Jimmy Smith made a name for himself as a play-by-play commentator on Bellator. His skills transferred quite well into his role as part of the commentary team on Monday Night RAW as well. Now that he’s no longer with WWE, Smith is able to speak freely about things.
Smith made his debut over a year ago as he replaced Adnan Virk. While Virk would be criticized on a regular basis, that was not the case for Smith as fans certainly loved his work.
However, Smith was replaced and let go recently as WWE changed up their commentary team again. The company moved over Kevin Patrick as Jimmy Smith’s replacement for Monday Night Raw.
While speaking on MMA on SiriusXM, Jimmy Smith made it clear that he does not like being called a commentator in WWE.
“First off, let me explain that I wasn’t a commentator in the WWE,” Smith said. “I was not. I played a commentator on television. And that’s not an insult. I’m not saying it wasn’t difficult or not, it was very difficult. But it’s like, you’re a character pretending to commentate fake fights … And I had a mailbag question … about, ‘Man, you’re always staring at the screen.’ I was like, ‘Yeah because you’re not supposed to acknowledge anything that’s not on the screen. Anything the fans can’t see, I don’t see.’
“Yeah, I see Finn Balor running into the ring with a chair. I’m not blind. But I’m not supposed to acknowledge it, because they shoot around it until he hits Edge over the head with a chair. So I’m not supposed to see it until the audience sees it. So I’m like, blinding myself, literally. I have blinders on. I just watch the stream. I’m not telling you what’s really happening, I’m not telling you what you’re not seeing, which is kind of the fun part of doing commentary. It’s having that in-depth analysis, that you’re not really able to do, or that vision that you’re really not able to have in WWE.”
Triple H also accidentally told Jimmy Smith about his WWE firing. The former Raw play-by-play announcer is thankful for his time in the company. We’ll have to see what’s next in store for Jimmy Smith.
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