‘Good Ol’ JR’ Jim Ross has revealed his number one problem with commentary in various promotions in the modern age of professional wrestling.
The voice of many promotions since the nineteen seventies, Ross has provided a soundtrack to countless generations of childhoods including fans of World Championship Wrestling and World Wrestling Federation/World Wrestling Entertainment alongside his broadcast partner Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler.
Taking to his Grilling JR Podcast, Ross talked about what irks him most with present day commentary and what those talking heads sitting ringside can do to remedy their mistakes:
“Sometimes I have a big issue with commentary to this day, I’ve had it forever, one is talking through false finishes. How do we know it’s a false finish and not the finish unless we know the finish? All of a sudden we just talk through those false finishes because we know it’s not the finish.
The other thing is the friggin’ use of pronouns. I know we’ve made fun of Vince about that, but one of the best things Vince taught me on commentary was to not over use pronouns. Who is he? If I said, ‘Conrad Thompson did, Conrad overcame the odds, he is the champion of the world’, or I could say ‘he did it, he’s the champion of the world’, it doesn’t have the same stick. I catch myself doing it and I hate it. The best way to get talent over, and that’s the only job a broadcaster has is to get talent over, you do it with their names, nicknames.”
All for helping the newer generation of commentators, Ross mentioned the aid he’d given someone outside of AEW recently giving them a list of rules to stick to in order to make it in the industry:
“I told a kid the other day who does commentary, texted me and wanted some help. He doesn’t work for our company, AEW. I told him the most important job you’ve got is to put talent over and you’ve got different ways to describe the talent without it being a pronoun.”
Jim Ross currently works as the voice of All Elite Wrestling after sporadic jobs with WWE including commentating on Roman Reigns vs. The Undertaker at WrestleMania 33 and being one of the original voices of what we now know as NXT UK at the WWE United Kingdom Championship Special in 2017.
Credit for the interview: Grilling JR
h/t for the interview: Wrestling Inc.