Jim Ross Retire Bitch

Ross has become toxic to the AEW telecast
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein

The All Elite Wrestling Tag Team Championship match Saturday night had a consensus agreeing that it was the best bout of the night. A huge reason for that was the extra added tension built in thanks to Hangman Page's gradual self-alienation from The Elite, a story that began almost concurrently with the beginning of the Dynamite show and that has metastatized into Page becoming a belligerent alcoholic with growing antipathy with his ever-distant friends, even Kenny Omega, with whom he still holds the titles. The match, which featured Page and Omega defending against their fellow friends in The Elite, the Young Bucks, had a distinct flavor in the early going. Whenever Omega was in the ring, it was a cordial, sporting affair. When Page was in, he agitated either one of the Bucks, causing them to, in a phrase, lose their shit.

Tensions boiled over into the closest the group came to being torn apart when Page spat at Matt Jackson. The elder Buck let his anger get the best of him, and he started shoving Page hard. This drew both Omega and Nick Jackson into the ring to try and cool the tempers. Watching it without commentary would have given away the story easily, so it should be a layup that the commentary team would complement the action with an appropriate call, right? Nah, Jim Ross basically just complained about Nick Jackson and Omega as "illegal men" in the ring with all the nasal and whiny indignance of a racist father wondering aloud why LeBron James gets away with so many travels on layups.

Once upon a time, Ross was a dynamic commentator. Those days were long past in 2009, when he was on his last legs in WWE. As he wandered around the wrestling landscape, his commentary quality dwindled and dwindled until it was apparent that while listening to him mention wrist control and whine about flippy-dos with Josh Barnett during New Japan on AXS TV telecasts, he was a spent force. I'm sure Tony Khan and the executive vice president wrestlers didn't hire Ross because they loved him on those moribund telecasts, but the need for name credibility, which is what has caused them to hire Tony Schiavone and Tazz as well to sit with Excalibur at the broadcast table, had them reach out to Ross. They lucked out with Tazz, who has brought vibrant energy to the booth with his spot-on "real sports" analysis, and to a lesser extent, Schiavone has been a net positive as well.

Ross though? If ruining what was a climactic moment not only in the story of Hangman Page and his friends, but perhaps in the promotion on the whole, was the first thing, it would be what it was. It was the first moment where the cold war between Page and his friends spilled over into hot conflict. That moment deserved a call of similar gravity, importance, panache. Even a BAH GAWD in service of the expectorant and following "I don't like you anymore" shove might have served well. I don't know what how he could've called it, or at least allowed Excalibur to get the call in, but the last thing should've been something shrilly in service of enforcing the rules. It would've been a big first strike, but I could've seen it.

The thing is, he has a history. If you thought that he'd stop yelling at the pesky tag wrestlers for ignoring the rules or saying blatantly offensive things about wrestlers after graduating from AXS to TNT, well, sorry, you were fooled. He's used the outdated term "oriental" to refer to Japanese wrestlers. He asked "what is Kris Statlander all about" two months after she officially signed with AEW, and then when Excalibur explained her to him, he dismissed the helpful backstory. Every tag match, he whines at least once about the illegal men and always mentions how the wrestlers have until ten to get out of the ring after tagging out to an audience that is mostly used to no one enforcing five counts anyway. He's called women "credits to their gender." Every show has been a non-stop run of gaffes and offense coming from his mouth. He's been the worst part of the show almost every show he's been a part of.

AEW is a breath of fresh air to the wrestling mainstream, but it is as World Championship Wrestling was and what WWE is right now. Corporate wrestling backed by billions will always fall into the cash-backed rut of hiring people with famous names rather than those who'd do the job for them well. Ross was nice to Cody once in WWE, so now Cody feels like he should keep doing Ross favors. Khan doesn't mind paying money for his services, especially since another friend of The Elite, Dave Meltzer, continues to praise Ross' work like it's even half of what Michael Cole's ceiling is anymore. No matter what Khan or Vince McMahon or anyone who runs a multimillion dollar industry backed by billions says; they don't listen to you. It's a double-edge sword, because the best things in any wrestling company have never come from pandering to fans, but the worst shit always comes from not reading the room.

You won't be able to trust Khan doing the right thing until Cody or one of the Bucks or Omega start to feel heat about Ross verbally diarrheaing over their matches. The sad part is that it's not the first time Ross failed the Bucks either. During a New Japan show on AXS, the Bucks pulled off a Meltzer Driver with Meltzer in the front row as a tribute to his brother who passed. Ross and Barnett on commentary talked over it while decrying flips in the process. It was an active detriment then, and he's an active detriment now.

I don't know what the course of action is other than watching Dynamite and the pay-per-views on mute. I've gotten good at tuning him out, but you can't rely on your own mental rigor to block out every enraging thing he says. It's frustrating, because like the match he nearly ruined with his selfish adherence to following rules, AEW is mostly a good product. However good anything is, like WCW in 1996 or WWE in 2013, there's always going to be something going on telling you not to trust the entity in whole going forward. AEW is a good wrestling promotion, but it's still a corporate wrestling promotion. It's not your friend, and neither are any of the people in charge. You have to take the bad with the good, and unlike WWE, at least the good outweighs the bad by a considerable margin. But the thing to keep in the back of your mind is if you can't trust Tony Khan to hire the best commentator possible to make his product look as good as possible, can he be trusted to keep his company as good as it is now for a long time?