Michael Cole Explains Why He ‘Toes The Company Line,’ Vince McMahon Keeping The Energy Up

Michael Cole is celebrating his 25th year in WWE, serving in multiple roles throughout his time in the company before landing as the lead play-by-play announcer and Vice President of Announcing.

Cole has perfected the art of controlling traffic as a WWE announcer, but some fans aren’t always satisfied with him not speaking out against the company while on commentary.

Speaking on The Press Box, Cole explained why he doesn’t fire back at WWE storylines while on TV.

“It’s funny because you get a lot of immediate feedback on social media and one of the big things I get is, ‘Michael Cole, why don’t you say what you really feel. Why don’t you stand up to the company. Don’t toe the company line all the time. Why are you saying all that garbage?’ I always tell them, I’m a soldier. I have producers and directors that have a vision for this product. I’m an actor, I’m going to do what you tell me to do. I tell people, ‘if you work at McDonald’s and your boss says make a Big Mac, and you make a Quarter Pounder, and you consistently make a Quarter Pounder instead of a Big Mac, what’s going to happen? You’re going to be fired,'” he said.

Vince McMahon is in the ear of all WWE announcers and has been in Cole’s ear for years.

When asked about hearing Vince throughout the night, Cole said, “Vince is real cool in the way that he produces because he will give you, I don’t know how he is with the other announcers, it’s different with me because we’ve been together for 25 years. We are sort of on the same wavelength sometimes. Vince sometimes only has to give me one or two words and I know exactly where he wants me to go. Most of the stuff is just reminders, getting back to a storyline, at the end of the match, if Becky Lynch has defeated so and so, it’ll be, ‘Remind us of the pay-per-view,’ so it’ll be ‘Becky vs. so and so at the pay-per-view.’ Just little reminders because we have a lot of stuff going on in our mind that we have to worry about where we’re getting next.”

Cole continued, discussing how Vince always want to keep the energy up with the announcers.

“Another thing Vince is really good about is keeping our energy up. Sometimes during the shows, our energy will wane sometimes. He’ll make sure, ‘Keep the energy up.’ We need our product to have our energy at the same level for every single segment of the night. You want your peaks and valleys, your roller coaster because you have to give yourself somewhere to go, but you also want energy throughout the entire night because it’s not fair to the other matches in the ring if you don’t treat them like you would the bigger matches on the card. It’s not fair to the Intercontinental Championship match if you’re not treating it with the same level of excitement as the main event for the Universal Championship. It’s not fair for the performers in the ring because they’re putting their bodies out there for 20 minutes in that match. It’s not fair to the fans at home who might be fans of the superstar in the ring. We need to try, to the best of our ability, to have the same level of excitement and intensity for every match we can,” he said.

Cole is set to be in the booth for WrestleMania 38 on Saturday and Sunday, which he says are the easiest nights of the year.

Fans can check out the lineups for WrestleMania 38 at Fightful’s events section.

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