What has Happened to Great Announcing?
With the recent HOF inductions of The King Jerry Lawler and JR, I was wondering who people thought were the best announcers. JR seems to get most of the votes with King in second, but is this actual talent or just familiarity with these two?
I personally think that the best announce duo was Monsoon and Ventura in the late eighties and early nineties. Ventura is the best announcer I have ever heard and this is mostly due to the heel nature of the character. Ventura tended to gravitate to the heel characters, although he would often show respect to some of the faces. Lawler used to be like this until he pretty much shifted to the "Puppies" and loving the face characters like most face announcers.
Other announcing groups of note were McMahon/Lawler (McMahon was okay but not great), Shciavonne/Tenay (Schiavonne was the only great announcer in WCW that lasted, they had a guy named Madden I believe that was wonderful), Joey Styles in the original ECW, Tazz/Cole, JBL/Cole, and Tazz Styles. Another brief thing was when the Coach joined RAW to make a threeman team and that was the best JR and King had been in years. Heyman and JR was also pretty good.
I feel the problem now is that both JR and King have gotten lazy in their announcing and I have found myself muting them quite often. JBL and Tazz are the only announcers that seem to be trying at their job, but then they are the only two heel like announcers in the busniness. I really think a third man needs to be added to RAW at least. First to train a new man and to inject some life into a stale and bland position in the WWE.
