Michael Cole on Struggle of Following Jim Ross’ Commentary Style in WWE & Dealing with Family Medical Crisis Early Into His WWE Career

A recent episode of the What’s Your Story? with Stephanie McMahon podcast featured WWE commentator Michael Cole as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Cole’s thoughts about his struggles trying to follow Jim Ross’ commentary style in WWE.

“I could never understand early on what the difference between me and Jim Ross was. I would sit back and listen to tapes and go, ‘I’m telling a story. Jim’s telling a story. I’m explaining to you guys who these characters are, Jim’s doing the same thing. Why is Jim the greatest of all time?’ Because Jim had emotion. Even the simplest of calls out of Jim Ross, you could feel it come from here. That’s why people believed in him. I hope at least over the number of years I’ve been here, I’ve been able to emulate that just a little bit and be able to show the audience some emotion from what I do.”

Cole also gave his thoughts about how it took him a long time to find his true voice as a commentator in WWE and as Ross’ replacement as the top commentary person in the company.

“I had to learn how important that was, for them to feel that out of me. When I started here, it was always, you’re Jim Ross’ replacement. I heard it ad nauseam. Those are massive, massive shoes to fill. By the way, shoutout to JR because I know he’s going through some health issues. I wish JR the best in his surgery and everything else. But listen, it was a really — they were tough shoes to fill because JR was a lifer in this business. He started out as a teenager, I came into this at thirty years old. Didn’t know what I was getting into. They were pretty mighty shoes to fill and for many years, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do that. Vince believed in me, Kevin Dunn believed in me, I’m not sure I believed in myself until one day when the lightbulb went on and I said, ‘I think I may belong here.’ It was a struggle for a decade of trying to figure out what my voice was and how that voice was different from Jim Ross. Early on in my career, you can go back and hear some stuff, it’s embarrassing. You’ll hear me screaming, stomping a mudhole in him the size of Texas. Doing stuff that Jim used to do. I’m saying to myself, this is embarrassing. What can I do to differentiate it? It took me a long time to really find my voice.”

Cole also gave his thoughts about his wife Yolanda’s kidney failure in 2001 and him dealing with that family medical crisis early into his WWE career.

“The urologist tells her that she’s got 5% left function left in her kidney, and we knew something was wrong for a little bit because you know we were young, late 20s, early 30s. We go out and have some beers or whatever at night. She would literally, after one beer, get really, really sick, and we couldn’t figure out why. Find out it was because the kidney wasn’t feeling the upper system,” said Cole. “So she immediately had to go on dialysis, and my wife is 4 foot 11 at this point. She weighed about 95 pounds, and the dialysis almost killed her. It was three days a week.

Obviously, I’m in a new job where I need to travel, so I’m on the road. I’ve got a son at the time who’s 15 years old, who doesn’t even have a driver’s license, who’s literally driving her to dialysis so she can get there. The guilt inside of me was insane. I kept wanting to leave this company because of them, and she wouldn’t let me do it. She said, ‘You know, we got to support these kids. We got to support this family.’ And I tested my kids, all tested. None of us were exactly compatible to hit the 10 markers that you need for a transplant, and we were trying to figure out what do we do. We got put on the organ donor list, and that’s a five or six-year wait.

My wife was literally withering away. You know, you can see in front of you, my kids are eating up over it. The kids are trying to enjoy high school at the time, you know, and they’re trying to live their life, and they’re not able to do that.” 

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com, F4WOnline.com