JBL in the Announce Booth

A welcome addition to the booth
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Jerry Lawler's absence from the broadcast booth was sad in that I don't wish anyone to die on the job. I'm glad he's okay and is still breathing. At the same time, I'm also kinda glad that he was forced from the broadcast booth too. It sounds crass, but it's not like he was lighting the world on fire as a commentator before his condition. It sucks that it was the heart attack that put him out of commission, but c'mon, listening to John Bradshaw Layfield in the color commentator's chair was a stone cold improvement.

Obviously, the first thing noticeable about JBL's work was that he wasn't afraid to say things like "New Japan" or "CMLL". Those were the kinds of things that made us love Matt Striker at first, but then there was the whole thing about "being a good announcer" that was way more important than name-dropping non-WWE wrestlers or knowing the names of arcane moves. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to know the names of all the moves to be a great announcer. What you need to do is be able to play the role of what the announcer is supposed to be.

JBL accomplished that with flying colors. The color commentator is supposed to have strong stands and make bold statements. He gets stories over and reminds people why things are happening. He takes cues from the play-by-play guy and explains them. He's supposed to give a shit. JBL did all that with enthusiasm and authority. It didn't matter that he was away from the company for so long. The stuff he was saying not only made him sound knowledgeable as a wrestling scholar but as someone who was actually watching WWE TV while he was gone. That's not really a given for anyone thrown into the job. As enthusiastic as Booker T was (and I loved him for that even if people didn't like him overall), I have to admit that there were times when I thought he was just making shit up on the fly. Then again, it was better than Lawler's "Tazz-lite" mentality.

Tazz, and Lawler for that matter, is a shitty announcer because he doesn't care. He's not focused. He doesn't know what's going on. It doesn't matter if he was working with Mike Tenay or someone legendary like Jim Ross, he skated by. JBL, however, seems to be a natural fit for the job. I'm not sure if he's going to be on the show this week, because I heard that he's actually climbing Kilimanjaro this weekend, and that's not a slight undertaking in the least. Still, I hope that when he gets back that he's actually looking to be a longer term replacement for Lawler in the booth. Lord knows RAW needs the shot in the arm. It wasn't provided when Michael Cole went rudo, but even Cole at his worst as a straight-man shill for the company would be tolerable with JBL to bounce off of. He was, and is, that good.