Following the announcement on last night’s Friday Night SmackDown that Michael Cole and Corey Graves would be the new commentary team for the brand, new details have emerged regarding the status of the now-former SmackDown analyst, Wade Barrett. According to a report from PWInsider, Barrett will be “off the road going forward” and will not be moving to the Raw announce team.
The commentary change has led to speculation about whether it was related to recent comments Barrett made about Nikki Bella on the Clash in Paris pre-show. Bella noted on her podcast that she “wasn’t thrilled” about Barrett’s comments regarding her age and stated that he “avoided” her at the following Raw. However, the PWInsider report has not confirmed that this is the reason for the change.
For his part, Barrett addressed the situation on Twitter, stating that he did not avoid Bella and would be happy to speak with her. He later noted that they had spoken and the issue was “squashed”.
The report also provided an update on the announce team for Monday Night Raw. The current plan is for Michael Cole and Corey Graves to call both Raw and SmackDown for the foreseeable future. This is a significant change in workload for Graves, who had briefly been moved off of the main roster announce teams before returning to fill in on Raw for Pat McAfee. Now, he is slated to be the lead analyst for both of WWE’s main roster shows.
UPDATE: Barrett has responded to the report. Click here to read what he said.
