Vic Joseph Calls WWE RAW Commentary Stint a ‘Failure’

Vic Joseph had been calling NXT matches alongside Wade Barrett since 2020 but is now partnered up with Booker T following Barrett’s transfer to the main roster. Before this, he was part of RAW but it appears he isn’t fond of his time on the red brand.

Joseph talked about his time as the lead commentator for Monday Night Raw during his appearance on Cheap Heat with Peter Rosenberg. He shared that he worked alongside Mason Madden and Jerry “The King” Lawler for several months before getting replaced. While he sees this time as a failure, he feels he has found his true home at NXT.

Joseph explained that his short time on Raw taught him important lessons that helped him improve later. Since returning to NXT in 2020, he feels he has gotten better each year and considers it his show, just like fans think of Michael Cole with SmackDown.

”And then I got the call to do Monday Night Raw and I will say because a lot of people talk about my time on Raw and it was short. If I didn’t have that experience and Rose, you’ll know this more than a lot of people listening, if I didn’t have that failure, I would not have known how to succeed and so with that, coming back in 2020 with NXT, I’ve been in the seat ever since. I have felt that every year, I’ve gotten better and I do feel that it’s my home. It’s, for a lack of a better phrase, my show. You listen to SmackDown, you think Michael Cole, you think Joe Tessitore (on Raw). I don’t think I’ve ever been, no matter what show I did, thought of in that way. Thought of, oh! That’s Vic’s show. Oh, Michael Cole’s on, Tess is on or Corey Graves is on and I feel that now.”

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Joseph went on to explain why he thinks his Raw experience was a failure, saying that if he had done better, he would still be in that role. He mentioned that Paul Heyman, who was in charge of Raw at the time, has told him he didn’t fail, but Joseph still feels he should have performed better. He sees his time on Raw as a chance to learn. Even though he feels he didn’t do well enough, he appreciates the opportunity. Joseph said that whenever he sees Heyman, they talk about it, and Heyman reminds him that the situation wasn’t entirely his fault.

”I look at it (Raw commentary stint) as a failure because if it wasn’t a failure, I’d still be doing the show. That’s how I look at it and so, I didn’t do my job and because I didn’t do my job up to the ability of certain individuals, they had to make a decision. I thank Paul Heyman for giving me that opportunity. I just saw Paul recently at Raw and we always go back-and-forth and I always pick his brain but he always tells me, ‘You didn’t fail.’ Every time I see him, he goes, ‘Hey, just remember, you didn’t fail. It just was a bad situation.’ I look at it a little bit differently because I’m always a little bit harder on myself. But man, I can tell you if you go back and listen to 2019 Vic Joseph and you listen to 2024 Vic Joseph, it is night and frickin’ day, because when I was doing Raw, I couldn’t handle doing a graphic and a transition and getting back into the calling the match and I was working with Jerry Lawler, at the time, who’s seen it all and it was moving so fast. You were talking about football.

(Jayden) Daniels is the quarterback for the (Washington) Commanders. It’s slowed down already for him. But man, when I got in there, I was like that number one pick and everything was moving so fast and I just wasn’t doing fundamentals. I was out of my comfort zone and to get taken from that show and to do what I’m doing now, I do all the graphics, I do all the transitions, I do all the kicks, I do all the sends and all that and that is by design and that (is) what I’ve taken the most from it is people listening go, ‘Man, that’s smooth. You’ve gotten so much better.’ I had to or I wouldn’t be here and then that’s just the honest to God’s truth about it and so I took a lot from that Raw run that-that had to happen for me to get to where I am now. It had to happen.”

Vic Joseph has certainly come a long way since starting out in 2017 and he remains a staple of NXT television no matter what. Therefore, fans can expect him to be part of the NXT family for years to come and they wouldn’t have it any other way.