WWE Changing RAW Announce Team

:raw:

Adnan Virk will be taking over play-by-play commentary on WWE RAW starting this Monday.

Virk will be replacing Tom Phillips, who had been handling play-by-play duties on the show since last year.

Virk is a Canadian sportscaster who had hosted The Score in Canada. He worked for ESPN from 2010 until 2019, when he was fired for allegedly leaking ESPN information to the media. During an interview with The Washington Post last year, Virk said that he felt like ESPN was making an example out of him.

“I know that I made a mistake,” Virk told The Washington Post. “I would have thought that everything I’d done for the company would count for something. Whatever happens in life you say: ‘What’s the action? What’s the result of the action? Who’s the person? And how important are they to the company?’ Ultimately, I’m hurt that I was that replaceable for doing something I thought was relatively benign.

“I feel like they wanted to make an example of me.”

Virk added, “What I can say is that I was a good corporate citizen and I was proud of that. I loved working at ESPN. I used to get made fun of for going to every town hall. I know the difference between important information and something trivial, and in my mind this was so trivial that it wasn’t a huge deal.”

Phillips was added to the RAW announce team in January of 2020, replacing Vic Joseph. He had previously served as the lead play-by-play announcer for SmackDown, NXT and NXT UK.

Former UFC and Bellator announcer Jimmy Smith also recently joined the WWE announce team, as he worked the pre-shows for NXT Takeover this past week. Smith had auditioned for WWE at a SmackDown taping in early March.