WWE Trades Ruthless Aggression For PG | Wrestling Timelines
November 9, 2010 | Michael Cole Falls Asleep
It felt good being a WWF fan in the good old days, didn’t it? And wasn’t that the point?
You watched in the 1980s and early 1990s, enchanted by the real-life superheroes who always won in the end. Roddy Piper would run his nasty mouth, but Hulk Hogan shut him up. Randy Savage was an intense psychopath so fast and volatile that it felt like he could attack anybody at any minute, but Hogan put him down for the three. Bobby Heenan was cruel to your favourites, but Gorilla Monsoon never entertained his nonsense.
Now imagine that Heenan is the lead commentator, is mean-spirited, and has lost nearly every last shred of his legendary comedic sensibility. You arrive then at Michael Cole: heel play-by-play commentator.
Heel Michael Cole is an insufferable listen, and his role means he is inescapable. Literally, barely a second passes without his sardonic, joyless, snarky voice polluting the broadcast. He hates almost everything. Inexplicably, his role is to hate almost everything. It is one of the worst, most baffling, and least enjoyable choices WWE has ever made. It is anti-feel-good. What is a child meant to make of it? Children’s television is meant to be joyful. It’s meant to take place in a vibrant, pleasant world. Cole’s nasal misery soundtracks a world stained with the dark red and blue lighting of a soul-crushing era. Cole is awful on Raw, but on the November 9, 2010 edition of NXT, he reaches a nadir. WWE no longer presents Bra & Panties matches, but the boy’s club still finds a way to be misogynistic.
Cole sarcastically describes the action on the all-women’s season of the NXT game show as “riveting!” - it becomes his catchphrase - and the running joke is paid off when he falls asleep during the show. The show is performed by developmental prospects who are barely trained. Of course the action is subpar. Cole pisses himself laughing at the botches and timing miscues nonetheless in what is a thoroughly degrading hour of television.
Ultimately, this version of Vince McMahon - the man who has conquered the U.S. wrestling landscape, who destroyed his WCW competition many moons ago - is too powerful, out-of-touch, egotistical, and rampantly unpleasant to produce earnest and well-intentioned family-friendly programming.
And everybody who works for WWE wants to suck up to him.