Former NFL star Pat McAfee was the latest guest on Busted Open Radio to discuss his new role as the color-commentator for WWE Friday Night SmackDown. During the interview McAfee explains how he was able to secure the job, and what he expects going forward, which includes working with Vince McMahon. Highlights are below.
Says he is okay with listening to criticism from his peers:
It’s one of those things with me where I think people have this misperception of me that I don’t do well with coaching or whatever. I actually love coaching. I wanna be great, I wanna be as good as I possibly can, I wanna make the product as good as possible. But just, it depends on who it is and I had to have that thought because I’ve heard the horror stories obviously, and I was like, Vince McMahon, self-made billionaire, a guy that revolutionized the world. If he wants to talk to me and tell me how to be better, I’m okay with listening to that but I do believe he gets and understands me too so I think that’s a big part of this whole thing.
How Vince McMahon was not at his first taping and how expects his commentary to change once he is:
The commentators are very, very important so, I know it’s a big role, I know it’s a very important role. I’m trying to get as good as possible at that role. I wanna be great at it. Not because they gave me a shot, gave me an opportunity but it’s good for wrestling if I get better at my job and now that I’m kinda done with night one — Vince [McMahon] was not there. I guess everything could be [different] in the next week or so. But I gotta work on a lot, but I enjoyed it and I’m excited to see whenever V.K.M. shows up, what it’s gonna be like as well.
Explains how fast everything happened:
The original phone call, there was no thought that I was gonna be doing commentating for SmackDown. We kind of all — I know very little compared to a lot of people that have been in the business, but I think anybody who’s ever been in the business does know a couple things that there’s a chance when you get a call, it was like, ‘Hey, you thinking about maybe wanting to do something a little bit bigger?’ Absolutely. You know, I absolutely love what was going on. They’re like, ‘Okay, let’s figure out how we can make the schedule work’ then they brought up, ‘Hey, would mind maybe doing some commentating? Do you care?’ I’m like — and I didn’t know what it was gonna be. I thought maybe NXT, maybe something else and then as the conversations continued, they’re like, ‘How about commentating for SmackDown?’ And I was like, ‘… Yeah. I have no idea why. I have no idea why you would be putting me on FOX every Friday but I would absolutely love to do it.’ Michael Cole, you know, getting a chance to work with him makes my life a whole lot easier so it’s just like dream situation after dream situation that I did not know what was gonna be what it was until very quickly before it all kind of got announced. It kind of all happened relatively quickly.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling
)