Mike Adamle

April 28, 2008

I’m going to go on a bit of a rant this week, as I’m finding it hard to bite my tongue. As most of you should know by now Joey Styles is no longer announcing ECW television. Joey has been moved to the Website division and has been replaced at the desk by Mike Adamle. I’m both a friend and fan of Joey’s, but his moving away from the desk isn’t what I’m going to rant about. Joey is a great guy, and above all else a professional, so he will succeed no matter where he goes. What I want to rant about is moving Mike Adamle to the desk and having him call ECW action.

I missed Mike’s debut at the desk but caught the highlights, or rather lowlights, on YouTube in an amaze compilation video. This week I made a point of watching ECW to witness his announcing first hand, and after those two experiences I can’t for the life of me figure out why this man has a job. I will grant you that announcing wrestling is a very difficult job, and if Mike Adamle just sucked I’d be okay with that. I’ve done play by play before and believe me I sucked too. My problem with Mike Adamle is that in addition to sucking he is completely unprepared for, and incompetent at, the job he is being paid for.

Adamle is obviously not a wrestling fan, has no knowledge of our sport, and is completely unfamiliar with the WWE product. This is completely inexcusable! Even if he had never watched a wrestling match in his entire life, the day he accepted the job with WWE it became his job to familiarize himself with the product and prepare for the job he was being paid for. Mike has been working for WWE since the beginning of the year and after his debut interview with Jeff “HARVEY”, he should have been watching 4-6 hours of WWE television per day to ensure mistakes like this never happened again.

In his debut on ECW television he screwed up the names of wrestlers and their moves, and even after a degree of post editing was still absolutely atrocious. This past week on ECW he said practically nothing at all. There were unbelievably long stretches of absolutely silence when I guess either Tazz needed a breather from trying to carry the entire show, or they just tuned Adamle out in post editing, to avoid even more mistakes. The only comment I remember hearing Adamle make this past week was when he informed us that Tommy Dreamer “TAPPED OFF” in his tag match, when he in fact “TAGGED OUT”.

How many tag matches do you have to watch before you figure out that it’s called a “tag”? I’m guessing unless you are Eugene’s dumber brother 1, which leaves me thinking Adamle didn’t watch a single tag match before sitting down at the desk to call this one. I guess we should be grateful, it could have been much worse. He could have said that Dreamer “Tapped Out” rather than “Tapped Off”, or maybe if it was Out Back Jack tagging out he would have called it “Jacking Off”.

I just don’t understand how someone can care so little about their job performance, and show up so unprepared. Mike Adamle has been employed by WWE for 4 month and is still struggling with the most basic wrestling terms not to mention the names of the guys on the show. This should be completely unacceptable. There has to be a better choice out there somewhere. Hell, even Helen Keller would be better; at least a blind deaf mute wouldn’t say anything stupid. Mike Adamle needs to be replaced and he needs to be replaced NOW. If he really wants this job make him go home and study wrestling and pass a wrestling quiz before allowing him back, or sending him another pay cheque.

There is a saying I am a big believer in. “If you fail to prepare, you are prepared to fail” and thus far Mike Adamle is an EPIC FAIL!

Lance Storm