With Smackdown moving to Fridays on Fox starting on October 4, a shakeup in the broadcast announce teams for both Raw and Smackdown has been expected. WWE made those announce teams official by way of a press releases on Thursday, and there are certainly some surprises, including the return of WWE Hall of Famer Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler to Monday Night Raw.
Via the press release:
WWE Premiere Week ushers in an unprecedented era of coverage with special episodes of Monday Night Raw, NXT, Total Divas and the FOX debut of Friday Night SmackDown bringing fans eight hours of primetime programming.
As part of WWE Premiere Week, new voices will be brought to the Raw, NXT and SmackDown broadcasts. Raw’s new announce team will include play-by-play from Vic Joseph with Dio Maddin and WWE Hall of Famer Jerry “The King” Lawler serving as analysts; NXT play-by-play will be called by Mauro Ranallo with Beth Phoenix and Nigel McGuiness as analysts; and SmackDown will feature Michael Cole handling play-by-play, Corey Graves serving as analyst and Renee Young as a Special Contributor.
The NXT announce team stays the same, thank goodness, and the Raw announce team simply moves over to Smackdown intact. We were hoping they’d at least get Corey Graves and Renee Young away from each other for a while, although that might still happen for the most part, as Young’s a “special contributor.” Maybe they don’t want to overwork her if she’s also hosting WWE Backstage on Tuesdays. Vic Joseph, Dio Maddin (of all people), and Jerry Lawler is certainly a choice for Raw. What happens to Tom Phillips and Byron Saxton? Did they get thrown to the wolves?
What do you think about the new announce teams? Let us know in our comments section down below.
