Hard Hit Prince
Not really working as a
Busted Open satellite radio recently spoke with WWE ring announcer Michael Cole. Here are some highlights from the interview.
On his start and his rise in WWE: I got off on the wrong foot here in WWE for a bunch of different circumstances. Number one, I came from CBS News, so I came from outside the business. And this is back in 1997 where its still the good ol boy network, where if you werent brought up and didnt pay your dues in the wrestling industry you had no business being here. Jim Ross is a guy who dedicated 30 years of his life to this business. He started as a referee, building rings and morphed his way into becoming an announcer and he had paid his dues, as most of the guys had. So I came in in 1997 and I was first employee that was ever hired by the company that was an announcer. I came from CBS Radio. I had been a wrestling fan but I had never been involved in it in any aspect. So I come right out of the blue and start doing shows on WWE. So there was immediately a backlash from the true hardcore fan. Who is this guy? How can he be talking about a product that Ive watched for 25 years; Ive never heard of him. Hes not from the business. Hes not from the industry.
Then I wasnt even able to get my feet wet and pay my dues here before Jim got sick with his bout of Bells Palsy. So when Jim got sick, all of a sudden, now I had been in the company for a year and they throw me now onto Monday Night Raw and PPVs and I was clueless. I had done sports before, so I knew how to go out and call action, but this business isnt just about calling action. Its about telling stories. Its about understanding the psychology and that was all foreign to me. So for four or five months Im trying to fill the shoes of this legend who had been sick and I was thrown into that spot so there was a horrible backlash at that point. Rightfully so because I wasnt ready for that spot. I shouldnt have been in it. And then third, Vince Russo at the time who was our writer decides that this is great, lets make JR the bad guy; lets make him the heel and have him attack Michael Coles character.
It obviously turned out bad because I ended up being the bad guy because the perception was both within the storyline and in real life is that heres this young, punk kid coming out of the news world to replace the guy that I grew up with. It would be like some guy from a local news station stepping in to replace Walter Cronkite on the news. I had all these things against me and when JR came back fans were like, thank god, this Cole guy sucks, he shouldnt be here, and I stuck it out. I had seen so many things in my life covering news from wars and so many horrible things that I couldnt let this stuff affect me. I had a wife and family and thats who I loved and who I cared about and this other stuff was like, whatever, Im not going to let these people affect me, and I continued to move on and I went to do Smackdown and I did that show for 10 years, which was, to me, an incredible run, and finally in 2008 got drafted to Raw and the rest is history. I dont have any regrets at all. I thought and I still think that I earned that role. People still to this day cant stand me for replacing Jim Ross, and they think that JR and I have a terrible relationship because of the storylines that weve done, but we dont. Jim and I are actually real close and we do have a great relationship and Jims been a great mentor to me and here we are today.
On the pressure during the Monday night wars: There was a ton of pressure. I was in over my head, and Ill be the first to admit that. I had been in warzones around the world and never felt the type of pressure that I felt in those few months leading up. Then I had to call Wrestlemania on top of it all, except for the main event, which we brought Jim back for, but it was an extraordinary amount of pressure which I wasnt ready for. But I always try to look at things from a positive standpoint; that really prepared me for what was coming over the next few years here in WWE and really becoming the voice of Smackdown and becoming the solid guy on that show and moving on to Raw and where I am today.
On dealing with the multitudes of different fans: This day and age people dont understand the amount of pressure thats on us as commentators to serve so many masters. First off theres the hardcore fans, like you guys are, who have been watching for 20 or 30 years who want their old school wrestling. They want you to call a wrestling match; they want you to call every single hold, so youve got to please that. Youve got to try to do your best. You also have to please your kids who are 50% of your audience and your women who are a large part of our audience too, so youre talking about different stories when it comes to those demographics. Were obviously in a PG era now, so you cant get away with a lot of things you could get away with 15 years ago. The other thing is were inundated with social media and I get tweet constantly during the show; hey Cole, shut the heck up, stop with the twitter, stop with this and that. Our company wants to be in the fore front of social media. Thats our companys goal and our objective. I have to do that, I work for WWE; I need to do what they want me to do. Does it get to be too much sometimes? Yeah, of course it does. I think we do a lot of things in excess, but thats what we want.
So when Im talking about whats trending worldwide or when Im talking about what somebody said on their Twitter feed earlier today, I know guys like you who want your wrestling are probably saying, geez Cole, shut the hell up, enough already. But then theres kids at home going, oh my god, Im going to follow Vince McMahon on Twitter, this is an exciting day. So youre trying to please so many masters and youre never going to please everybody. So all you can do is try to do the best you can, try to be entertaining, try to tell a good story, try to explain to your audience whats going on and on top of all this, especially this time of year, we have such a new audience especially when youve got a guy like Rock, whos the biggest movie star in the world right now and hes got the number one movie in GI Joe, you have a lot of new audience members watching this show every week now because of guys like The Rock or because of Undertakers back or because Brock Lesnar the MMA crowd may come in, so now youve got to try to explain whats going on in our soap opera every week to fans who arent watching on a weekly basis. We have to do it in ways that dont insult guys like you who watch every week and know the stories and background of these guys. Its a terribly difficult job, but I love it. The challenge is amazing and the criticism is great because I learn a lot of times from the criticism. Ill read my Twitter feed and a lot of the fans out there have great suggestions and great ideas that Ill try to bring into the show the following week.
On calling the Raw of Jerry Lawlers heart attack and turning face: First and foremost, Jerry and I are great friends. Were real close. Jerry and I have known each other for 16 years now and people may not remember but when Smackdown went on the air Jerry and I were its first team for a couple of years. We worked together every week, plus I worked with Jerry when JR was sick. So I worked with Jerry for years and years, I had his first WrestleMania match, but what people remember about our relationship up to the point of the heart attack was the fact that I was a bad guy and he was a good guy and I disrespected his dead mother in the ring and I dragged up stuff about his familys past and all part of the angle, which by the way was all Jerrys idea, he signed off on it, but thats what they remember. So 90% of our audience thought we hated each other. Which I guess means were doing a great job. But Jerry and I were real real close. The night that it happened in Montreal, Ill take you through the story, Jerry had a match, which is neither here nor there, and he came back to commentary and we were calling, I cant even remember what the match was at this point because everything is a blur, but I do remember, Jerry and I dont look at each other when we do the show, I have a monitor to my right which I watch and Jerry has a monitor to the left which he watches, the only time we ever really look at each other is when we have an on-camera or something like that, so in the middle of this match I heard Jerry snoring and I thought he was doing like I used to do when I was a heel, especially back in the NXT days, I thought he was making fun of the match in the ring and I thought he was snoring because the match was boring.
So I chuckled because I thought thats what he was doing and then I looked over to Jerry to my left and Jerry was laying down on the table, his head was down, and he was literally snoring. At that point I thought this obviously isnt good, he looked blue. So I jumped up, first thing I did and Ill never forget this is I hit my mute switch on my box because I was screaming for the doctor. Luckily we had Doc Sampson at ringside. So Im screaming for the doctor, Doc, doc, Jerry needs you, and I hit the mute switch I think out of instinct but Ill never forget, I remember doing it because I knew something serious was happening and I knew that his family watches the product and I didnt want them to know at that point what was going on because I thought that if it was me I wouldnt want my wife or anybody in my family to learn about what was happening from live television. So I hit the mute switch and Jerry at that point I grabbed him to try to hold him up and then he fell out of his chair and then the doctor luckily was there. At that point I just went into instinct mode and I just started calling the match that was going on in the ring and didnt reference anything that was going on. Then obviously we went to commercial break and during the break they hauled Jerry off in a stretcher and all that. So Im down at ringside and Ive got to do the rest of the show for an hour, I had no idea whats going on. Ive got my producers and Triple H and others telling me and giving me updates in my headset which I would come back on the air and say, hey, this is the latest we heard, and so on and so forth and then at about 10:30 eastern, about a half hour before we went off the air, I remember somebody came in my headset, I cant remember who it was, and they said, Michael, you need to prepare for the worst. Im like, ok, and they said, you need to be prepared to deliver the news. So at that point I knew what they were talking about obviously.
So now we had stopped doing commentary out of respect to Jerry, so now Im sitting out there with 18,000 people surrounding us and millions at home, no one knowing whats going on, and I didnt either, and now Im sitting there going, ok, now how am I going to deliver this news to millions of people around the world and what am I going to say and how am I going to say it and how am I going to keep myself composed, and all that is running through my head and then almost like it was scripted, and I hate saying that because of the business were in because it wasnt obviously, but when we went off the air on Raw we had got an update that Jerrys heart started beating on its own and I was able to deliver that news going off the air and that was such an emotion moment.
I remember after we went off the air, I went to the back, Jerry had already gone to the hospital, I went back to the locker room and called my wife and I said, did you whats going on? And shes like, oh my god, I did, and at that point I broke down because I think it all just hit me there. I think its the news background. I think its ones of those things, youre trained. I have seen a lot of atrocities in my life over the years in Africa and Bosnia and places like that and I think youre just trained, but this obviously different because its a real good friend of yours that it happened to on live television and I realized that I had a service and that was to update the fans what was going on with Jerry. Then at that point, we thought he was going to pull through and obviously he did, thank god, and now hes still a pain my ass like he is every other week, but it was just an awful time.
I remember on Wednesday, two days after it happened, I was actually in the gym at my home in Texas and I got a phone call from Jerrys girlfriend, Lauren, and she said, Michael, Ive got somebody who wants to talk to you, and it was King. I was like, Holy cow, King, how the hell are you calling me two days after you basically died on national television? I guess he had been reading some of the press and stuff and he said, Michael, Im so sorry. I asked why? He goes, well, I killed your heel heat. So I guess he had watched stuff that was said and everything else. So after that I became baby face. I think it was the right time, the heel run had run its course, I think it went on much longer than it should have. So what had happened was the company collectively said, if were going to turn you this is the time to do it. Since JR had been taken off Raw and I became a heel, the one thing I thought the company was missing was that straight guy who was able to deliver the show the way that it needed to be delivered, like the Jim Ross and the Gordon Solies, Gorillas, they didnt have that voice of reason in the booth. This was the perfect opportunity to allow them to do that and as a company we collectively said, lets run with it, and we did. Its been fairly successful. I still have a lot of detractors out there, a lot, but its getting a little bit better.
It was weird too because, I hate that it happened under these circumstances, because I really would have liked to have that face turn and done something like save somebody in a match or one of those cool things you always dream of. This is quite the way I wanted the face turn to happen, but Im also glad it happened this way because I think it added some legitimacy to what I do. But it was cool to actually get tweets and messages of support from fans when for 15 years 90% of what you receive is you suck, I hate you, youre the worst ever, and you just dont respond to that stuff, you just become callous to it, its just like, ok, they dont like me. But Im still here and Im still on the air.
On his favorite announcing combination/preferences: From an ego standpoint, I take pride in the fact that Im able to do all of it. We dont get a chance to toot our own horns a lot but from an ego standpoint, and you have to have an ego to be in this business or any business. You have to have confidence. I take pride that I can do it all. One of the things that Ive said about my career is that, love me or hate me, the one thing that Ive been able to do that I dont think anybody would take umbrage with is the fact that I have been able to work with anybody theyve given me. When I was on Smackdown, I worked with Jerry Lawler, I worked with Tazz, I worked with Mick Foley, I worked with Jonathan Coachman, I worked with JBL, I worked with Paul Heyman, Ive worked with JR, Ive worked with Josh Matthews, Ive worked with Todd Grisham, Matt Striker, Ive worked with everybody and Ive been able to pull it off. So I take pride in that.
Three man booth over 2 man booth? It depends who Im working with. I love the three man booth with Jerry and John. JBL and The King. Love it. Then Im really able to be that straight on host and direct the traffic. Johns your heel, Kings your baby face and Im able to be that guy that delivers the information which is the role that I cherish because I think I do that well.
2 man booth, I love working with King and I love working with John. So any combination of those right now is preferable to me. I think the 3 man booth works a little bit better on Smackdown than it does on Raw because Smackdown is a show where theres not as much social media involvement, the matches are much longer. Raw you get three or four minute matches and social media so its a little easier to navigate a two man booth on Raw with all the stuff you have to get in as opposed to Smackdown. I think that out of all the partners Ive worked with I think that Jerry Lawler and JBL, either together or separately, have been my favorites.
On 3 Hour Raws: I was actually excited initially and then when I sat through it for about two months I was like, oh my god. The worst thing is, and its nothing to do with the guys in the ring, because theyre busting their humps every single time, its the energy level. Its really, really difficult. Your mind really starts to wander. You get past 10 oclock eastern time and your mind really starts to wander. So youve really go to focus on the task at hand. PPVs are weird; to me a three hour PPV goes by like that because its just concentration, youve got two other guys working with you to help carry the load, I dont know. For some reason the three hour Raw seems real long, but then other days, like last night in Washington DC for the go-home for Wrestlemania, that show flew by. I looked at my watch and it was quarter to eleven. I was like, holy cow, where did the show go? Then theres other days where its like 10:15 and youre like, oh my god, how do I stay awake? Get me another Red bull. Again, its nothing to do with whats going on in the ring or anything its just mentally trying to stay focused and alert for that amount of time on live television. Smackdown is different. You can go out there and screw around and you make a mistake you can fix it if you have to. On Raw, youve got to watch everything you say. Its complete concentration.
A lot of times the audience goes through peaks and valleys too throughout the show for three hours. The live crowd is up and down. So you have to try to get them going and get them up there. Thats your job as a commentator, make every match and every superstar and diva interesting. Its difficult to do but it can be done. The thing about 3 hours is coming up with creative and different ways to say things, say different stories. How many times can we say The Rocks going to be here tonight? Ten times youre promoting it a show; youve got to try to come up with a different way to say it each time. There are a lot of things that go on that just a guy watching at home doesnt realize. Tweaking ways you say things and trying to drive you guys in the right direction on certain characters and giving background on guys and theres a lot of work that goes into this. Following Twitter, social media, oh my god that stuff is nonstop.
On Cenas current heat: I think theres a reason for that. Rocks fresh. Hes not here all the time. Even during this run hes missed a few Raws then comes back then miss a few Raws, so Rocks fresh. Hes different and hes bringing in a ton of new faces to our product because hes a movie star. Arguably the hottest movie star in the world right now. So hes bringing in a ton of new faces. Hes fresh, people watch him, people think its cool that a movie star is our champion. John is there every day. Hes been there for a decade. Hes in the trenches every single day. Hes at every live event. Hes on television every single week. Hes at every single PPV. I think that theres a familiarity there. I think that fans of our product who watch it religiously and dont miss a show, follow the inside workings of this, I think that characters like John to guys like yourself can get stale. I think thats what our fans vocalize. I dont think its dislike for John Cena; I think they appreciate everything John does.
John is the most wonderful human being on the planet. Hes one of these guys, Ill preface this by saying hes one of my closest friends in the business, but John has not changed in ten years here. John is one of these guys who has never changed who he is when he became famous. Hes the same guy that he was when he first walked in that door 10 years ago. Hes the same guy thatll sit down in a lounge a chair and have a beer with you and put on some country music and shoot pool. Hes that way today just like he was 10 years ago. John does so much and you cannot overstate what John does not only for this company but for the charity organizations out there. When you grant over 300 wishes and being as busy and in demand as John Cena is, that says something about the mans character. Granting 300 wishes, youre not doing that for publicity. The Susan G Komen for the Cure, we did the breast cancer awareness for the first time last year, that was all Johns idea. John came to the company and said, hey, listen, lets do this. Next thing you know, weve got pink ropes and the pink ribbon all over the place and it was Johns idea. He felt passionately about that. So I dont think the fans, unless theyre idiots, which I dont think our fans are, some maybe, but I dont think its a dislike of Cena personally.
I dont want to see [a heel turn] happen. I love John how he is from a character standpoint. He loves the adversity. The one thing about John is that John will start out getting booed out of the building, whether hes in a match or a promo, I guarantee you by the end of the match the fans are going to be applauding him and standing on their feet for what he either said or what he did in the ring. No matter what happens Sunday at Wrestlemania, no matter what happens in that match with Rock, I guarantee you that there will be a show of respect for both Cena and Rock at the end of that match. They may boo Cena out of MetLife Stadium, which they probably will because its a New York crowd, but I guarantee you by the time thats over there will be respect there.
On his favorite calls/matches: There were two that stand out. Ive been doing this for so long, people always ask me, what was your favorite match? What do you think of this rivalry? I dont remember. I dont remember what happened two weeks ago sometimes on Raw thats why I keep unbelievable notes in my iPad because I seriously dont remember. We do so much programming, I call so many shows its hard to keep this stuff straight. But the one match that really stands out for me is the night, it was in February a number of years ago, I think it was No Way Out PPV, it was the night that Eddie won the WWE Championship from Brock and that call to me was my favorite, still to this day because I was real close with Eddie and I felt that that night when he won. This was really the crowning achievement for him. I lived through him with that. I called Mick Foleys first championship match. I was sort of thrown into that because thats when JR was sick so I really didnt know what I was doing. I told Mick the other day that I wish that it happened like 5 years later so I could actually know what I was doing when I called it. Mick said, hey, you did fine, it was wonderful. But the Eddie-Brock match was one. Undertaker-Shawn Michaels was a very emotional one.
Shawn and I over the years had become really close. I can tell this story because Shawn and I talk about it all the time, weve actually talked about it on a DVD; I couldnt stand him when I started in this company. I could not stand him for a number of reasons. But when he came back from his injury we got to know each other and got real close. We both live in Texas. We have a lot of the same interests; we hunt, we fish together. Actually, Im the voice of his outdoor show, Macmillan River Adventures, on the Outdoor Channel. Calling that match to me was very emotional. The third match was last years Wrestlemania between Rock and Cena. It was fabulous, tremendous match to call. Probably thinking about it now, probably the best match Ive ever called was the one a few weeks ago when Cena beat Punk to keep his opportunity to face Rock at Wrestlemania. It was like a three or four segment match on Monday Night Raw. It was incredible match and obviously when the guys have matches like that it makes our job easier. I very rarely at this point in my career go back and listen to a match that I called. I just dont do it. Ive got so much stuff going on that I just dont have time. But I actually went back and listened to that match and I was very, very proud of that work. I had both Punk and Cena come to me and say, listen that was fabulous. I think a lot of it has to do again with the fact that, remember how JR was Steve [Austin]s guy and JR got really emotional because him and Steve were so close. I think a lot of that happens with John and I because I am close with John. Its just like anything else, when youre emotionally attached to something, youre going to be a little more into than you normally would. Plus that match was fabulous anyway. That was probably the favorite match that Ive ever called.
