PARKS’S TAKE: Will Joe Tessitore break the streak of slow starts or disasters for mainstream sports announcers moving to WWE?

In a week-and-a-half, ESPN announcer Joe Tessitore makes his WWE broadcasting debut when he takes over Monday Night Raw from Michael Cole, who will move to Smackdown. Tessitore is a well-regarded voice who has experience calling a variety of sporting events, but is most well-known for his college football work.

It’s another in a long line of attempts by WWE to lure mainstream sports announcers into the pro wrestling fold. So far, they’ve had little success translating that ability across genres. Recently, WWE hired Adnan Virk from ESPN, and then UFC’s Jimmy Smith respectively to be the lead announcers on Raw. Virk lasted about a month, while Smith made it more than a year.

Prior to that, it was Mike Adamle, former NFL player and American Gladiators announcer who was given the reins of WWE programming, flaming out spectacularly, such that WWE turned him into an incompetent on-air authority figure. There were also the failed attempts, like trying to hire UFC’s Mike Goldberg away from that company in 2005, or even dating back to when Vince McMahon Jr. began taking WWE national in 1984, going after the biggest name in sports announcing, Howard Cosell.

McMahon’s desperation to make WWE acceptable in the mainstream led to these big swings. Thus far, it appears Triple H is continuing down this path, though it’s through the connections forged by Nick Khan that these acquisitions are being made. McMahon frequently shook up his announcing combinations on Raw and Smackdown and the new regime appears to have the same philosophy. If nothing else, Hunter is easier on his announcers than McMahon was, which will aid in the transition.

Tessitore is a fan of the WWE product, which will help, though in and of itself is not a guarantee of success. Will he succeed where others before him have failed? Will he be properly prepped to handle the breakneck pace of a three-hour show in ways that Virk and others were not? We’ll find out in a few short weeks.

(Greg Parks is a long-time PWTorch Newsletter columnist, longtime host of “Wrestling Night in America” on the PWTorch Dailycast line-up, and produces “Greg Parks Outloud!” every week on the PWTorch VIP podcast line-up.)

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