Nigel McGuinness opens up about his transition from wrestling to commentating.
The English legend discussed this topic during a recent interview with the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling, where reflected on how much he enjoyed doing commentary once his in-ring career came to an end.
Yeah, absolutely it was, very much so (enjoyed commentary as much as the in-ring part of my career). Commentary was something that I never thought about doing in any way, shape or form. I was very lucky that when my in-ring career ended, Ring of Honor and specifically, people in the company I was friends with went out of their way to get me a non-wrestling role for which I will always be grateful. First on commentary and then as a matchmaker so yes, the commentary stuff, I didn’t take to it very easily at first. As most people who try commentary, they find out pretty quickly how difficult it is.
Later…McGuinness opened up about his time doing commentary in WWE and learning from Tom Hannifan (Phillips) and longtime WWE play-by-play man, Michael Cole.
You gotta find your voice, you got to find what it is you’re adding to the show and to that end, I think I took a big influence from Joe Rogan, what he did on UFC and how he found his voice there and I tried to do something similar within pro wrestling. It’s obviously a little bit of a medium, but still there are a lot of similarities with them so once I found that voice and then when I was able to go to WWE and get that kind of feedback and that kind of experience from guys like Michael Cole or Tom Phillips/Hannifan, it was amazing. I’ve said to people sometimes, if I knew this much about commentary when I went to WWE, this is what I learned. It was just absolutely incredible and speaks to the talent and the ability that guys like Michael Cole and Tom and all those play-by-play guys have to just keep things on track.
McGuinness later calls Cole one of the most underrated commentators in the industry.
I really think that Michael Cole is one of the most underrated or underappreciated commentators in the history of this industry. I cannot put him over enough.
Elsewhere in the interview, McGuinness spoke about a potential return to the ring, citing legends like Edge and Lita coming back as inspiration. You can read about that here.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)