Legendary WWE announcer Michael Cole has looked back on a heated incident with broadcast colleague Pat McAfee which nearly led to McAfee storming out of WrestleMania.
Since his arrival on WWE commentary, McAfee’s energy and overall enthusiasm has played a major part in Cole coming across as more authentic onscreen, resulting in some of the best work of his career. While both announcers have great chemistry and are calling the action on Raw on Netflix, they have not always seen eye to eye.
While appearing on Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast, Cole recalled McAfee being a part of the WrestleMania 37 kick-off panel in Tampa where the announcer turned up in shorts for the show:
“With Pat, it’s different. Pat and I are really good friends. He’s always been a wrestling fan his whole life. He came to one of our house shows in Indiana a number of years ago, and we just started talking, and he’s like, ‘I’d like to try this.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, you know,’ he was at Barstool all the time, and we’re like, ‘Why don’t you come in and start doing some stuff with NXT?’ And he came in and he started doing the countdown shows and all that. And he and I got really, really close, and then our relationship imploded for a night.
Because at WrestleMania a number of years ago…I’m no longer in charge of the announcers. I used to not only be an announcer, but I was [also] in charge of all the announcers. So I was a VP in the company doing all that. And so we brought Pat in to do the WrestleMania kick-off show. And you know, everybody at WrestleMania is in tuxedos and ties and the whole nine yards, and Pat shows up in shorts. Now, they were tuxedo shorts, but he shows up in shorts.”
Continuing, Cole recounted becoming irate at McAfee for not following the dress code. Cole then yelled at McAfee in front of multiple executives, resulting in an upset McAfee storming to the locker room and nearly out of the venue:
“So now we’re about to go on the air live. It’s all this pressure. I see Pat walk into the gorilla with these shorts on, and I’m like, in front of everybody—which was my bad—’What the f*ck are you doing, dude? You’re in f*cking shorts. It’s WrestleMania. Stephanie McMahon’s there. Vince is there… all these people…’ I’m dressing down Pat.
In the moment, I didn’t think about it. Then I… then he stormed off. And I’m like, ‘Where the f*ck are you going?’ ‘I’m not doing the show.’ He goes back. He’s packing his bag in the locker room to leave. He goes, ‘You just embarrassed me in front of everybody in this company.’ And I never thought of it that way, but he was right.”
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One of the most tenured and dedicated employees in the company, Cole is closing in on 3 decades in WWE and continues to work a full-time schedule. Also in the interview, Michael Cole listed the reasons why he has only missed 3 shows in the past 28 years.
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H/t to Wrestling News.co