The Best Announce Team in Pro Wrestling Today

by Brian Phelps
http://www.wrestlersway.blogspot.com

Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon. Jim Ross and Jerry "The King" Lawler. Tony Shiavone and "Iron" Mike Tenay. Jesse "The Body" Ventura and Vince McMahon. In the world of professional wrestling, the commentating booth at one time held legendary status. The 1980's and 1990's were a golden age for pro wrestling commentating with a who's who of legends and hall of fame announcers. 

Currently, the climate for commentating in pro wrestling is at an all-time low. As of late, we've seen 3-man booths in WWE with Byron Saxton, Corey Graves, and Michael Cole with an occasional splash of Booker T. Or, Josh Matthews and Don Callis over on Impact Wrestling (or Josh and "Pope" D'Angelo Dinero at one point). The one bright spot has been Jim Ross and Josh Barnett doing the commentary for NJPW on AXSTV (though they're not commentating live so often times Jim Ross sounds more like he's doing commentary on a video game then an actual broadcast). Prior to that, we even saw Michael Cole wrestling at WrestleMania. 

However, a brand new announce team was put together and this is already the best announce team in all of pro wrestling right now. WWE? Nope. NJPW? Nope. Impact Wrestling? Nope. ROH? Nope. Major League Wrestling now has the best commentating booth in the business. MLW with their Battle Riot episode introduced Matt Striker to team with the legendary Tony Shiavone to call the action for Major League Wrestling. Upon listening to them on commentary, you can already tell the difference between how Shiavone and Striker call matches versus other teams like Corey Graves and Byron Saxton. They actually do what I've been imploring wrestling commentators to return to doing what made commentators great:

1) Actually calling the match at hand - Too many times in recent years, the commentators spend more time talking about the top star of the brand in the middle of other wrestler's matches. I don't want to hear about Roman Reigns during a Dolph Ziggler versus Seth Rollins match for example. Commentators are supposed to be helping to tell the story of the match happening in the ring. 

2) Calling the match like a real sport - It seems like nowadays, commentators don't spend enough time talking about the wrestling moves themselves and how the pain they inflict with these moves changes the complexion of the match. They spend more time talking about someone's attitude or demeanor. Already, Striker and Shiavone were discussing during a Sami Callihan vs Shane Strickland match how Callihan was working the leg of Shane Strickland. They even noted how at certain times how it was a mistake for Strickland to be using his "bad" leg to kick Callihan noting that the risk may not be worth it. They also noted how at one point Callihan was working the other "healthy" leg of Strickland. And earlier in the night during a Jimmy Havoc match, Jimmy had his arm bandaged from a previous cut on his bicep he sustained during a hardcore match a couple of weeks before. Striker astutely noted how if the other wrestler took the bandage off or opened that wound up that Jimmy Havoc could bleed out. It's little details like this that are missing from other broadcast teams, and something that has really been missing since the Monday Night Wars.

3) Giving us more intimate details about the wrestler's personas - One thing that Tony Shiavone and Matt Striker too have always been really good at was explaining little details about a wrestler's background and how it plays into the match at hand. They were noting on the show how one wrestler had recently trained in Jiu Jitsu, but also noted that how even though that is impressive that this is wrestling. They noted how wrestling was different from boxing and mma. These little comments add so much more realism to the match and credibility to the commentating booth versus the cartoony back and forth exchanges you'll hear on WWE programming between Corey Graves and Byron Saxton. 

We need more commentating styles like Tony Shiavone, Matt Striker, and WWE's Mauro Ranallo (who is a legit sports commentator in his own right outside of pro wrestling). How Mauro Ranallo is not the lead commentator for RAW or Smackdown is baffling to me. He's the most talented announcer in all of WWE. I mean, the guy called the Mayweather vs McGregor fight for crying out loud and yet he's only on NXT?