Cole really is the nut low. First thing I think of when I think of him and of JR is hell in a cell in both cases. JR obviously for selling the living **** out of mankind and Cole repeatedly saying 'is this symbolic?' when UT lifted the cell with big boss man being hung by a noose. So bad

If Cole called the mankind/UT HIAC foley never becomes a main eventer

I'd actually love to see Big Show move over to be a heel commentator. He was great last week, and I'll post Brandon's explanation as to why (which I agree with):

Best: Big Show’s The Only Guy In The Company Who Understands What Heel Commentary’s Supposed To Sound Like

At points I couldn’t tell if Show was on color commentary or if I’d somehow left my physical body and Quantum Leapt into JBL. Big Show was GREAT on color, and did a better job of establishing feuds, explaining character motivations and getting everyone over in one match than the Raw team did with every match combined in 2014.

The trick to good heel color is to tell the truth, but to tell the *******’s truth. Point out things that COULD be true, but can be rationalized as untrue, or sour grapes. You can’t say “Roman Reigns can’t wrestle unless he’s carried and is embarrassing looking trying to wrestle in an airbrushed swat vest and cargo pants,” but you can say “Roman Reigns is all hype.” Because to people like me, that’s totally true. Roman IS all hype. But to fans who love him, they can say “NUH UH, ROMAN’S GREAT” and they don’t really need a ton of ammo. It’s playing with the subjective. You’re a heel because you’re being declarative with your subjectivity. Trust me, I know all about that.

It’s why Heenan and Jesse Ventura were so good. They could say Hulk Hogan was cheating, and yeah, to an objective eye, Hogan was being a butthole and taking shortcuts. Attacking people when he didn’t need to. Going too far to prove points. But the vagueness of “Hogan’s cheating” allows kids or Hogan supporters to rationalize it and say “well, the other guy cheated first! He’s just evening the odds!” To the people on the heel’s wavelength, that doesn’t justify it. Hogan should be BETTER. And that perpetuates the argument, and keeps you talking about the show. You give folks just enough to get them hot, then back away and let them burn up.

That’s not what JBL does. JBL just says CESARO CAN’T COUNT LOOK HOW STUPID HE IS, and there’s no way to defend it. Nobody “likes” that point of view. When Michael Cole says Daniel Bryan’s a nerd, there’s not a constructive group of people who can build a conversation on that. It’s just giving them a catch-all to dismiss something. One fuels what we call “haters” — people who are vocal in their dislike of something, but don’t really have a reason beyond “that’s how I feel.” Those people haven’t made a decision or felt something based on actual reasons or stimuli, they’re just picking a side. Those people are the NPCs of the world. You don’t need the reasoning to be complex, it just has to be there. Show made Rollins seem important by saying he’s the best worker on the show and the future of the company, but kept it able to be deconstructed by coming at it from a biased point of view. He talked **** about Roman, but in a way where you could tell he was scared of him, and only out there to take an opportunistic cheap shot. Disputable reason, debatable logic. Conversation. Interest.

I'm in the weird spot of thinking that a King-less booth (unless they do the Smackdown and bring Tom in to do PBP and move Cole into color, which I think is decent) will be pretty painful. He's become the most tolerable thing about the RAW broadcast (I will not taint Renee by lumping her in with those clowns).

If I'm the WWE, I'm prepared to throw a lot of money at JR. I think they might be able to find more buys/attention in bringing him back than anything else they could do with their roster.

When did king turn face?

He just sort of gradually did. He started squealing "PUPPIES!" in a falsetto like a dip**** during the Attitude Era, the fans enjoyed it, and he slowly transitioned to defending faces more and more over time.

The squeels and whoops King does are so amazingly annoying - thankfully he's toned it down in recent years, but still - wtf? Listening to some of his older commentary on the Network it's just amazing that nobody told him ages ago that going 'whooooooop' in a really high pitch voice was not doing anybody any good.

I really feel JBL could be a great commentator if he had someone better to work with than Cole and King.

Theyre all aids, sorry to ruin all your memories of Kings and JBLs past, but they all suck at commentary and it hurts the show

So after I say I don't like and never have like Kings commentary you're going to ruin my memories of his commentary by revealing that he's always sucked?

Thanks - that's so helpful.

Though I did really enjoy JBL in the past, I can't see putting any of his current suckitude on his bad broadcast partners. It was actually Cole that he was with when he was really good in the past, right?

His problem isn't really with being fed the wrong setups or whatever, it's that he actually makes really terrible and lazy pro-heel arguments when a lot of the time there's an actual plausible case to make on the heel's behalf.

JBL just feels super mailed in and way too much like he's just there to disagree with Cole.

Just feels like he's not naturally bad, but he's not being asked to try at all because for whatever reason Vince doesn't give a **** that the booth is a trainwreck right now.

I don't like the pussyfied JBL. I think it would be better if he went back to the old school APA bad ass but on the mic.

Lawler was fantastic in attitude era imo. Helped that he was in the booth with JR who was able to keep control.

Counterpoint: you enjoyed it when he loudly squealed "PUPPIES!"

Point of Odor: Eskimo stinks

Lawler was a good talker in the late 90s early 2000s. The women's bra and panty matches were just a joke anyways and half the time Lawler was in the ring. His face when Sable exposed her boobs with nothing but painted hands was hilarious. And JR was like "Good God Almighty" hahahaha. And "Puppies" was always fun. Especially when Debra used to come down with JJ and the crowd would chant we want puppies. haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfYZq_wJoh8

^ found the vid on youtube

I did, not going to deny it. It was funny and the excitement was clear. Also his over the top ridiculousness worked well with JR.

It could be an age thing. I'm not sure how I would feel about it watching it at my current age, but wrestling is supposed to cater to all ages anyway so I feel that doesn't invalidate my comments regardless.

=(

Just leaving this SD spoiler here.

Assumed he was gonna reveal to be Ziggler or something but nope

lolllllllllllllllllll

That's too good to be true.

Oops, I forgot to copy the beginning portion. It basically said Vince was mad that some people perceive NXT as a better product than RAW/smackdown

Unreal lol

It really never gets better.

I'm sure Vince thinks some of the NXT stars are overrated. Vince and Kevin Dunn think that everybody under 6'2, 250 is overrated.

Smackdown spoiler just again shows that whomever has that belt will lose more than they win.