WWE commentary has honestly been awful since Jim Ross left, and even for certain points while he was there Jerry Lawler's nonsense or Micheal Cole's blathering brought J.R. down. And if you're able to bring Jim Ross' commentary down, you're shit at your job. I am a huge Pat McAfee fan, he's a genius at what he does, bringing a mixture of comedy and sports talk together and he is also a huge wrestling fan. Key word is wrestling fan, because he takes wrestling very seriously; while he sees it as sports entertainment to a degree, he treats it seriously like an actual sport and tries to not break kayfabe. This makes guys like Jim Cornette (a favourite wrestling talker of mine because of his old fashioned approach to the business) like Pat's approach to the business. He was given the opportunity to talk briefly during WrestleMania which is huge and when he wore a sport jacket a t-shirt and shorts, everyone was like, "no matter how good he was he's done, that'll never fly with Vince." Thing is, he did a few commentary gigs for NXT afterwards even leading into a fun mini-feud with Adam Cole. Yet despite this, Vince didn't seem to hate it. All of this led to strangely when I was watching The Pat McAfee Show one day, he announced that he'd be doing full time commentary alongside Micheal Cole for Smack Down. I immediately was like "oh no, he's done with his show, which isn't true he wasn't." but at the same time I was like, "good for Pat."
That's when I realized wait, not good for Pat, because WWE is a soulless vacuum that would suck everything that makes him so funny and unique away from him. Yet, strangely............that didn't happen. Vince is letting Pat be Pat and because of that, he is making commentary exciting, and is making WWE TV a little better. (Granted that's just a little better because it's still WWE). That is part of the draw honestly, Pat McAfee is one of the funniest people around and letting him be his typical goofy self is what part of the enjoyment really is, you get to see a real genuine person on WWE and not a stale cardboard cookie cutter announcer like Micheal Cole, a boring one like Byron Saxton, or a guy who could've been interesting in Corey Graves but they made him awful too. Pat goes out there and is still the same Pat McAfee that we see on his own show. WWE needs more things like that, whether it's genuine storylines or most importantly letting characters be themselves; in the old days, you were given a point to talk about for a promo but how you said and worded it was up to you and that kind of thing needs to come back.
If anything, his genuine nature, his real quality on tv, and his love of professional wrestling all make Pat McAfee something that WWE definitely needed.
That's when I realized wait, not good for Pat, because WWE is a soulless vacuum that would suck everything that makes him so funny and unique away from him. Yet, strangely............that didn't happen. Vince is letting Pat be Pat and because of that, he is making commentary exciting, and is making WWE TV a little better. (Granted that's just a little better because it's still WWE). That is part of the draw honestly, Pat McAfee is one of the funniest people around and letting him be his typical goofy self is what part of the enjoyment really is, you get to see a real genuine person on WWE and not a stale cardboard cookie cutter announcer like Micheal Cole, a boring one like Byron Saxton, or a guy who could've been interesting in Corey Graves but they made him awful too. Pat goes out there and is still the same Pat McAfee that we see on his own show. WWE needs more things like that, whether it's genuine storylines or most importantly letting characters be themselves; in the old days, you were given a point to talk about for a promo but how you said and worded it was up to you and that kind of thing needs to come back.
If anything, his genuine nature, his real quality on tv, and his love of professional wrestling all make Pat McAfee something that WWE definitely needed.