Michael Cole has called WWE’s biggest matches for nearly 30 years. He says it took the first 10 of them just to work out who he was supposed to be behind the desk.
Speaking on What’s Your Story? with Steph McMahon at Fanatics Fest, Cole said the comparison to Jim Ross followed him from the moment he arrived.
“When I started here, for many years it was always, you’re Jim Ross’s replacement. Jim Ross’s replacement. I heard it ad nauseam, and those are massive, massive shoes to fill,” Cole said.
The gap between them, he said, was not about ability but about time in the business.
“JR was a lifer in this business. He started out as a teenager. I came into this at 30 years old, didn’t know what I was getting into, and they were pretty mighty shoes to fill,” Cole said. “For many years, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do that. Vince believed in me. Kevin Dunn believed in me. I’m not sure I believed in myself until one day the light bulb went on and I said, I think I may belong here.”
His early attempts to close that gap involved doing an impression of the man he was replacing.
“It was a struggle for a decade, Steph, of trying to figure out what my voice was and how that voice was different from Jim Ross’s,” Cole said. “Early on in my career, you go back and hear some stuff, it’s all over YouTube, it’s embarrassing. But you’ll hear me screaming, stomping a mud hole in him the size of Texas, doing the stuff that Jimmy was doing, and I’m saying to myself, God, this is embarrassing. What can I do to differentiate?”
Cole eventually landed on what actually separated them, and it was not vocabulary.
“I could never understand early on what the difference between me and Jim Ross was, because I would sit back and listen to tapes and go, I’m telling a story, Jim’s telling a story. I’m explaining to you who these characters are. Jim’s doing the same thing. Why is Jim the greatest of all time?” Cole said. “Because Jim had emotion, and you could feel even the simplest of calls out of Jim Ross. That’s why people believed in him. And I hope, over the number of years I’ve been here, that at least I’ve been able to emulate that just a little bit.”
He also took the opportunity to send his regards to Ross, who has surgery scheduled for next month.
“Shout out to JR, because I know he’s going through some health issues,” Cole said. “I wish JR the best in his surgery and everything else.”
McMahon brought up the storyline that first put the two on opposite sides, when Ross returned with his own announce table to work against Cole. Cole’s assessment of it was blunt.
“I thought it was the worst storyline ever attempted in this company, trying to turn Jim Ross heel,” Cole said. “Especially with this little 30-year-old, 150-pound punk with a mullet and a cheesy mustache, wearing skinny jeans with frosted tips in my hair. They really thought they were going to make Jim Ross heel.”
Both men committed to it anyway.
“Jim tried to buy into it. I tried to buy into it. He kicked me in the down low, which he really hit me that night, and that started this whole mini storyline,” Cole said.
When Ross was sidelined by Bell’s palsy, Cole was handed Raw with barely half a year of experience.
“I was thrown into this situation where I’m calling Monday Night Raw in 1998 with about six months of experience under my belt. What the hell am I doing here?” Cole said. “There were so many times that I thought I was going to leave the company because I didn’t think I was going to be able to pull it off.”
The timeline, it turns out, was predicted on day one.
“When I started in the business, Kevin Dunn told me it’s going to take you 10 years to get comfortable in this role. I’m like, 10 years? Come on. I’m a network news reporter. I’ve won all kinds of stuff around the world, journalism awards. Ten years to do this?” Cole said. “It took 10 years, folks, and I’m still learning today.”
