AEW Commentary
By Scott Keith on 11 June 2020
Hey Scott–
Watching AEW tonight with Le Champion, it really highlights just how strong the play-by-play is. Jericho is a heel, and he's a cool heel, but he doesn't bury anyone on the show, a la Kevin Nash. He assigns value to everyone so that every character who appears on the show is (to varying degrees) special.
Even when Jericho isn't part of it, the AEW commentary team is consistently good. Yeah, they trip over wording from time to time, and there are jokes that occasionally fall flat, but they never mock or bury their own product, there's no forced laughing at poor attempts at humor… it's almost as if there isn't an out-of-touch old man yelling at and over-producing the announce team every second of airtime.
In the neverending comparisons of the WWE and AEW products, the commentary seems like the one place that AEW is light-years ahead.
Hot take, I know.
Like I said in the rant last night, Jericho is so entertaining on commentary that it kind of brought the show down a lot when he left in the middle of the show. He managed to get Pineapple Pete over just by insulting him for no reason! And the fact that the announcers aren't afraid to reference older stuff and aren't afraid to occasionally lose the viewer with a deep cut for their own amusement is great. You don't feel condescended to while listening to them, which is the biggest advantage they have.