't think he'll get much better in the role.