The Press Box - The WWE’s Michael Cole on ‘WrestleMania,’ His Career in News, Great Announcers of the Past, and the Art of Calling a Match

Episode Date: March 30, 2022

Bryan is joined by WWE announcer Michael Cole in advance of ‘WrestleMania 38.’ They discuss Cole’s former role at CBS News, his transition to announcing for WWE, the mechanics in calling matches, his relationships with former and current announcers and wrestlers, and much more! Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Michael Cole Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For as long as I've known the NBA, it's been a Stars League. But even among the Stars, there's an exclusive club. Russell, Dr. Jay, Jordan, Kobe. They're all part of a select group that paved the way for the NBA superstar of today. And some even shared secrets with each other along the way. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Jackie McMullen. And this is the icons club. Hello, media consumers.

Welcome to the press box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here along with producer Erica Servantes. David Shoemaker is off today, but we're going to talk about a very shoemakery subject, professional wrestling. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, so of course I'm a professional wrestling fan. Of course I rooted for Hulk Hogan as a kid. Of course the WWE's attitude era shaped me more than any actual class I took during college. By the early 2000, Shoemaker and I were watching Monday Night Raw on our Lower East Side apartment every week.

It was such an occasion that we always sat in the same seats, me and the white chair to the left, David on the plaid couch to the right. Now, one part of wrestling I always found interesting was wrestling announcers. Wrestling announcers are like Joe Buck and Troy Aikman from a parallel universe. They call the action, tell stories, and read promos, but they also have a very specific and very very very unusual job. And with WrestleMania starting Saturday, I wanted to talk to an announcer who has been sitting at a highly breakable ringside table for 25 years,

the WBE's Michael Cole. In 1997, Cole left a job as a radio newsman to join WWE. Cole learned the ropes, unintended. And over time, he became one of only four play-by-play announcers since the 80s to attain the title of the WWE's signature voice. You're going to hear Cole talk about what he thinks the job of a wrestling announcer is,

what WW CEO Vince McMahon says into his earpiece during a match, whether Cole knows the results of the matches he's calling while he's calling them, and what happened the night his color analyst had a real-life heart attack while sitting at his side. If I were a wrestling announcer, I'd tell you you might be witnessing the greatest interview in the history of sports entertainment. Here's how to call a professional wrestling. match with Michael Cole. All right, Michael, you went on the radio show of Pat McAfee, who among his 900 other jobs

is your color analyst on Friday nights. And you said something I thought was interesting. I'm an actor. What do you mean by actor? I always tell everyone when they ask me about working for WWE and sports entertainment, I explained to them that I am a fake broadcaster for a make-believe sport. and I use a fake name. And I mean all of that with the utmost respect.

I'm not poking fun at the profession by saying that, but I try to use that analogy to explain to people what it's like to be a commentator in sports entertainment. My real name is Sean Colthard. I came from CBS News. I walked into sports entertainment as a fan, not having any idea what I was getting myself into. I had to come up with a different name

because at the time Sean Michaels was a major star in the company and they didn't want to have two shons on the air. So I took my middle name and half my last name. So I have a name that doesn't belong to me. And I play a broadcaster on television. And it's really important that people understand that because yes, indeed, we do broadcast and we are commentators and it's very serious at what we do. But there are many, many points that we have to act. And if we don't believe in certain storylines or we don't believe in certain characters, we have to make the audience believe that we believe. So we are actors. And, you know, in many ways, we're a scripted television show. So we have to do things the way that the writers and the

boss wants things done. And that's why I consider myself an actor more so than anything else. What would you say the job of being the WWs play-by-play announcer is? First and foremost is to help all of the superstars in the ring in wrestling terms get themselves over, help them become stars, help them to establish their characters. The men and women that are in the ring each and every week, taking bumps, getting physical, wrestling the matches, they're making the money for the company. I am there just to embellish and to enhance what they're doing. There are very few superstars in the history of sports entertainment that have been able to become stars by themselves.

There always has to be a support system, whether that's the TV production team, whether it's a tag team partner, whether it's a trainer, or whether it's a commentator. And my goal and job is to make sure that all of these superstars have the best chance of success.

And that helps to come up with nicknames, to come up with names of moves, to embellish storylines, to help the characters become larger than life to get to the point where they are today. And for us, that's the most important thing we can do. I always tell all the young announcers that I work with that come aboard here in WWE that it's not about us.

We'll become stars in our own right by making sure that we take care of the individuals that are putting their bodies on the line each and every week for this product and for the fans. And when you say embellishing, if you put me in your seat on Friday nights with absolutely no training. I could figure out I'm supposed to say things like 325 pounds of pure muscle and left a trail of destruction through the WWE these last few weeks. But what are the finer points of embellishing to really get the audience to buy in? He had a character and many times picking one word that may describe that individual and then expanding on that and making that person larger than life. For instance, Omas, who is just a huge individual who wrestles on

Monday Night Raw. And Omas began as the colossus, the personal colossus for A.J. Stiles, that was the line that we were given by the creative team. And we as commentators had to take that one line and embellish upon what that line meant and how that helps his character. The man's seven feet tall. He's over 300 pounds. He is a colossus. He does things in the ring that no man that size has ever been able to do in the history of sports entertainment. That's what I mean about embellishing the character.

When he walks by the announced desk, just using terms like, look at the size of this man. Watching at home on your television set does not do justice the size of how big this guy is. It sucked like that because what we do is larger than large. life and all of our superstars are larger than life. And that's what we're trying to sell here. It's one of the reasons that Pat McAfee is so awesome at his job sitting next to me because he has that mentality of a fan. And what's going through his mind is, I'm a fan. And this is the first time I've seen Omas. And how would I describe this guy or his famous line about Brock Leznor? He's the alpha male of our species. Those are those those one lines that can really help get an

individual character over. Do you put a personal limit on the the number of times you can use the phrase in the history of sports entertainment. No, I try to, and it's funny you say that because, you know, we get, we get busted on all the time about it's the first time ever. It's the first time in history. But again, you know, we're a promotion that for, you know, 50 years, 60 years has built its business on characters that are larger than life. So I always look at trying to be able to say things like the first time ever or the most important time in history. We're always looking for those little things. And hopefully, you know, that moment, you can really play upon it and get people interested

in the product. For instance, Lita and Becky Lynch back when we were doing Saudi Arabia, for the first time ever, women were on billboards in that country, women that were involved in an athletic event. So we made a big deal about that. It was history in the making. So there are many, many moments that we're involved in that are historic. And we want to try to point that. out. What's the difference between good wrestling announcing and bad wrestling announcing? That is this. We're not a wrestling company. W.W.E is an entertainment company. So the style that I utilize and the style that many people that work for me here in WWE utilize is what I like to call sports entertainment announcing. And a lot of people

will laugh at me about that and they'll make jokes about it. But what we do here is much, much different than what they may do in other companies. Because many of those companies, and proudly so and rightfully so, are professional wrestling organizations. We're a sports entertainment product. I'm going to date myself here, but some people will understand this. Back in the late 70s in the early 80s, there was a television show called Taxi. And Taxi was based in a taxi garage in New York City.

What made that show interesting and the reason it was one of the number one shows on television is because people became emotionally invested in the characters. The Alex Riegers, the Latka Gravitz, the Elaine Nardos, they became emotionally invested in these characters. That's what sold the product. That's why people watched, not because they were cab drivers in a garage, they were emotionally invested in their characters. It's the same thing with WWE. We just happen to use a wrestling ring as our focal point of where our conflicts are resolved. But in order for our business to be successful, you have to become emotionally invested in the characters and what we are selling. The majority of the people that watch our product, they enjoy wrestling, of course, but they also get really into the soap opera style of what we do.

There's a lot of other companies out there that do strictly wrestling. And that's cool. You're going to call a wrestling match much different they're going to call a sports entertainment match. We focus a lot on stories. We're storytellers more than. we're play-by-play guys or color analysts. And I think that's really where the difference lies. So is a better way to ask it,

what's the difference between good sports entertainment announcing and bad sports entertainment announcing? Good sports entertainment announcing is telling stories. You have to be able to tell stories about the match of the ring and be able to tell stories about the characters that you're talking about. Bad sports entertainment announcing is just going out there and just calling every move of every match and not focusing on the story. This isn't radio.

This is television. We can see that the guy's doing a drop kick. We can see the guy's got someone in a headlock. We don't need to hear about all that. What we need to hear about is what makes that character in the ring tick. Why is the good guy a good guy? Why is the bad guy a bad guy? Why don't I like the bad guy?

Why is he the person that I'm supposed to not like? why is the good guy person that I'm supposed to cheer for? Our job is to explain that to people and get you as a fan emotionally invested in our product. Let's talk about your background in media. You went to the new house school at Syracuse, which is the biggest factory in America for sports announcers and TV radio people generally. What did you want to do with your career at that point? I always knew I wanted to be in radio. That was my first love. Ever since I was growing up in a small town in New York, I knew I wanted to do some type of radio. I wasn't sure if it was going to be a DJ,

if I was going to be a sportscaster, newscaster, wasn't sure what I was going to do. Obviously, going to Newhouse, I was exposed to sports. And I ended up spending four years calling basketball and football for Syracuse University on the college radio station, WAER. And at the time, I had some pretty darn good talent

that I was working with Mike Tariko, of course, NBC Sports. Mike and I were classmates for four years. we called football and basketball games together. Bill Roth, who was a very famous radio announcer from now. He was at Virginia Tech, went to UCLA, back to Virginia Tech now. Bill was a peer of mine at Syracuse University. Sean McDonough was in school a few years before I got there.

So, you know, Syracuse was known as a sportscaster factory. So once I got into that whole group at Syracuse, I wanted to do sportscasting. When I got out of Syracuse, there wasn't a sports casting job available, not one that I wanted. So I actually went into news. And then I ended up doing news from 1988 through about 1997 when I came aboard in WWA. What kinds of stories are you covering at CBS? I was working out of a station in Houston called KTRH.

It was an AM news station. And I was covering a trial that they actually became famous at the time. And they did a movie of a cheer. cheerleader's mom who hired a hitman to try to kill the rival of her daughter in the cheerleading squad. So I ended up covering this court case every day for about three months and I was stringing for CBS. And CBS just ended up hiring me at the time.

And I ended up going around the world for CBS. And this was radio now, which I loved because you had to paint a picture as opposed to seeing the pictures. And I ended up covering three presidential campaigns. I covered all 53 days of Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, covered the war in Bosnia. Went all over the world. I was in Haiti for big events there. I worked out of Africa.

So there was a lot of different things that I did. But I was out of growing family at the time. In 1997, my contract was up and I auditioned here at WWE and was expecting to spend a couple of years to get TV experience. and 25 years later, I'm still here. So there you go. After 10 years in hard news, what was interesting about wrestling for you? And again, I came here to get television experience. That was the main reason I came to WWE,

because I had been doing so much radio, I wanted to get some TV experience. And once I came to WWE, I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the aspect of being able to tell stories. I fell in love with characters. I fell in love with the stuff that we're doing, the travel. I was able to have more of a schedule where I could plan things as opposed to CBS where I'd be set out on stories. It might be out for six or seven months at a time.

I knew my schedule here in WWE, so I was able to spend time at home with my family. It just gave me everything that I really wanted. And once I was here, I got bit by the bug. Once you're involved in this, it's really difficult to not enjoy it. Was it weird going from a world of hard news to a world where? where you're an actor? Incredibly hard. It was, you know, you're always,

it's just, it's so hard to describe. It was such a new experience for me. The only thing I knew about sports entertainment at the time was the fact that, you know, I was a fan. That was it. I knew nothing about the psychology of it. I did not know how to call a wrestling match. I came here brand new,

but the WWE gave me everything I needed to succeed. They sent me to live events my first year. I rode with the likes of JBL and Ron Simmons and learned the business from those guys. So that's, it was really, and at the time, Jim Ross was the only announcer we had. So I really, I was just throwing into the deep end and just said, go to work and learn how to be a sports entertainment announcer, which is what I ended up doing. I remember your early years, you were the young goate guy who did some work as the backstage interviewer. Don't forget the blonde highlights. Oh, the blonde highlights.

There we go. And if people don't know, backstage interviewer. a huge part of the job, maybe the whole job, is to look physically threatened by the wrestlers that you are interviewing. Is there any more art to it than that? Art, and people laugh. They're like, all you're doing is holding a microphone or reciting a line. Well, that is true. However, you have to be able to sell, in wrestling terms, for the individual you're interviewing. Again, much like when you're doing play-by-play as a backstage interviewer, you're embellishing what the characters that you're interviewing are doing.

So one thing is to be physically intimidated if you're interviewing the undertaker. You want to obviously be concerned, be scared, you know, maybe stand back a little bit, hold the microphone in a different position, have a different look on your face. You know, one of the reasons that I became very well known early on my career was the backstage interviews I did with The Rock. I really became a foil for the Rock. You know, Rock used me as a backstage prop many times. And that helped Rock with his character, but it also helped people know who I was.

Hey, that's Michael Cole. He's the guy the rock threw his t-shirt on the head. Or that's the guy the Rock talks about Puntang Pai with. And that helped me get recognized as well in my early years here. Yeah. I can just see, you know, the backstage interview holding the microphone way far away from their body, you know, sort of shrinking away from. Well, and that's an art in of itself.

I've heard people talk about this. in interviews over the years. And it really is true. And it's an art. You know, you want to have your superstars appear larger than life, right? So if you're interviewing a superstar, you'll take your shoes off and you'll split your legs. So you look much smaller than you are interviewing that superstar.

It's just a little technique that we use in the business to help, you know, again, embellish the character. How do you get from all these smaller jobs to play by play? Seriously. You know, I got my first break. Jim Ross got sick with Bell's Palsy back when I first started. So I got thrown into the mix for a few months. And that was so eye-opening to me.

I realized that, holy cow, I don't know anything. I'm as green as grass in this business. I have no idea. I thought it was easy. You got there and call moves, right? That's not the case. And, you know, I was thrown into the fire on Monday Night Raw, and it was really eye-opening for me. But I also learned over those first few months,

what I needed to do to work on. And then when SmackDown debuted in 1999, they gave me the chance to do the job. And I thought that I had matured a bit over those couple of years and took over as the voice of SmackDown. And that really is where I was able to hone my skills because at the time, Smackdown was not a live television show. We taped it.

So we had the ability to go back into an edit room and spend hours upon hours during the week, re-editing the show. and more importantly for myself, I was able to change some of my commentary that I didn't like the way it sounded, where I needed it to sound differently. And I learned more in that edit room

over those couple of years than I did anywhere else. And I always talk about Paul Heyman, because Paul Hammond at the time, he was the main producer of SmackDown and the maid writer of Smackdown. And Paul Hammond used to keep Taz and I in that edit room some nights until five or six o'clock in the morning, redoing line, line after line after line.

and explaining to us why the redo was so much better than the line that we delivered live, the psychology behind it. And that's how I learned. So when I did start doing live television, I was ready for it. And, you know, those years of that were invaluable. And the edits were you hit the wrong point here. You emphasized the right, the wrong thing. You're not telling the story in the right way. Again, I was green and I was learning the business. I was learning the psychology of it. And, you know, I may use a word that could have been, you know, to describe a superstar that another word could have been better. I may have talked through an entire fight outside the ring that may have been better if I had laid out and allowed the, you know, sound of running into a barricade or hitting some steel steps or going through the table and hear those explosions.

That story is told better than me yip yap in my way through it. So little things like that, and that's how I learned to do what I do today because it was invaluable, the opportunity to go back and fix your work as you were learning. A lot of people don't know that, that we did that. But it was invaluable. It was a lot of work we put in a lot of effort. But at the end of the day, it really helped us become better people and better announcers. I heard you say there are only four people in the history of WWE who have had the job you have

and have done it for a significant length of time. Gorilla Monsoon, Vince McMahon, Jim Ross, whom you just mentioned, and you. Can we go through them real quick? Of course. All right. Guerrilla Mansou, how would you describe his announcing style? Over the top. Wild exaggeration.

But again, at the time, when Guerrilla was broadcasting in the 80s and the early 90s, that's what our business was. You know, WWE at the time was really our character, were cartoon-like in many ways. And guerrilla was perfect for that. You know, the irresistible force meets the unmovable object, probably the most famous guerrilla monsoon line of all time. I had the distinct opportunity and honor to work with guerrilla in his later years in

WWE before he passed doing some international shows. And just being in the presence of that man and working weekly with him in the announcement in Stanford was just such an honor. and I learned what everybody else had known for so many years that, you know, Gino, he was just an unbelievable character and someone that just loved this business and that I was able to learn so much from. But, you know, Gorilla was really, when I was growing up and going through college, you know, Gorilla was the guy, right? He was the guy I used to listen to. It was pretty incredible. So they have the opportunity to work with him. It was awesome. I feel like I learned anatomy from Gorilla Monsoon as a kid because he'd always be like, he's working on the trep and. Epizius muscle.

Exactly. And that was in the day before Google, right? So you actually had to go to a dictionary or an encyclopedia to look up what the hell gorilla was talking about. Exactly. And you'll hear us do that today. Corey Graves will do it every once in a while. McAfee does it a lot where they'll use those outrageous terms to describe the body part,

just like guerrilla used to do. Yeah, it gives a little highbrow, you know, touch to something in a kind of cartoonish world, especially in Gorilla's Day. Vince McMahon, I feel as underrated as an enabreated as an enabrester. because we now know him as so many other things other than a straight announcer. How would you describe his style? Straightforward. Vince had a little bit of everything, right?

He was a great storyteller. He could exaggerate when he needed to be exaggerated. The thing about Vince, and I bust him on this all the time, because he had such an advantage over any of us who've done play-by-play since, because Vince, obviously was writing the stories. He was writing the shows. So he had in his head, he knew exactly where he was going with every single character and every single story. A lot of the times we're out in the cold, we're blind. We have no idea where the company is going with certain stories. So Vince had this such a unique opportunity to be able to take his vision and mold it the way he

wanted to mold it and lead the audience down the roads that he needed the audience to go down. So we had such a distinct advantage over all of us. You know, people you talk to today don't realize Vince was an announcer. They all think of Vince is the Mr. McMahon character. But he was an announcer. He called some of the great all-time matches. And of course, the big switchover came at the Montreal school job. So he was an announcer who was essentially also his own producer. And the thing about Vince, too, that a lot of people don't understand is Vince started really as a backstage interviewer or a ringside interviewer at the time. Vince's dad was not big on Vince getting involved physically in the business. So Vince had to do anything he could to be involved in the company.

So he started as a backstage interviewer in those old yucky yellow jackets holding the big microphone at ringside. So that's where Vince started, just like all of us. Jesse Ventura, you see this funny thing with him when they would do a match together. he'd be like, it's not like when you played polo during your time at Yale, McMahon. And as a kid, I was like, oh, wow, that's that guy who went to Yale and played polo. Later would find out that's basically the opposite of Vince McMahon. But it worked in the moment. Jim Ross, you mentioned, he's the guy when you get to WWA in 1997.

Was he a mentor to you? You know, Jim and I have had a rocky relationship over the years. It's grown to one of mutual respect. You know, Jim at the time, listen, the late 1990s in sports entertainment in general were a awfully competitive time. Not only in WWE, but obviously with WCW, ECW as well, very competitive time in sports entertainment in the late 1990s. People like Jim, a lot of wrestlers, whether it be a John Layfield or a Booker T or Sean Michaels or Steve Austin, these were old school guys. These were guys who were brought up in the territories. Jim Ross learned how to be a wrestling announcer,

started off as a referee, did some managing, of course, in the territories. So he fight and he, you know, he fought and he clawed to get his spot in WWE, to be at the top and the pinnacle of the mountain. And now you got this guy coming, you know, from news, knows nothing about sports entertainment. and, you know, I think Jim felt a bit threatened at the time. And he shouldn't have been. Jim was the greatest of all time.

And so there was a little bit of competition between us in the beginning. But it flattened out rather quickly. And Jim really helped me understand the, the, but it meant to be an announcer in WWE. The little things you had to do, the intangibles to become a much better announcer. That's what Jim helped me with. He, to me, Jim Ross is the greatest wrestling commentator of all time because Jim understood and was able to convey emotion. And in order to be successful as an announcer in this business, you have to be able to feel the product. And since I didn't come from the wrestling world, it took me years and years and years to understand how to feel WWE.

and when I was able to feel the product, it took me 10 years. That is when I think I was ready to make the next step in my career. Jim is the best ever when it comes to emotion. There's no doubt about it. Even today, at his age, Jim is able to make you feel something that no one else can make you feel about a particular move or a spot or a story. Jim is so awesome at that. And that is what I think I learned more from Jim than anything else, is how to become so attached to this product that it oozes out of you when you talk about it. So those three guys had distinctive sounds when they called matches.

What did you want to sound like? It was funny. I needed to sound like Sean Colthard slash Michael Cole. But it wasn't difficult to do that because I wasn't from the wrestling world. So I didn't have any habits that I had to break. I didn't grow up listening to Jim Ross. You know, I didn't, you know, I didn't know I was going to be a wrestling announcer. So I didn't hang on every word that Gorilla Monsoon or Vince McMahon said.

So when I came into this, I was already ahead of the game because I didn't have to break any habits that old wrestling announcers had. So I was able to just carve my own style out. And what that style has become is very matter of fact, very newslike. You know, I'm a broadcaster. It's what I do. I'm not a wrestling announcer. I believe that I am the best ever in the history of sports entertainment to be able to handle traffic and to be able to juggle the traffic with the partners that I work with. And what I mean about traffic for people that may not understand that part of the game, that is getting from the pyrole and Ballyahoo that opens the show to the sponsorship read that starts, to the first entrance to explain the guy, to the graphic to talk about his match at WrestleMania, to the sponsorship billboard that we're reading during that.

entrance, to the on-camera to get my partner ready to be introduced, to the next entrance, to the graphic at the end of the segment that takes us to break. That's what I consider traffic. And to me, the proudest thing that I can do for two hours on a Friday night on Smackdown is go flawlessly through traffic. So my producer does not have to worry about me. He can hand me our run sheet and know he knows that I will follow that sheet. So he can worry about all the other things that he has to deal with and he doesn't have to worry about Michael Cole. To me, that is the most important thing that I do and I think I do it better than anybody in the history of the business. And the idea here is if we flipped on a broadcast from 1985, 1995, 1995,

2005, there's a lot, lot more traffic of that sort today than ever before? There are more sponsors and there's more B-rolls and there's more graphics than ever in the history of WWE. Listen, I did Monday Night Raw for a long time. That three hours is a grind and there's a lot of traffic that needs to be done on that show. The same with Smackdown. It's more compact when it comes to Friday nights. But there is more in that that can ever be done ever in the history of the business. Back in 1985, you didn't have any of this stuff. You went out there and you called a match and you told the story. This is incredible the way that it has to be done today. Wrestling is its own self-contained universe. And when an outsider comes in, sometimes people say,

well, we don't know you. You're not from this world. Did you hear that when you start? It went on for years and years and years. And I still get a lot of it today. It, you know, it, it was hard the first few years here. You know, thank God they didn't have social media back then because I can only, I know the stuff that people say about me today. I would imagine what they were saying about me in 1999. But yeah, it's hard.

It's really hard to break into because, again, the time that I broke into the business, everyone had scrapped years and years and years making 50 bucks a night driving in a car with six other people to make the next town working into the territory so when they finally made it to WWE

they had spent 20 years getting here I walked in off the street at the top level of sports entertainment in 1997 and a lot of people did not like me for that what does the public want from a wrestling announcement?

I think from the main guy the host of the show, I think what the public wants is credibility. I think they want to tune on their, you know, put on Raw on Monday night or Smackdown on Friday night and have a consistent voice that has been there for years and years and years. There's a reason that there's only been four people in the history of WWE that have done this as long, you know, this long. And it's because it's like it in any sport, it's like it in any business. You know, Walter Cronkite, years and years and years and years and years was the face that people would go to for news on TV because they trusted Walter.

He was your dad. He was your grandfather. He was the guy who you believed in everything he was saying. It's the same thing in wrestling. You want to believe the person that's talking to you. You want to, because you've got to, you know, you might have a color guy that's off his rocker and another guy that's a, you know, a bad guy as an analyst. And another guy that's a good guy as an analyst. They're coming up with these different stories and embellishing ideas.

They want us, the fans at home want us to be the voice and face that every single week is there for them consistently and they can trust and they know that they'll be able to handle the job. So credibility is showing up year after you're being there. Is there a way of calling the match that conveys credibility? I assume knowing the right terms, things like that on the very basic level. But what else? Yeah, it's, listen, I'm very close to this because back in around 2010, the company decided to turn me from a basic play-by-play announcer to a bad guy character as a play-by-play announcer. And for about two years, I was a bad guy, but I was also the voice and the host of the show. And we learned a very valuable lesson that that does not work, that the fans do not like that.

because the main guy is supposed to be helping the product, is supposed to be helping the wrestlers in the ring, not taking shots at them, not talking negatively about them. And we learned a very valuable lesson. So when that ended, and I became a neutral announcer again, it took me years to rebuild the credibility that I had lost

because I had played that character. Gotcha. With the fans, just because that had stepped so far outside the usual, way they see a lead announcement. It was the first time in the history of wrestling that a lead announcer had been a bad guy. It never been done before. It goes all the way back to the 80s, right?

Guerilla monsoon, studiously neutral, Bobby the Brain Heenan or Jesse Ventura, almost misleading the audience, you know, lying to the audience, having a great time next to him. But there's a reason that works. Neutral plus bad guy or neutral plus good guy, whatever it is. Exactly. And now you had your lead guy who, you. you couldn't trust because he was spewing a bunch of BS. So it took me years to get my credibility back.

2012, Jerry the King Lawler had a real-life heart attack on a show you were announcing. What do you remember about that moment? I remember everything about it. It was, you know, I had covered news and tragedies for years and years like we talked about earlier. But, you know, this was different. You know, this was a guy who I had, you know, spent my entire career in sports entertainment with. Jerry and I started calling shows together. when I first started in WWE, and he had become a great friend of mine.

You know, a year prior, I had the distinct honor of having Jerry's only WrestleMania match, you know, in his illustrious career. So Jerry and I had become so close. And I just remember, I remember it like it was yesterday. I'll never forget the moment, but we were calling a match. And, you know, I was on Jerry's right and I was looking at my monitor my right. And I just, I heard snoring. And I thought Jerry being Jerry was.

was snoring because the match was putting him to sleep. I thought it was Jerry telling a joke. And I started laughing. I turned around. I looked at him and he was faced down on the announce table and Jerry had turned blue. And at that point, he slumped out of his chair and Mike Mansoury, who was at ringside for us, grabbed Jerry and called for the dock. And I at that point hit my mute switch.

And I was screaming, get the doctor here, get the doctor here, while we're still doing a live television show. So then I had to segue back into the match because I didn't want people to, you know, could be concerned yet because we weren't sure what was going on. And at that point, they carted Jerry off to the back. I continued to call the match. Eventually, at a respect to Jerry, we decided to not do commentary for the rest of the show. We'd only give updates every 15 or 20 minutes. And I'll never forget a producer coming into my ear at about 10, 15 Eastern time and saying, hey Michael, you need to figure out how you're going to tell the world that Jerry Lawler has passed away on the air.

So now I'm on live television and I'm going, holy cow, what do you do? You know, what am I, how am I going to say this? You know, how am I going to tell the world that this has happened while keeping my composure? Because I was a wreck at the time. meanwhile I've got Jerry's family texting me during the show trying to get information because they didn't have any info and I have nothing to give them

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to tell them so for 15 or 20 minutes I'm trying to put together this you know how am I going to break this news that my you know one of my best friends in the business passed away next to me and you know thank God that right before Raw went off the air that night our producer came back on and told me hey Jerry's going to make it You can deliver that news, which I did.

And that was just an incredible moment as well. And, you know, I'll never forget that night. That will live with me forever. And I remember two days later, I had just gotten home off the road. And Jerry's girlfriend had called me and said, hey, I got somebody who wants to talk to you. So Jerry, he got on the phone and he said, hey, Michael, man, I'm sorry. I just ruined your gimmick. because I was a heel at the time.

I took a big baby face turn when Jerry got sick that night because of the way apparently I had handled the situation. And at that point in time, the company realized, okay, you got to be this credible neutral announcer again because you were able to handle that situation that people need to see you do that on a weekly basis. Let's talk about the mechanics of calling a match. What's your prep like for WrestleMania?

I'm asked this question a lot. And people don't believe me when I tell them this. WrestleMania is the easiest night of the year. To me, it is the easiest because it's the culmination of everything. All the stories have already been told. All the matches have already been made. And they're there in front of you. And if you're calling weekly television and

You don't know the stories by WrestleMania Sunday. You have no business being out there. So for me, WrestleMania weekend is sort of, it's our Super Bowl, obviously, right? It's the culmination of a year-long stretch of getting to this moment. You know,

Rock and Roman, for instance, story's been building for months and months and months. And now it's just, let's call the match. Everyone knows the story. Everyone knows what's on the line. Everyone knows these characters. Now I'm going to go out there. I'm going to have fun and I'm going to call the match.

It's funny. Al Michaels told me the exact same thing about the Super Bowl a couple of months ago. That it's somewhat comforting that all the chatter has been done. Right. There's no more. Here it is. It's a game right in front of me. And now I can just focus on calling it without having to worry about all those things in the back of my head.

Exactly. And that's how I feel. I mean, I have fun on WrestleMania. Last year, because of circumstances beyond our control, I ended up having to call every match for both nights, Saturday and Sunday. I had a blast. It was fun.

You go out there, you ask your analyst questions, you sit back, you watch the match, and just have a good time. I mean, it's just, it's awesome. You mentioned Brock Lesnar and Roman Rates. That's like the main, main event at WrestleMania. When you sit down at AT&T Stadium, you will know the outcome of the match,

but will you know everything that will happen in the match to that point? I don't necessarily know if I'll know the outcome of that match. I don't know the outcome of every match. Really? 90% of the time I will because I need to, because I need to know where to take the story. I need to know where to leave the audience. Pat McAfee, my partner that night will know nothing. Oh, wow. He will have no idea on purpose. He doesn't want to. He wants to react as a fan. There have been many famous moments over the years at WrestleMania where I did not know what was going to happen. Seth Rollins cashing in money in the bank to win the championship back in Santa Clara. Ironically, Brock and Roman in that match, I did not know he was cashing in that night.

So my response was genuine. Undertaker streak being broken by Brock Leslie. I had no idea that that was going to happen, which is if you go back, and listen to my call, which was as simple, the streak is over, is because I was fully expecting Undertaker to kick out. Because I didn't think they were going to end the streak that night. And when the one, two, three happened, I was as in shock as everybody else was. So I may not know the outcome of Rock. I may not know the outcome of Brock and Roman. And I don't know if I really want to. I may just react.

So the decision is made that if you don't have to know, you don't know so that you can get something like a genuine reaction? I can always find out. I would say, I was going to say. It's not like, don't tell Cole, you know, any of this stuff. Sometimes I don't want to know. Undertaker and Brock, that finish, I don't know when that was, that decision was made. But it wasn't the way I was expecting it. But sometimes I don't want to know.

And I'm not sure what I'll do on WrestleMania Sunday. It's an interesting part of this, right? Because you're talking about being an actor. You're talking about talking about storylines and selling something to the public. But then mixed in is these genuine moments. Like I am watching and reacting just like an NFL announcer who is watching a football game. And I think that's where the acting comes into play. Because I need to know many of the big.

spots in a match. I need to know the finish. I need to know direction where we're going so I can lead the audience to the next step. So that's where the acting comes into play. Because I know something's going to happen and I need to tell that story. I need to genuinely act like I did not know that was going to occur. And then I think is the art and what I do as a play by play guy is to be able to have the audience sitting at home going, oh come on, Cole had to know that happened. Wait, maybe he didn't know that happened. That's where the art this in the fun of this is. Uh-huh.

So we can't tell the genuine, oh, my gosh, apart from the acted, oh, my gosh, moment. Exactly. So on Fox, Joe Buck, he has a producer in his ear when he's calling a football game, now ESPN. Who's in your ear during a wrestling match? I have. People still don't know how I do my job today, right? I don't know how I do my job today.

It's crazy because now I've got, so you've got Vincent in my ear a lot because it's his show. It's his baby. I've got my producer in my ear. I've got my audio engineer in my ear. And I've got Pat McAfee in my ear, who's a raving lunatic. So Pat is dancing on the desk, and he's air, you know, air guitaring on my head, and he's jumping up and down on me. Meanwhile, Vince is saying something. My producer's saying something. I've got you, my audio guy saying something. So I've got five different voices in my head. So it's funny, we'll have meetings right, before the show and people will be telling me things and they'll look at me and go, are you going to write that down or are you going to acknowledge what I said?

Yes, sir. I have five voices in my head every Friday night for two hours. I can decipher between things. I'm taking it in just like I would on the air. Exactly. You know, it's funny too because you get a lot of feedback, obviously, these days with social media, immediate feedback. And one of the big things that I get a lot of the times is, you know, Michael Cole, why do you say what you really feel? You know, why don't you stand up to the company? You know,

don't tell the company line all the time. Why are you saying all that garbage? And I always tell them, listen, I'm a soldier. I have producers and directors that have a vision for this product. I'm an actor. I'm going to do what you tell me to do. And I tell me, people if you work at McDonald's and your boss says you need to make a big Mac and you make a quarter pounder and you consistently make a quarter pounder instead of making that big Mac, what's going to happen to you? You're going to get fired. So when Vince is in your ear and he's telling you to make a Big Mac, what is he saying during a show? What kinds of things? Vince is real cool the way he produces because Vince will give you

And again, I don't know how he is with the other announcers. It's different with me because we've been together for 25 years. And Vince is, you know, we sort of are on the same wavelength sometimes. So Vince sometimes only has to give me one or two words. And I know exactly where he wants me to go. So, you know, and most of this stuff is just reminders, getting me back to a storyline. You know, at the end of the match, if Becky Lynch is defeated, you know, so and so, it might be, hey, remind us to the pay-per-view. And it's just like, hey, Becky versus so-and-so at the pay-per-view.

Just little reminders, because, again, we have a lot of stuff going on in our mind, and we have to worry about where we're getting next. And he just wants this. So most of the stuff at this point of my career is reminder stuff. Another thing that Vince is really good about is our energy, keeping our energy up. Because sometimes in these shows, you know, your energy will wane sometimes. He'll make sure you get that energy up. Keep the energy up because we need to have our product and have our energy the same level

for every single segment of the night. Uh-huh. It can't wax and weighing throughout the pay-per-view. It has to be at a big level, then maybe go up another jump when you get to the main event, something like that. Exactly. You want to have your peaks and valleys and your roller coasters

because you have to give yourself somewhere to go, but you also want to have energy throughout the entire night because it's not fair to other matches in the ring if you don't treat them like you would the bigger matches on the card. So it's not fair if there's an Intercontinental Championship match, if you're not treating it with the same level of excitement that you're training your main event for the universal championship.

It's not fair to the performers in the ring because they're putting their bodies out there for 20 minutes in that match. It's not fair to the fans at home that might be fans of the superstar that's in the ring. So we need to try, to the best of our ability, just have the same level of excitement and intensity for every match that we can't. You said earlier, your job is to build up the performers. Do you ever hear back from them saying, Michael, why aren't you building me up more? Why, why aren't you helping me out more on commentary? So, you know, one of the biggest honors that I received in my career was when Sean Michaels retired. And he was in the ring doing his retirement on Monday Night Raw, and he looked over and he thanked me for helping him in his career.

And when he meant by that was every time that I was able to call his match and put him over in wrestling terms, just helped him get bigger and bigger and bigger. you know, to tell his story, to embellish his character. So I always tell the young superstars today that, listen, on a normal Friday, I sit at ringside all afternoon. That's where I do my work. That's where I talk to the people putting their matches together. That's where I go through my show, where I talk about producers. And I encourage all the young superstars to come up to ringside and sit down with me and talk to me. And give me some background about themselves.

Hey, you're going to use a new move? Do you have a new name for it? you know, what's the story you're trying to tell on this match? Tell me a little bit about your background. Give me some tidbits of what I can bring up in the show to help, you know, you get better. It's funny to this day when Undertaker, even up until his last match, he was one of the guys that always come to ringside and sit down with me to talk about his character and talk about his match. The rock was huge in the same exact way.

Even when he came back to do a couple of matches with John Sina at WrestleMania a few years ago, you know, he would make sure to come talk to us about what was going to happen in that match. So I encourage all the young superstars today to do that because, you know, we can't read their minds. We've got a lot of, especially me, I have a lot of stuff going on, right? I'm not just an announcer. I have a lot of responsibilities in the company. So I need them to be, take, to make the effort and come to me because you really have to be invested in your character, and want that character to get over and try to use every resource available to you to allow that to happen.

I want to ask you about your other responsibilities because you are in charge of broadcasting at the company so you're looking on the lookout for other announcers who might work in a wrestling capacity? How do you spot people who could be good WWE announcers? So I'm a vice president of honor announced talent. I have about 30 people that work for me in WWE. It involves so many different things. Obviously, you deal with agents, you deal with contracts, you deal with critiquing, you deal with scheduling, you deal with finding young talent. Finding somebody that can do this job is a very difficult thing. It's extremely hard to do.

We've had a lot of misses and we've had a lot of hits over the last couple of years. I just look for somebody that can tell a story and somebody that is a capable broadcaster that can put a few sentences together. That's what I'm looking for. Somebody that's intelligent enough to be able to handle what we do because sports entertainment, you know, it takes an intelligent level to do this because you're trying to manipulate the audience a lot of the times, lead them down the road, understand the psychology of what we're trying to do. Why is a bad guy, you know, doing something? How do I talk about

a bad guy differently than I talk about a good guy? There's a lot of those things you have to learn. So we're always looking for somebody that are good broadcasters, maybe a fan in the business, but not necessarily. And just someone who we think could cut it here. And, you know, it's a strenuous audition process. We go jump through a lot of hoops to get there. But I think over the past few years, we picked up some pretty good people. I hear you say you lost a significant amount of your hearing just by wearing headphones and doing it for as long as you have. Yeah, just I need to hear myself when I broadcast. You're a broadcaster. So I need to hear myself. And it has to be loud. And I think over 25 years of doing that, it's just deteriorated the hearing where I have especially

molds that have been made for me that go into my ears, that I wear my headsets over, and it increases the volume of what I can hear during the show. So they're almost like hearing aids for for ringside commentators. How does it affect your daily life losing that much of your hearing? So my wife will say all the time, why are you yelling? I have hearing aids, which I wear a lot, so that's really helped. I just think you get used to it. But again, I'm not retiring tomorrow, so I'm going to have to put up with this for a while. So, you know, my audio team has really done wonders in helping make things comfortable for me to be able to continue doing this for as long as I have. Let's talk about McAfee before we go.

He started working with you as your color analyst on Smackdown on Friday nights last year. What is what is McAfee's broadcasting skill as you see it? Energy. he is the most energetic and enthusiastic person I've ever been around. He makes everyone around him better. He makes everyone around him want to enjoy the product. Pat and I have developed an insane amount of chemistry. I hired Pat five years ago to do some panel work for our NXT pre-shows.

Brought him on board last year, knew he was going to be a huge hit, was shocked that he actually wanted to come. work for us and work with me. He's just an incredible guy to work with. He's a fan. And you can tell that he's a fan when you listen to him. He's just so over the top and so exciting and so energetic. And we work, I think, because he's the classic extrovert and I'm the classic introvert, right? And that's why we work. And that's why it works so well together. And we've become so extremely close.

And that's why Joe Buck and Troy Aitman work. That's why they're going to ESPN together because they're friends. And they got great chemistry and they get along with each other. And that's how Pat and I are. You know, one of the honors that Pat I hope is going to bestow on me coming up is that in the first week of June will be my 25th year on the air in WWA. And Pat wants to make sure that he's there as part of that broadcast because of the respect that we have for each other. You know, it's been 25 years of 52 weeks a year and I've missed two television shows that I've been assigned to in 25 years. And I don't think

that's ever happened. I don't think it has. And that to me is really what I've taken pride in and everything that I've done in my career. When people ask me, you know, what's the, what's the proudest thing you've accomplished in WWE? And I tell everyone, work ethic. You know, I'm not the greatest wrestling announcer that's ever lived. I know that. But I don't think there's anyone out there in the history of sports entertainment that has worked harder than I have to get to where I am today. And, you know, that's the one thing I'm pretty excited about. When I talk to announcers like you that have worked for a really long time, who've done that 20 years, 20 years plus. A lot of times they make great money. They've had a fantastic career, but I can always sense when I talk to them, they just

wish the public love them a little bit more or the public said they loved them a little bit more. Do you want to be loved as a wrestling announcer? Is that important to you? I don't want to be loved at all. I don't. If it happens, great. I want to be me. I want to retire knowing that I've given everything that I've had to this company, that I've given everything that I've had to WWE, that I've given everything that I've had to the fans, that will make me feel good. Knowing that I had the type of work ethic where I didn't miss any shows,

that means more to me than anything. but more importantly than all that the fact that throughout my entire time here in wwee that you know i've remained married to a wonderful woman and i've raised two great kids and put him through college and that's what i want to be remembered for i want to be remembered as that guy who hey he spent 25 years on the road and he did everything that he had in wwee and he gave up a lot of stuff in his personal life and in his family life for this place. But he, you know, had a damn good marriage and he raised two great kids. To me, that is the most important thing that can happen in all of this. And everything else on top of that is gravy. And I appreciate

everyone I've worked for. And I appreciate the WWE fans. But I don't need the accolades. I just need to know that I've done something right because I've been on the air for many, many years. Michael Cole, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Glad you guys had me. Huge thanks to Michael Cole. And by the way, full disclosure, The Ringer has a podcasting deal with WWE, but this interview was done independently of that,

and there were, of course, no restrictions on questions I could ask or subjects I could cover. Now let's bring on our favorite wrestling commentator for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun

headline. Yeah. Today's headline comes from our new ringer teammate Matthew Bellany, David. Catch him over at the town podcast. He's got some wrestling content coming up this week too. Maybe already up at the time this is theirs, but keep an eye out. Damn.

Headline is from the L.A. Times. It's a real estate story, David. Singer Adam Levine is moving out of a gigantic Pacific Palisades home. That's the story here. Homes for sale. I want you to think of a Maroon 5 song as you tell us what is the L.A. Times'

strained pun headline. I can't believe this is coming down to my knowledge of Maroon 5 songs. The house is for sale. For sale. So therefore he must move? Oh, moves.

Is it moves like Jagger? Moves, move, um, what the heck is it? Moves like. You're real close. You're right there. He's, um, he's, he's got to move like Jagger. He's got to move like Jagger. Okay.

Yeah, that's good. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.