Ever feel like a zombie after dragging yourself through three hours of Raw? Don’t worry, Michael Cole does, too. The often maligned WWE commentator sat down with Sports Illustrated and admitted just how exhausting every Monday night is:
“When 11:15 p.m. ET rolls around, people have said to all of us, ‘You guys look like zombies.’ And it’s true. It is mentally exhausting. And it is physically exhausting, too. I sweat through my suit sometimes. When I am done, I get in my car to drive to the next town and I completely zone out for two or three hours. But it is also rewarding every week. I love it.”
“People think I sit down in a chair and I look at the ring and say, “Okay there are two guys fighting and this is what they are doing” and call the match. That is, and I swear to God, so far from the truth. I sit down and in my headset when I am calling Monday Night Raw for three hours, I have my executive producer, I hear my audio technician, I hear whoever is producing us backstage whether it is [WWE Chairman and CEO] Mr. [Vince] McMahon or Triple H or whoever it may be at the time. I also have two guys I have to listen to that I am working with so we can have a conversation on the air. So at any given time I have my voice, the two guys at ring side, audio, the executive producer and whoever is producing that night. So I sometimes have six voices in my head at once while we are on the air on live television. While that is going on, someone might say that the number one trend in the world on Twitter is this and we have to hit on it. Meanwhile, don’t forget to tell people why Paige is doing this to Nikki Bella. Then John may be telling me a joke and Booker T might be laughing and I have to keep all this going and keep the train on the tracks. I am a traffic cop.”
Well, I’m not sure if putting women’s wrestling over is a priority for any of those six voices, but it’s good to know that WWE’s decision to make you think most of their roster is a terrible waste of time is by committee.
Cole went on to talk about knowing the outcomes, and whether or not his reaction to The Streak ending was genuine:
“If I wanted to know, I could know everything. But I don’t want to know and especially at WrestleMania. A perfect example was last year with The Undertaker and Brock Lesnar. When Undertaker’s streak was ended by Brock, oh, my God, I was as shocked as the people sitting at the stadium that night inside the [New Orleans] Superdome. I had know no idea in a million years that was going to happen, and that was the reaction you got out of our call hopefully. I was expecting The Undertaker to kick out and I did one of my normal ‘One, two…’ and I was expecting to say kick out and all of a sudden it was three. I looked at John and he looked at me and I mouthed to him off-air, ‘Is it over?’ His eyes were big and wide and I said to myself: ‘Okay, the streak is over.’ I want those moments to happen.”
Michael Cole doesn’t go into the imaginary offer I make to the WWE commentary team each week to board a rocket going straight to the sun, but it is nice to know that moments like that can still be allowed to happen organically. Here’s to hoping this year’s WrestleMania broadcast will have a lot more of that, and less like three dudes making wet fart sounds into the void.
