Do's and Don'ts of announcing professional wrestling.
July 8, 2015 9:43 AM   Subscribe

"Don't say 'Edge is busted open,' instead say, 'Edge got his teeth knocked down his throat!'"

"Describe what it's like in the arena where pictures can't do it justice. For instance, tell us what the Undertaker's entrance is like? Can you feel the power of the deadman?"
posted by Cool Papa Bell (15 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
TL;DR: Watch Jerry Lawlor, do everything the opposite of how he does.
posted by Space Coyote at 10:09 AM on July 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Don't say "He Fell" say "As Gawd is my witness, that man is broken in half!"
posted by hellojed at 10:16 AM on July 8, 2015 [15 favorites]


Those are great notes, frankly. But christ, that's a ton to remember.
posted by shmegegge at 10:20 AM on July 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Many of these are actually pretty good tips for better descriptive writing. I especially like the notes on passive aggressive language, describing the environment, and words to avoid (such as avoiding "that" and unclear use of pronouns).
posted by kikaider01 at 10:39 AM on July 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


I assume the advice to take out extra health insurance if you are sitting at the Spanish announcers' table is in another document.
posted by AndrewStephens at 10:41 AM on July 8, 2015 [9 favorites]


This shows the best and worst of Vince McMahon -- some good ideas, plenty of shitty ones, loads of self-contradiction, reliance on certain favorite people (most of whom are related to him), entirely too much effort, and despite it all, according to everyone who would know, he's still a goddamn micromanager to the point that he is talking to the announcers via earpiece while they're on the air.
posted by Etrigan at 10:45 AM on July 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


Lawler is a thousand times more palatable these days than he was back 15-20 years ago, when everything out of his mouth was in a two-octaves-higher cartoon voice and every other sentence had the word "puppies" in it.

I try not to hold what comes out of the mouth of WWE commentators against them too much because they all have earpieces with VKM et al. guiding them. JBL, for instance, ranges from fun to insufferable depending on how much he has to recite heel talking points being fed to him.

The best commentators in the business are, of course, Insane Clown Posse (obviously NSFW).
posted by delfin at 10:46 AM on July 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm looking for the section that instructs Jerry Lawler to ignore all of the other guidelines and keep being terrible forever.

I haven't found it yet, but I know it must be in there somewhere.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 10:49 AM on July 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I try not to hold what comes out of the mouth of WWE commentators against them too much because they all have earpieces with VKM et al. guiding them.

Examples: better announcing on Smackdown (Vince doesn't care), NXT (Vince super doesn't care), and even the Beast in the East special (about which Vince apparently didn't care), wherein Cole was only like 10 percent bad.
posted by Etrigan at 10:58 AM on July 8, 2015


Cole was downright amazing on Beast In the East. I wish every week's RAW / SD was that full of wrestling and devoid of crap commentary and crappy segments. Tell the story of how we got to the match, and then have the match. Repeat for 2/3 hours.
posted by deezil at 11:01 AM on July 8, 2015


As we all know, the same rules apply when posting to Metatalk.
posted by leotrotsky at 12:12 PM on July 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


hellojed: "Don't say "He Fell" say "As Gawd is my witness, that man is broken in half!""

We will also accept "Bah Gawd! That man had a family!".

I bet the WWE is still kicking themselves for letting the NBA get "with no regard for human life".
posted by mhum at 12:42 PM on July 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


As far as corporate branding and style guides go, this is actually pretty simple and straightforward. It can get a lot worse.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:53 PM on July 8, 2015


"No one cares what you (the Announcer) thinks (e.g. "I think Cena is great").

Aw, the days of heel announcers like Bobby Heenan are over.
posted by Spatch at 1:08 PM on July 8, 2015


I'm only about halfway through Beast in the East (man, I wish they'd at least done even a tiny bit of back and forth with Big E vs. Lesnar, it wouldn't have hurt Lesnar any, and it would've been a huge push for Langston) but I kept getting stuck on blatantly horrible pronunciation (ree-yo-go-koo, it's not that hard, seriously) and even worse factual errors. The Kokugikan isn't even on the list of largest indoor arenas in Japan. It's downright tiny even compared to the Budokan, and could fit in an out of the way corner of Tokyo Dome. It would have been a simple thing to get some local input and talk about the history of the hall, rather than horribly misguided falsehoods.

As for current announcers, why Regal hasn't replaced Lawler, I'll never know. There is hope, though, with Corey Graves. He's still pretty rough, gets over excited sometimes, but does a decent job on NXT.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:00 PM on July 8, 2015


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