Graves’ friendship with Michael Cole was spoken about as well.
The new voice of Friday Night SmackDown is Corey Graves. He is joined at the desk weekly by Wade Barrett. This stretch is Graves’ first time as the play-by-play announcer as he’s always been the color commentator.
Graves was welcomed onto Jessica Kleinschmidt’s Short and to the Point podcast and he dove into the transition to the play-by-play role. As an analyst, he did not do much preparation. At most, he’d research some backstories and things along those lines but now, he has homework to do.
He feels the most difficult part about the transition is keeping his wittiness in check, but when he was offered the role, he was told that they did not want him to be Michael Cole 2.0.
I think overall, the most exciting aspect is it’s something new (being lead commentator of SmackDown). I’m comfortable with it to an extent having worked alongside Michael Cole for all these years and Cole really had me from day one as far as what he would like me to become as a broadcaster. Even back as an analyst, I learned everything. Sort of the Michael Cole style; the outlines, the X’s and O’s. But for me, I’ve been in WWE now I think just over 12 years. Starting as a wrestler and evolving into what I am now which is insane to say out loud that I am the voice of Friday Night SmackDown. I’m a professional broadcaster now which is never something in a million years I thought would be on my bingo card. But, now that I’m here, it’s just exciting to have something brand new to dive into and improve on and watch back and analyze. I got so comfortable as an analyst that I did very little to zero prep before the shows. Every once in a while if it was a big Premium Live Event or for the Royal Rumble or WrestleMania, etcetera, I would do a little homework. Maybe drum up some backstories that people hadn’t been so familiar with. But now I actually have a lot of work to do. My workday begins when I get to the building on Fridays and that’s, weirdly enough, exciting for me.
The hardest thing about making this transition so far is keeping my wit in check, because as a human being, if there’s a joke to be made, I’m there. It’s a curse and a blessing. But I’ve been able to still maintain a little bit of that flavor. I was told right upfront when I was offered this opportunity, ‘We don’t want you to be Michael Cole 2.0. We already have Michael Cole…’ and I’m still finding my voice and Wade Barrett is a new partner for me. He’s a guy I’ve built chemistry with and been friendly with over the years, but as far as from a broadcast perspective, it’s all brand new so I’m learning on the job, on the fly as he is but, I think the beautiful part is we can just sort of gel and tweak one another together and evolve as a team and sort of be a little more complete while also being something fresh, something new that’s never really been done before.
Graves stated that WWE Chief Content Officer Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque is more loose with the reins on commentary. He gives them space and Graves said the last few months have been the most quiet his headset has ever been. The only time he’ll hear from Levesque is if he’s doing something terribly wrong or if Levesque is responding to one of Graves’ jokes that he found funny.
Triple H is another guy that I owe a great deal if not everything in my career to. He was the one that took a chance on me as a wrestler in NXT and I know we’ve had a few conversations since that him having to shut me down broke his heart as much as it broke mine and he’s always been sort of silently supportive. He’s always been in the back. If I need something, I’ve never hesitated to go to him and ask. He also is really cool and sort of refreshing in a sense that he gives us space. When he’s in Gorilla, where the old boss sat, and instead of being told and prompted, ‘Hey, you gotta say this, you have to do it this way, you have to use this verbiage.’ I think he understands that we are all fans and we all love this in different ways and as the business grows and evolves, you kind of have to let go of the reins a little bit. I still have my guide rails. I just feel like they are a little bit wider on each side now where rather than trying to stay on a particular path and walking a certain rhythm and do things a certain way, I have a little bit more leeway to be me and develop my own style as long as all the boxes that need check continued to be checked, I don’t have to do them the same way that the six guys before me have done or that Michael Cole does or etcetera… I’ve been on TV for I think seven years on Raw and SmackDown and in the last few months, I think my headsets have been as quiet and lucid as they have been, ever. I only hear from him if I’m doing something terribly wrong, which knock on wood, doesn’t happen too frequently. Or the other time I hear from him pretty regularly is if, much like Michael Cole, if a joke lands. If I say something and it gets to him, I go, oh, that was really good or he’ll double down. He’ll follow up on my joke in my headset and sometimes I’m like, oh man, I wish I could tell the people this but it just doesn’t fit.
The friendship between Graves and Michael Cole was delved into. Graves stated that he cannot recount how many times he’s messaged Cole that he’s done and he quits but Cole will talk him off the ledge.
(Michael) Cole and I, our relationship has developed so long over all these years. It was actually him who suggested that I give commentary a shot, way back when. I think the night after I had my final match, I didn’t realize it was gonna be final at the time but he was the one that sort of put the bug in my ear and had he not given me that opportunity, God knows where I’d actually be. But, I got to learn from him as a boss and as I watched him and took notes mentally and again, absorbed all this great stuff via osmosis from the greatest to ever do it in my opinion but now we’ve gotten to the point where we’re friends. He’s one of my closest friends and in a weird way, he’s almost like an older brother to me and when I have doubts or issues, he’s my sounding board. The amount of times that I’ve texted him at 2 o’clock in the morning telling him, ‘That’s it, I’m done, I give up, I quit, screw this’ and then I’ll wake up to the text in the morning and he’ll go, ‘I’ll see you on Friday.’ He knows me now. He’s talked me off plenty of ledges. But I’m eternally grateful for him and what still makes me laugh as for how professional he is, which I challenge you to find anybody in any walk of life to maintain the professionalism of Michael Cole. That guy is a pro’s pro in every sense.
Michael Cole is on the call for Monday Night Raw alongside Pat McAfee. For Premium Live Events, the commentary team is Cole and Graves.
There was a shift in WWE’s television production in late 2023 as longtime executive, Kevin Dunn, finished up with the company. Dunn was hired in 1984.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Short and to the Point with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
