WWE announcer Michael Cole talked about his run as a heel commentator on Monday Night Raw and SmackDown and being turned back after Jerry Lawler’s heart attack.
Cole said his run as heel lasted too long as he thought WWE was missing a “voice of reason” on TV. He said that following Jerry Lawler’s heart attack, he “became babyface”, and then he remarked, “I think it was the right time, the heel run had run its course, I think it went on much longer than it should have.”
Cole then elaborated on this comment, saying:
“The company collectively said, ‘If we’re going to turn you this is the time to do it.’ Since JR (Jim Ross) had been taken off Raw and I became a heel, the one thing I thought the company was missing was that straight guy who was able to deliver the show the way that it needed to be delivered, like the Jim Ross and the Gordon Solie’s, Gorilla’s, they didn’t have that voice of reason in the booth. This was the perfect opportunity to allow them to do that and as a company we collectively said, ‘Let’s run with it,’ and we did. It’s been fairly successful. I still have a lot of detractors out there, a lot, but it’s getting a little bit better.”
Cole then goes onto say his dream way of turning back into a face would have been to save someone in a match, but that he appreciated the fan support when he had to get serious and report on Lawler’s condition on live television. Cole said that turning back into a regular reporter on such an emotional night “added some legitimacy to what I do.”
Cole then went into detail about that night on Raw in September 2012:
“I’ve got my producers and Triple H and others telling me and giving me updates in my headset … I would come back on the air and say, ‘Hey, this is the latest we heard,’ and so on and so forth and then at about 10:30 EST, about a half-hour before we went off the air, I remember somebody came in my headset, I can’t remember who it was, and they said, ‘Michael, you need to prepare for the worst.’ I’m like, ‘Okay,’ and they said, ‘You need to be prepared to deliver the news.'”
…
“But when we went off the air on Raw we had got an update that Jerry’s heart started beating on its own and I was able to deliver that (good) news going off the air and that was such an emotional moment.”
