Michael Cole Reflects On 25 Years Of Commentary

Michael Cole was recently interviewed by the Pat McAfee Show, where he spoke about being on the air for WWE for 25 years straight.

“June will be 25 years on the air here, I want to make it 25 years because there’s not anybody, at least in our line of work that’s been on the air 52 weeks a year for 25 straight years.”

Cole says WWE has given him everything in his life.

“I want to set an example for the people that are just starting on the team, but WWE’s given me everything in my life. They have, they’ve given me everything in my life. I’ve put kids through college, my wife had a kidney transplant that was able to be taken care of because of this company, and I want to give back to the company everything that it gave to me. Also, when we have a young announcer like a Vic Joseph on NXT, or a Jimmy Smith on Monday Night RAW, or Corey Graves, Byron Saxton, all of those guys. I want to be able to give back to them a bit and help them along the way so that they can become the next generation of the great announcers in WWE history. There’s been very few that have been at the level that I’m at. There’s Vince McMahon and you had Gorilla Monsoon, you had Jim Ross and you had me, and now you’re looking for that next person that’s going to fit into that role.”

Cole compared his commentary role to classic news hosts from the 20th century.

“They also ask me too, ‘Why has Michael Cole been on the air for 25 years?’ and ‘Why was Jim Ross on the air for here for 20 years?’ And it goes back to the old adage of when network news was so prominent in our lives, the ‘60s, ’70s, ‘80s and the early ‘90s. You had the same network anchor every single night, whether it was [Tom] Brokaw or [Walter] Cronkite or Peter Jennings, and the reason that person was in that role every night is because — and you’ve got to remember too, back in the day, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were four channels, so you would sit down at night and put on ABC News, and there’s Peter Jennings. He would be there every single night for you, so you began to trust him and there was a trust factor there. It’s the same thing in what we do, there’s a trust factor. Whether or not you agree with Michael Cole or how he calls commentary, you know what Michael Cole is presenting, you can trust that. You can trust that he’s going to be able to handle the situation, no matter what happens, and it’s the same thing whether it’s Joe Buck on FOX. Joe gets a lot of flack, but I think he’s the best in the world at what he does, because he’s there each and every week.”