Commentary has all the time played an prominent part in the presentation of expert wrestling. Unlike many sports, it's de facto perfectly possible to consequent a match without any comment at all. But good comment can turn an midpoint match into a great match. Conversely bad comment can severely hurt a good match.
The comment team for expert wrestling is loosely based on the normal arrangement for comment in America Tv, a play-by-play commentator and a "color" commentator. Any way the color commentator in wrestling is a role that has usually been held by a heel character and was used to both supplementary the storylines and to rile up the audience at home by cheering on the heel wrestler.
For many years this recipe was followed pretty intimately with play-by-play focusing on the details of the match and the color commentator trying to construe the heel's actions. It was a recipe which worked very effectively and was close enough to what you would expect to see in any other sports event that it helped supplementary the illusion that wrestling was real.
Play By Play
When the Wrestlemania era began, that started to change. Increasingly the emphasis moved from sports to Sports Entertainment. With that convert in emphasis came a convert in commentary. The convert which took place over some years was to growth the emphasis on play by play announcers "telling the story" rather than calling the match.
That move to "tell the story" moderately came to dominate match commentary, to the extent that commentators often now spend as much time talking about what will be happening next week as they do about what is happening in the ring right now.
Compounding this question was the increasing push to make each show seem more impressive than the last (a trend started by the Monday Night Wars). This has resulted in announcers losing all credibility as they claim that a perfectly midpoint match is the match of the year or that that a tedious beat down is the most horrific thing they have ever seen.
The play-by-play commentator is supposed to be the audience's identification point. By moderately turning him into a blatant shill for the business both Wwe and Tna are damaging their association with their own audience.
How can we perhaps believe anyone Mike Tenay says when we know he is going to claim that every Ppv he hosts is the best Ppv ever? It isn't a believable claim. In fact it's outright silly.
Jim Ross has a similar question in that he's selling every beatdown on Raw like man is having their teeth extracted without any painkillers. Nobody believes it any more. While Ross is one of the few habitancy who can slip in the odd comment of the stock it seems that even he has issue openly disagreeing with the business line any more.
Color Commentators
The situation with Color Commentators is a little different. Their original role has been to get the audience riled up. Any way over the last few years there has been a move away from the heel commentator so that now they are tweeners at best and in some cases (I'm thinking man like Taz) they're clearly a face.
That convert has radically altered the dynamic of the comment team, and not for the better. Now the heel doesn't have a allowable voice making his case while the match goes on. There's no one there to point out when he is wrestling well and help get him over. Nor is there anyone to try and construe his heelish actions and make the wrestling story work properly.
Right now the only heel color commentator on national Tv is Jbl, who shows significant promise and could de facto come to be the best color commentator in the business given some time and experience. One of the reasons he works so well in my view is because while he defends all the heels, he does it without pretending he likes every particular one of them. When the heel does something brainless he says so, when it's smart he explains why it's smart.
Don't Talk Down To the Audience
The fundamental question I see with wrestling comment currently is that there is a complete lack of respect for the audience. It's not just that the clubs think they can de facto get away with telling their audience what to think, its that they think we won't even be aware that they are doing it.
Insulting your audience's intelligence is one of the quickest ways to get them to turn off.
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