“Sorry, Beth, you were saying..”

[mrbananagrabber]

That fairly unremarkable title really got me thinking; this was Mauro who accidentally talked over Beth Phoenix on NXT this week, corrected himself and let her finish her sentence.

And I realised that sort of thing just never happens on the main shows. The commentary on NXT is calm, everyone gets to speak, no-one gets shouted down or told to shut up, there’s no Corey style marking out over anyone, there’s no Cole spouting buzzwords and hashtags every two minutes..they’re there to call the matches, put over the wrestlers and continue the narrative of the storylines.

And it’s so refreshing to listen to.

[Perfect Timing]

May 30, 2019 19:27:58 GMT -5 mrbananagrabber said:

there’s no Corey style marking out over anyone, there’s no Cole spouting buzzwords and hashtags every two minutes..

MAMA MIA!!! THOSE COMMENTS WERE HOTTER THAN A GORDON RAMSEY COOKED MEAL!

[Deleted]

May 30, 2019 20:16:48 GMT -5 Perfect Timing said:

May 30, 2019 19:27:58 GMT -5 mrbananagrabber said:

there’s no Corey style marking out over anyone, there’s no Cole spouting buzzwords and hashtags every two minutes..

MAMA MIA!!! THOSE COMMENTS WERE HOTTER THAN A GORDON RAMSEY COOKED MEAL!

It's f***ing Monday Night RAW!

Also "sorry, Beth, you were saying" sounds like a FAN meme that gets run into the ground in 2 minutes.

[A Platypus Rave]

May 30, 2019 20:16:48 GMT -5 Perfect Timing said:

May 30, 2019 19:27:58 GMT -5 mrbananagrabber said:

there’s no Corey style marking out over anyone, there’s no Cole spouting buzzwords and hashtags every two minutes..

MAMA MIA!!! THOSE COMMENTS WERE HOTTER THAN A GORDON RAMSEY COOKED MEAL!

which is more or less what'd happen if Mauro was back on the main roster.

Even with commentary the problem is Vince.

Listen to Corey when he was in NXT vs. now... listen to Cole at Beast in the East when Vince wasn't around

[Deleted]

Mauro can be really obnoxious with the forced references, but he means well and the stuff he does for mental health awareness make it hard for me not to like him.

[Deleted]

Honestly I find Mauro way more annoying than I do the main roster commentators. He's better at actually calling the action but I just can't with having to stop to marvel at how he says the dumbest thing I've ever heard every 90 seconds.

[Evil Homer]

May 30, 2019 20:49:22 GMT -5 @dax said:

Mauro can be really obnoxious with the forced references, but he means well and the stuff he does for mental health awareness make it hard for me not to like him.

yeah some of his references are cringeworthy, but I’ll take that over “ its boss time “ or “ its the big dog “ and my least favorite whenever there is a big return “ oh my” and “ you gotta be kidding me “

[clifford]

May 30, 2019 19:27:58 GMT -5 mrbananagrabber said:

That fairly unremarkable title really got me thinking; this was Mauro who accidentally talked over Beth Phoenix on NXT this week, corrected himself and let her finish her sentence.

And I realised that sort of thing just never happens on the main shows. The commentary on NXT is calm, everyone gets to speak, no-one gets shouted down or told to shut up, there’s no Corey style marking out over anyone, there’s no Cole spouting buzzwords and hashtags every two minutes..they’re there to call the matches, put over the wrestlers and continue the narrative of the storylines.

And it’s so refreshing to listen to.

And to understand this you have to look no further than who's talking into the NXT team's headset vs. who's barking into the Raw & SD teams' headset.

[Super Duper Dragunov]

Honestly I think the best thing they did main roster was have Tom Phillips, Byron Saxton, and Renee Young commentating at MITB for a spell.

That was literally like the dream team of "we're the nice ones" all lumped together and it was SO refreshing.

[government mule]

Mauro's enthusiasm for the product is second to none, and really adds to the intensity of NxT and is the right place for him.

However, some of his popular culture references are almost painful to endure and I've no idea why he needs to do this.

[Prince Petty]

The thing with Mauro is, even if you find him annoying, at least he sounds like a real human being, not an automaton spouting corporate-approved lines.

The further removed people get from Vince, the more likely they are to seem like they have actual personalities and a level of consciousness.

[krozor]

Somewhere along the line, maybe with JBL but I think even early with Heyman, they decided that the heels needed to try to "win" at commentary. It's a fine line, but there was an art and balance to the way Heenan would say something terrible but only to set up Gorilla shouting him down, and the way they created chemistry as antagonists who were, begrudgingly, best friends with each other. Jesse would challenge Gorilla more, but ultimately knew when to step back or even outright acknowledge when a face did something worthy, and Ventura/Monsoon had a dynamic of two veterans who respected each other. Later, JR and Lawler had kind of a hybrid version of those two relationships.

Nowadays, they make the heel commentators on the main roster play it like they actively loathe their colleagues, and they spend every segment trying to bury them and the faces without doing Heenan's bit of letting themselves get comeuppance or Jesse's style of disengaging without tearing everything down. And on the rare occasion that one of the face commentary team is able to/is allowed to get a good rebuttal, they just have the heel yell "SHUT UP!" and still "win" the fight. It makes every single segment a slog, and the only way around it is when you put someone like Booker out there who just kind of does his own thing and mixes it up equally with everybody.