For better or worse, legendary announcer Jim Ross has become one of the central voices of AEW commentary. He’s in the booth with Exalibur and Tony Schiavone on every episode of Dynamite, and while he’s not doing play-by-play anymore, he’s still offering his color commentary as one of the elder statesmen of pro wrestling. But just because he’s working with All Elite Wrestling doesn’t mean he’s on the same page with everything the company does. On the most recent episode of his podcast, he offered an unvarnished opinion about AEW’s approach to wrestling.
Speaking to Conrad Thompson on Grilling JR, Ross had this to say:
Somebody said, ‘Well, why are you at AEW?’ Because they pay me a lot of money, and I like the people I work for, and I love wrestling and I love helping these young kids. Are they doing too many flips and flops for my taste? Yeah they are to be honest with you, they sure are. But they’re weaning themselves off that a little bit because, Conrad, that type of wrestling is not new and fresh anymore. How many times have you seen a 450? A 620? Blah blah blah blah blah… Now it’s not new anymore. It’s not new! So we gotta figure out something else that’s going to get the people’s attention. It might be a wrestling match! It might be using psychology and grabbing them by the emotional balls and pulling them right along with a story.
Admittedly, AEW does sometimes seem to put big spots over psychology and storytelling. But on the other hand, the complaint I’ve heard from probably the most people about the AEW product is that JR should retire from commentary. So everybody has opinions, I guess.
