WWE Raw lead announcer Jimmy Smith talked about a wide range of topics during his ‘Unlocking The Cage’ show.
During it, he talked about the criticism of the commentary team and the directive that is given to the commentary team regarding the new wrestlers, which is it’s a fresh start for the wrestlers and what they did in NXT doesn’t matter.
“With WWE, I’m part of the show. I’m part of the show. So things that you may see as weakness in commentary are things they want from us. When a character does a character reset coming up from NXT or some other organization, and I pretend to not know who they were or any of their accomplishments before they got to Monday Night Raw, I’m doing what I’m being told. It’s not that I didn’t do my research, it’s not that I didn’t know who Piper Niven was. Of course I did, I did my homework like I was supposed to. But when she came to Raw from NXT UK, they reset her character and called her Doudrop. So the directive was, ‘All right, we’re kind of resetting the character here.’ So people — and people did by the way get pissed online like, ‘Ah! Jimmy Smith and Corey Graves didn’t even know who Piper Niven is.’ Of course we know who Piper Niven is! But we’re part of the show and part of the show is, ‘We’re resetting her character’ and to not recognize when Corey Graves is talking about his fiancée or going off about Eva Marie which is another one he went off about or when he praises one heel typically over another, he’s doing his job. His job is to be an a-hole, douchebag character.”
