From Kyle Sparks:
Last night, on Monday Night Raw, Michael Cole jumped the shark. Prior to this, he’d been a mere annoyance. He’d go into his massive tirades against Daniel Bryan, Kaval and the Internet, while still inexplicably being an ostensibly face play-by-play man for the rest of the show. His hero-worship of The Miz and Alex Riley bordered on homoerotic. However, things started turning around when CM Punk was added to the commentary team. Punk didn’t really insert himself into things too much which would cause confusion among the team. He threw in some great one-liners, added a few doses of history and was a nice counterpoint to Cole’s periodic toadying.
Tonight however, when Cole left the announce desk to get physically involved in Jerry “The King” Lawler’s WWE Championship match on behalf of his idol, he went beyond a point of no return. The man has been booed for weeks, ever since NXT: Season One. He draws significant heat every time the RAW GMail (tm, Andy Wheeler) goes off. That’s all well and good, and if he was going to be a heel play-by-play man, he may have been able to develop into a decent one. As it turned out, he was far too inconsistent to really take it to the next level. Now that Cole has reached that point, WWE has no real choice with what to do with him. He literally can’t go back.
Next week will be a pivotal moment for this whole Michael Cole concept. If he is behind the announce table, it will be disastrous. Jerry Lawler will have a VERY significant and legitimate beef with Cole, and no one would be able to believe for a moment that he could put that aside in order to call the show. The tension would overshadow virtually anything in the ring. Further, if Cole IS calling the show with Lawler, it will simply overshadow virtually any disbelief at this point.
If they want to reveal him as the GM, if they want him and The Miz to be the mystery people at the head of Nexus, so be it. Regardless of what they do with Michael Cole from here on out, he simply cannot return behind the announce desk.
