Jimmy Smith made his WWE commentary debut on Monday, serving as the new play-by-play announcer for the red brand. Smith, whose background is being an analyst in MMA, shared the booth with Byron Saxton and Corey Graves.
While many may have been worried that Smith would be out of his depth as a wrestling play-by-play announcer given his background as an analyst, Smith explained how the roles change in wrestling compared to MMA.
"What WWE does with play-by-play and analysis is very different from any other broadcast I've been on. In MMA, play-by-play and analyst are really well-defined roles and one doesn't do what the other does. That's not the case in WWE where they do a lot of package stuff and ins and outs with commercials, which is never done by analysts in other sports. Also, I was told in the beginning before we started, 'Jimmy, joint locks are all you.' A play-by-play guy would never do that in MMA, but they respect my MMA ability. The lines are way blurrier than any other sports I've done. So, to hear I did a good job was amazing because it was difficult to keep those lines straight while I was doing it," Smith said on Busted Open Radio.
Smith earned praise from many fans on social media for his performance and he promised he will continue to improve with each passing show.
When asked about advice he received leading into the show, Smith replied, "On the inside, the advice for me, from everyone from the beginning was 'you may screw up moves' -- they were surprised at all the moves I knew. Byron was like, 'I stepped on you because I didn't think you'd know the name of the move and you did. -- A big part of it was, 'You have energy. Just have energy. Tell people they should be excited to be here and be excited to be seeing what you're seeing.' That was the advice from like four people."
Elsewhere during the interview, Smith discussed what it was like to have Vince McMahon in his ear throughout the show. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
If you missed anything from WWE Raw, check out Fightful's full report on the show by clicking here.
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