Ricochet speaks candidly about the topic.
From 2021-2024, Samantha Irvin served as a ring announcer for WWE. She took on duties for 205 Live, SmackDown and then made her way to Monday Night Raw.
She was the sole announcer for WrestleMania XL nights one and two. Irvin announced her departure from the promotion in October. Her fiancé and current AEW talent Ricochet spoke in-depth about her decision to step away from WWE while he was on Insight with Chris Van Vliet.
He thinks Irvin had been thinking about the decision since WrestleMania. He believes her thought process was that accolade was the highest she could get in her position. Ricochet shared that prior to her becoming an announcer, Irvin had an in-ring tryout for WWE.
He went on to detail her routine to get prepared for ring announcing and how she would time announcements to match theme songs. Irvin told Ricochet that she might not do anything else for a while. Ricochet also touched on the criticism Irvin received from fans after noting that she hated ring announcing and wanted to venture into other areas such as managing.
No (I don’t think me leaving WWE got Samantha Irvin thinking about leaving). She’s been talking about that for a while, even before my stuff was up. I think it happened at WrestleMania. I think last year’s WrestleMania was for her… announcing was only supposed to be like the way into WWE. Yeah (I’m talking about WrestleMania XL), with Roman (Reigns) versus Cody (Rhodes) and then The Rock and then Undertaker and all this stuff. But again, because she, first and foremost, is a fan. Before all of that, she grew up with it. Her dad watched it, her brothers grew up with it. So, of course, yes, she’s a performer so her time performing and traveling the world performing got her to a position to where Mark Henry found her and said, ‘Oh, this girl is amazing. We need her for something.’ Again, like I was telling you earlier, when the pandemic happened, she used to live in Vegas and did Cirque du Soleil and she did VEGAS! THE SHOW and she did stage shows. So when the pandemic happened, luckily Mark Henry got a hold of her during that. She actually did the full tryout. She did the full tryout, because they didn’t know she was going to be a ring announcer. Mark Henry said, ‘We just need this girl for something. She’s so talented, we need her.’ She’s got pictures where she was hitting the ropes. Her tailbone is bruised and her back is bruised, big bruises on her back. She did the whole tryout, taking bumps, body slams. Did the whole thing and then, I think she was in NXT actually as an interviewer. I think Greg Hamilton did his thing and then she replaced him on SmackDown because she was already interviewing but they needed somebody and then they were like, ‘Oh, she can do it’ and so, they just kind of said, ‘Hey, can you do this?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ because she was already doing 205 Live and she was doing things like that. But again, I think ring announcing was only supposed to be the way in. She wanted to be a character. That’s what she’s been her whole life. She’s been stage performing her whole life. Drama club to stage performing to traveling the world doing stage performance. So that’s kind of what she hoped, but then I think once WrestleMania happened, I think she was like, that’s the highest I’m gonna get. Because for her, she’s a performer. It’s funny because it’s hard to explain. When you’re just a performer — I guess announcing — because now she’s getting hate because she said she didn’t enjoy announcing. But she enjoyed making the WWE Universe feel emotions and she enjoyed using her voice to help promote and help move the company forward. But, just literally the act of, ‘Coming to the ring and weighing at 230 — ’ this is just my example: It’s like having Mariah Carey, but she’s just a ring announcer, and you don’t get any of the other stuff…
Yes (Irvin getting singing opportunities at WWE were ways to get her more involved) but also, like, she wants to be a stage performer. It’s hard to say and it’s funny because a lot of that stuff, she was like, ‘I’m so nervous. I don’t even want to do this because it’s so nerve-racking.’ She says singing the national anthem is like hardest song you can sing. Just the pressure, singing the national anthem when you’re on a pay-per-view or you’re at Allegiant Stadium and all the fans are watching. She’s like, ‘It’s the hardest song to sing and you gotta pick your breaths properly.’ But again, at the end of the day, she loves and respects the position and she loves and respects wrestling. You know, she wanted to be like Paul Heyman. Like a manager or something. But at the end of the day… me, for example, I loved WWE and I love my time there and I loved everything that I did. It’s a huge production, it’s the biggest production in entertainment. It travels, it’s huge. It’s the biggest show on earth, and I think in that production, people kind of have their roles. This is what I was telling her: I feel like she broke tradition. I think that’s why people are kind of upset. Because, again, how long was Fink doing it? How long did Lilian (Garcia) do it? Even Justin Roberts still doing it, and then the fact that she only did it for four years and then she found out, ‘This isn’t what I was born to do. This isn’t what I love to do…’ She’s like, ‘I don’t know how to change that part’ (about being good at announcing)… Again, I’m using these names. Again, these are my examples. But what if you had Whitney Houston, but she was just a ring announcer? Because even one time, I went behind Sam and I saw her. She had a little book open and she (had) the music bars, the treble clef and she had music notes and I was looking there for a second and I just looked over her shoulder and I said, ‘What is that? What does that say? What is that sound?’ And she was like — the music notes that (she) wrote, it said, ‘Rhee-Ah-Rip-Ley.’ She broke it down like that. She was making little jingles. Like, American Nightmare Cody Rhodes, Jey Uso ‘Main Event.’ She was making jingles. She was trying to time it with the song, she was trying to time it with the beat. So when the beat dropped, she was done saying it so the beat could go and she was really trying to tie it all together. Because she’s an artist, she’s a musician and that’s what she naturally does. She’s just not an announcer, and it’s like, obviously there’s no disrespect to any of that. Just because that’s not what you were born to do and that’s not what you love to do. It’s just crazy.
Again, people take offense to it (Irvin saying ring announcing was not her dream job). Again, I think she just broke tradition. I think traditionally, especially in WWE, they build off of… I don’t wanna say anything that’s gonna get taken out of context but you know everything does. They build it off repetitiveness. When you find something that works, like, if you smell what The Rock is cooking. He’s gonna say it every time because then the fans are gonna say it. Why would he change it up? Why would he change that up? It works, it’s working, it’s going… She found, just like The Rock found, this is great. I love this. I have so much respect for this. I put my heart, my soul into this. I gave it literally everything that I have to make WWE better because of the love that I have for it. But at the end of the day, it’s just not what I was born to do, and just like me, I told her, ‘If you feel even half the way that I feel, I feel like this isn’t what I wanna do. I feel like I could be doing more as well,’ and that’s kind of why I left and she just feels like she could be doing more and honestly, maybe at the time, maybe she doesn’t want to do anything. At the end of the day, we got two kids together, we got our house, we got dogs and I know it’s crazy but, again, just the way both she and I kind of grew up, she wants to be at home a little bit more and she wants to be able to take care of our kids and make sure they’re getting to school on time and doing their homework and she wants to make sure, when I come, the house is clean and stuff and that’s what she literally wants to do and so she’s like, ‘I might not even do anything for a while.’ Whether that’s make music, make whatever. She’s like, ‘I might not just do anything because this is kind of what I wanna focus on.’ I’m there with her. I’m like, ‘Hey babe, whatever you wanna do, I got your back. If you don’t wanna do anything and you wanna chill at the house, I got you. You can do that.’ Because now, she can travel with me whenever she wants, she can go with me whenever she wants and we can take the kids now together and we don’t have to worry about, she comes to a show, are people gonna think something? We kind of just wanna live our life a little bit, you know what I’m saying? They (our schedules) were pretty flipped. I would leave Tuesday to Thursday. I didn’t really get to see my daughter a lot either. The days we normally have her, I was gone now so, I think at the end of the day… we just had to really figure out what’s best for us individually, because that was gonna be best for us together. We have our conversations, you know, private, and she was always talking about, she’s like, ‘The biggest thing that’s –’ not that I regret — ‘But the biggest thing that’s gonna hit me about this is how the fans are gonna feel,’ because she knows the impact. She understands and she appreciates it all. But it’s like, man, at the end of the day, if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, even though you have mad love and you have respect for it, it’s like, man, and that’s anything…. I think she broke the tradition of wrestling. Again, you have people who are in it forever! I said, look at Rey Mysterio and A.J. Styles because they’ve been doing it for so long and they’re still in it. They’re still doing that. So I think, especially when wrestling fans find something that makes them feel good and makes what they like watching better, they just want it forever. Of course. I watch One Piece. It’s on 1,100 episodes. I want more episodes. I don’t want it to stop, you know what I mean? So I get it. So I understand, I understand. Again, I feel like she broke tradition, wrestling tradition in a way by just stepping away.
After Irvin’s departure, Ricochet sent out a tweet and noted that she’s not coming to AEW. Here’s what he had to say about the tweet:
I kind of think it was funny. No (I didn’t need to clear up that she’s not coming to AEW). Again, I kind of think it was funny. None of that’s real. It’s not real. No (X is not real). It’s not. I guess you need social media for a lot of promotion, you need it for a lot of stuff, especially nowadays but as far as our lives, again, it’s not real because no one says that stuff to us in real life. Anytime I meet anybody and I’ve traveled the world, no one’s ever said, you made a big mistake going — no one’s ever said, you need to change the way you wrestle. No one says that stuff to my face and maybe now they will and I hope you do because — but don’t be afraid of what I say back.
Taking over the Monday Night Raw ring announcing duties is Lilian Garcia. She is back in the role full-time.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
