WWE Hall of Famer JBL appeared on Something To Wrestle With, where he discussed several topics, including the Corey Graves situation.
JBL said, “You know, I can understand. There’s only three commentary spots, unless you have two color commentators on a certain show like you’ve had before with a three-man booth. There’s only three color commentator spots and so you got to move guys around, and that happens. And I can certainly understand Corey’s angst in this. I don’t know, only what was read. And certainly text does not denote tone, so you don’t know what tone this was written in. I think Corey has done an incredible job. I think Corey is an incredible commentator. I think Pat McAfee is too. I think — look, Pat adds so much to WWE. It’s wonderful that he comes in, and it’s wonderful he has this huge following. He does such an incredible job. They’re completely different. And to me, I think there’s room for both, and I certainly hope they find room for both.”
On whether he prefers two-man or three-man announce booths:
“Three man sucks. I hated it. I thought it was just awful, you had to get everybody in. And the hard problem with parting with a two-man booth is you’ve got to have the play-by-play guy be the part babyface, you know? So you can’t have a guy call it right down the middle. So understand the dynamics of a three-man booth, because the play-by-play guy can then call it right down the middle and you can have your heel and your babyface color commentators. Without that, generally the color commentator is a heel, and so you need a babyface play-by-play guy which kind of takes away a little bit from the play-by-play guy. Most guys, though, can walk that line, but I prefer a two-man booth. It is so much easier. Four-man booth was horrible. We had a four-man booth for a while, and that was just awful. It’s like you see on CNN sometimes, when you have like 18 people in the Brady Bunch boxes and like, this is the worst show ever. There’s no way anything gets done.”
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(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
