AAA commentator Corey Graves was a guest today on WWE Radio’s Busted Open podcast, where he hyped up this weekend’s Triplemania 34 events.
During the course of the interview, Graves spilled the beans on a very basic thing that every wrestler in WWE should be doing but most skip out on before every televised match. That simple step is to talk to the commentators ahead of time to make sure they know the story of their match.
“I cannot overstate how important it is for talent. Hopefully some of them are
listening to this right now. I know that I sort of appear to be kind of a grumpy guy. I’m really not hard to get along with, especially when I’m sitting at the commentary desk all day while rehearsals are happening, or walkthroughs, etcetera.
If you tell me what you want your story to be, I will tell it for you, and I will most likely enhance it for you. I will put my spin on things and maybe do it my own way, but I will make sure that what you want conveyed is conveyed.
With that said, there’s a remarkably low number of talents who make sure they seek out myself, or Michael Cole, or Wade Barrett or Joe Tessitore, or even Vic [Joseph] and Booker. And it’s funny because those are always the stars that populate the top of the card. Off the top of my head, I will tell you every match of his I ever called, John Cena found me. AJ Styles found me. Roman Reigns finds me.”
One reason why it’s important to communicate with the commentators beforehand is so they can better cover for the wrestlers when something inevitably goes wrong in the ring, or when the match falls apart in certain spots.
“Obviously, it’s pro wrestling. It’s not rocket science. There likely isn’t something that’s gonna be totally missed, but better safe than sorry. And if you arm us as the commentators with the information that you want the audience to know, we’re sort of that last line of defense. If something doesn’t go right, which God knows happens all the time, if I know where you’re trying to go, or what your goal was, nine times out of ten, I can spin something to get the train back on the track. It’s not necessarily going to clean up all the mess as a whole, but it will smooth down some of the sharp edges of what’s going wrong at the moment.”
Are you surprised that a “remarkably low” number of WWE stars bother to include this step in their routine before each match? Or is Graves overstating how important it is to get on the same page with the commentators? Let me know your reaction to Corey Graves’ advice in the comments below, Cagesiders.
