People View It How You Present It

[Max Headroom]

Something that I think about quite often, and something I also see others talking about quite frequently, is the commentating in WWE. In short, it's bad. It's been like this for a while now, but that's no excuse for anything. If anything, it is quite shameful that they have yet to change it. While watching RAW/Smackdown/PPVs, there are three voices which we constantly hear. I personally find two is plenty, but that's not what this is about.

These voices are the voices that speak to us, the viewers at home, and they are supposed to relay to us what is going on at the moment, as if we are only watching for the first time. For instance, when I'm watching the Playoffs, it doesn't take long to know who's who, who does what, who the main players are, and who is in charge of the puck. The commentators never shut-up, yet they never distract from the action. This is what commentating is all about, making the sport/craft seem important.

Then I turn off the good ol' hockey game, and I start to watch some WWE wrestling. The commentators never shut-up here, either, but they don't keep your attention to the action in the ring, they seem to do anything but that. They joke around like a bunch of ass-hats, talk about things that happened/are going to happen, but not what is *currently* happening, which is essentially all that matters. They hardly even talk about wrestling, constantly referring to other things, whether it be another sport, pop-culture, or whatever. When I'm watching hockey, they don't randomly chat about football and whatever some rapper/pop-singer is doing, they talk about hockey. When I'm watching wrestling, the same should happen, they should be discussing wrestling. Nothing else.

I'm not here to crap on the commentators personally, as from what I know, they're told what to say a lot of the time. But whomever is in charge of telling them needs a swift toe up the arse. There is plenty of time in-between matches to shill the Network, the App, the upcoming main event, and everything else. There are plenty of comedy segments where you can get out your lame jokes and whatnot. But when a legitimate match is going on, you talk about what's going on in the ring, or simply shut your mouth.

Like my title says, people will view your product how you present it. If someone is surfing through the channels, comes upon a wrestling match, but then hear the commentators talking about the plague or something (?), they're not going to take the match, or the wrestlers, very seriously. On the other hand, if they turn it on, see a good match, and hear the commentators calling the moves, talking about why they do certain moves at certain times, the area of the body the move targets, and so-on, they're going to view it as a much more legitimate thing.

So, I apologize as that's a bit of a long one, but commentary is a very important thing to me, so this is something that drives me. I know muting it is an option, but that's also not the same. A sport needs commentary, and it needs good commentary. Do you guys agree? Am I alone in thinking the commentary style needs to be changed? Is there something I missed that you would also add? Or do you think everything is fine the way it is? Wrestling may be "sports-entertainment", but the first word there is "sport", and the action inside the ring should be viewed as such. People view it how you present it.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

To some degree, it's true that commentators can help determine how fans view a particular aspect of the product whether it's a certain storyline or certain wrestlers. For instance, you always hear the commentators being "serious" or "behaving like professionals" during matches involving guys like Cena, Bryan, Rollins, Reigns, Wyatt, Taker, Triple H and a few others. They're keeping the focus on the match, what's going on in the match, helping to tell a story and/or generally hyping the wrestlers involved. Much of the rest of the time, they're cracking lame jokes or arguing over other generally foolish topics instead of hyping the wrestlers or the product as a whole. As a result, the impression given to the fans is something like "We don't feel these wrestlers are relevant and are here to fill up some air time, so you probably shouldn't care about them either."

It's not really the fault of the commentators because, as mentioned, they're told what to say some of the time by Vince McMahon. Years back, Mick Foley quit his commentary position because he just got tired of Vince screaming through his headset like some deranged madman whenever he said something that wasn't in Vince's script or if he forgot something or improvised a little bit. It's just an example of what I think may is one of the key problems in WWE: Vince McMahon's obsessive compulsive desire to micromanage every single aspect of the product and his histrionic overreactions when someone doesn't follow his instructions to the letter.

As with various other things going on in WWE today, there are constant comparisons of the quality of commentary in the main roster and NXT. If you look at commentary in NXT, they actually do something that's pretty novel: they actually do commentary all the time. They hype the wrestlers in every match, they keep the focus on the match while hyping NXT overall, they help tell the story of what's going on between the wrestlers inside the ring. There are small and subtle differences between NXT and the WWE's main roster and those small differences all seem to revolve around a simple change in creative control with Vince calling the shots on the main roster while Triple H calls them in NXT. The POSSIBLE solution?: Vince McMahon stepping down because of his failure to adapt to the changing mentality of modern wrestling fans, resulting in Vince becoming more out of touch with each passing year.

 

[FromGlasgow]

It seems like the commenators are desperate to constantly advertise something now especially the network, I understand the need for advertisement but its monotonous hearing adverts all the time its not just the network I'm hit with all these adverts for mobile apps or merchandise, Upcoming tours, WWE video game, sponsors the next PPVs not to mention the actual ad breaks they have anyway it feels like its increasing every few months.
I have a feeling that if the commentators werent so restricted in what to say that it would improve a lot, They could start with actually calling the ones in the ring, wrestlers again and not sports entertainers.

 

[OYDK]

Very true, the announcers rarely seem to get excited nowadays. Perhaps they're uninspired or maybe they're told to act a certain way, but the point is the commentary takes away from the action more times than not these days. J.R. and Bobby Heenan are regarded as two of the best of all time because they were invested in every moment that happened when they were at the table. When J.R. had to plug something, he would always say something along the lines of, "I'm sorry to take away from this great action but..." and than fly through the ad before getting back to the match. Cole and J.B.L. seem to do anything they can to not talk about a match.

It's bland and boring but I guess WWE likes that kind of sound. Highly doubt Cole or J.B.L will be remembered for their greatness at the table.

 

[Pedigree1]

First and foremost I have all the respect in the world for Vinnie Mac i truly do.. He has launched this impressive empire to heights that himself I am sure,he could have never have thought possible..

But that was then and this is now.. For awhile now like since JR left and maybe even before that the commentary has been suspect.. Its why Mick Foley left,cant stand having a maniac screaming into your headset every second.. That shit would drive me insane as well.. Vince needs to step aside totally and let Trips handle day to day operations IMHO..

The commentary is one of the small problems that exist in the WWE. Its a big problem but an easy problem to fix.. The King phoned it in along time ago. That part is easy to tell,and its quite painful to hear him every smackdown episode pretending he cares when we know he doesn't..

I dont wanna hear about Recaps every second or the 9.99 network price! I know what the network cost.. I don't want to hear about other advertising i want the commentators to actually care about the matches they're calling..

To some degree i get they can't call the match they way they want.. The announcers are just bland all of them.. Saxton too soon to tell yet,but JBL is bland and so is cole.. Vince has been out of touch for so many years now its really sad..

 

[whoopin' ass]

I think that is a large part of it. When you don't care enough to talk about the match going on, to tell why a move is important, why should your audience care? It is to the point where they don't call anything including the pin. I was watching a divas match a few months ago - they literally were not talking at all about the match in the ring, not one thing. Someone would get a near-fall and there would be no comment about it. It has gotten to the point where really the matches don't matter, the commentary moves the story along more than the matches which is a big problem because wwe storylines are usually full of issues. But I think it is very true - when you can't be bothered to talk about the match itself and instead are talking about everything and anything else, you are telling the fans that the match and the people in it don't matter.