The Jimmy Smith Era Begins

The Monday Night Raw lead play-by-play announcer position seems to have gone the way of Defense Against the Dark Arts professors.

Many people, including me, were surprised to learn after WrestleMania that Adnan Virk, a former SportsCenter anchor, would be taking over as Raw’s newest play-by-play announcer. I like Adnan, always have, and was more than willing to cut him a great deal of slack as he looked to transition. However, it turns out that he, like many, were just in over their heads with the position.

Leading the Raw commentary team (and everything that comes with it) might just be one of the hardest jobs in the world. Now, Jimmy Smith of UFC and Bellator fame will take a stab at the role.

As someone who has followed mixed martial arts nearly as much as I have professional wrestling, I like Jimmy Smith. He’s a likeable guy, a smart guy at that, who has a knack for succeeding in various television roles for two of the world’s leaders in MMA. The situation almost runs parallel to Mike Goldberg, who anchored UFC pay-per-views for over a decade. The story goes that Goldberg, who had no experience calling pro wrestling matches, received the call to replace Jim Ross on less than a week’s notice and had to no-call, no-show his UFC event that weekend. Obviously, that deal never came to fruition, but now it’s Smith’s turn to show what he can do. And unlike Goldberg, Smith has never served in a play-by-play capacity, working strictly in a color/analyst role.

He has, however, drawn positive early reviews from Michael Cole, who also had kind words to say about Pat McAfee, who has since drawn rave reviews working alongside Cole on SmackDown. However, McAfee’s job is essentially Jimmy Smith’s former job: color commentary. On top of that, Smith will be asked to work on the WWE’s flagship show without even a spell of calling a live show in developmental.

The news of Smith’s hiring coincided with the release of Tom Phillips, a man who many thought checked every box the WWE looks for in its commentators: young, intelligent and presentable. To top it off, Phillips also brought some serious wrestling acumen to the table in addition to years of knowledge of the WWE commentary style. Alas, the WWE could not commit to Phillips, and his future employment was not to be. It will now be up to Jimmy Smith to bring some stability to a Raw commentary table that has lacked it for a large chunk of time.

The constant shakeup of the announce tables in WWE dates back a few years as it dealt with JBL and Booker T stepping aside while trying to figure out if Jerry Lawler was still fit to perform in a weekly role. It’s fair to give WWE a pass in those scenarios. However, the announce teams got a new look in fall 2019 when Vic Joseph, Lawler and Dio Maddin were named as the next announce team for Paul Heyman’s Raw. I wanted to love the pairing simply because of how different all three of them are, but there was no chance of that working out. Joseph had mostly been calling taped shows at the time, Maddin himself had zero commentating experience and Lawler, the elder statesmen of the three, isn’t exactly a player-coach type.

Later, WWE tried Tom Phillips, Byron Saxton and Samoa Joe as the Raw commentary team and saw some success. However, this pairing was likely never viewed as a long-term solution because of Joe’s desire to return to the ring and WWE’s inability to commit to Phillips in any one role.

The latter point showed in the WWE’s snap hiring of Adnan Virk to replace Phillips on Raw. I’ve known of Virk for a number of years, and like Smith, he too excelled in every on-screen situation I’ve ever seen. However, he may go down as having had one of the least memorable commentary runs in Raw history. At least Mike Adamle stuck around long enough for his gaffs to catch on. Virk, unfortunately, didn’t even last long enough to reach Adamle territory.

Needless to say, history will not be in the corner of Jimmy Smith come this Monday, or any Monday after.

However, the optimist in me says that in spite of WWE’s insistence on trying to fit square pegs into round holes, there is a chance this marriage could work. I never even considered Smith a possibility for WWE until I heard the news this week. But now that I have, when I envision what a Jimmy Smith-Corey Graves-Byron Saxton might sound like, Jimmy can bring a lot of straight man credibility to the table while Graves and Saxton bicker over top of it. A guy like Smith can also help legitimize the product, which is something WWE always seems to be after.

However, for Smith to succeed, he will need to first show he can handle the glorified traffic cop role of play-by-play announcer, and later show he can work with Vince McMahon. Given everything we know about Vince and everything I’ve seen from Smith, the two might get along, especially if Smith gets off to a nice start. If both of these things come to fruition, who knows?

I thought about writing a lengthier piece about how two-man booths are vastly superior to the three-man booths we see so commonly today, or what WWE actually needs to look for in its commentators. However, none of those ideas bear any relevance at the moment. Right now, we are living in the Jimmy Smith Era of Monday Night Raw. 18 months from now, I’d like to say we’re still living in the Jimmy Smith Era. Will we be? History suggests we won’t, and if we’re not, I might just have to get to that aforementioned article.