• Old School WCW Announcer Would Have Celebrated His Birthday
Today would have been the 70th birthday of Old School WCW Announcer Lee Marshall (Marshall Aaron Mayer).
He originally started as a member of the broadcast team in Verne Gagne’s AWA promotion, but also appeared as a ring announcer at WWF WrestleMania 2.
In WCW, Lee Marshall first started using the name “Stagger Lee”, but soon ended up with his real name
For most of his WCW career, he was used mainly as a backstage interviewer, but also did commentary for tv-shows whenever they needed him to.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY & † REST IN PEACE
November 28, 1949 – April 26, 2014
• NXT Commentator Mauro Ranallo In Rough Shape
SmackDown commentator Corey Graves took the following shot at NXT commentator Mauro Ranallo during NXT TakeOver: WarGames 2019:
Just for the record guys, I know you wouldn’t know it, but there’s actually a WWE Hall of Famer AND a former Ring of Honor Champion on commentary.
I’d imagine they have a lot to offer.
— Corey Graves (@WWEGraves) November 24, 2019
Far, far too many.
— Corey Graves (@WWEGraves) November 24, 2019
Mauro got offended over this and deleted his Twitter account. He also didn’t work Survivor Series 2019 (where he was scheduled to call the NXT Championship match) and also didn’t work this week’s NXT.
On the latest edition of WWE’s After The Bell podcast, Corey issued an apology to Mauro:
“What’s up, everybody? Welcome to After The Bell, I am Corey Graves. A ton to get to this week as we do every week but before we go any further, on a personal note, I needed to address something.
This past Saturday, during the ‘TakeOver: WarGames’ event, I sent out a tweet. It was an unpopular opinion, as I often do with the intention of just stirring up a little controversy, maybe have something fun to talk about on TV or here on the show.
It was maybe not the most professional way to go about things, and it was never meant to offend or disrespect or disparage anybody. That was never my intention. If it was taken as such, I apologize deeply. That was not my intention.
I would never intentionally cause anybody undue stress, especially a co-worker. So, I apologize.”
According to ProWrestlingSheet, Corey made the tweets to promote the brand war between the main roster and NXT ahead of Survivor Series:
“According to sources, Corey wrote those tweets to play into the brand warfare element of Survivor Series and the SmackDown announcer planned to bring them up on commentary in a joking manner when he was joined by Mauro at the desk the following day.”
In an update to this, Dave Meltzer noted on Wrestling Observer Radio that Mauro is in rough shape after this:
“He’s in rough shape. I think everyone pretty much knows the situation, it was pretty bad the last couple of days. So, it’s pretty bad.
It’s a day by day thing, there’s no way of knowing what’s gonna happen next. It was a very unfortunate situation and I think we’ve spoken a lot about it, but it’s probably worse than we said.”
For those who don’t know, Mauro has bipolar affective disorder.
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