Hum.... No, he's still annoying as fuck, he oversells everything. He acts like a 19 years old doing video games longplays on Youtube and overacting all the time to get more likes.

 

The other guy (don't know his name) marking out is cool though.

I have no problem with Mauros enthusiasm and hes a huge actual fan of the art. Its just those forced references and lines that kill me.

 

 

Come on, it was straight hilarious, not bad hilarious. Vamp was drunk, they were bullshiting around. I take this over any English WWE announcing team.

In hindsight, yeah, but at the same time they were NOT calling the match, so we gotta factor that shit in. I still like Striker better because like you said, shit's hilarious, but you gotta wonder about paying for a service and actually not getting it.

 

I dunno, for me having legit fun announcers to listen too often beats the hell out of guys who blandly or annoyingly call a match. I can remember to this day Eddie Carpentier & Guy Hauray calling some god awful match between SD Jones & Mike Sharpe at the garden and making fun out of the old, immobile referee and just being hilarious about everything. To me it's always been part of pro-wrestling. Like those WCW matches were Dusty Rhodes & Bobby Heenan were going insane. Ok, they weren't putting the matches over, but it was entertainning as fuck and I never got enough of this stuff.

 

The one thing I'll remember from the Braun match at Mania will always be Christophe Agius (he's playing heel) basically shouting "Fuck him up ! Fuck him up !" at Cesaro when the kid got in the ring. I mean, I was tired as hell by then, but I died laughing. I'm pretty sure they aren't micromanaged and Vince has no idea what is happening in the French booth, and the fact they are funny as fuck is what makes me come back to watch these PPV too, even when they're really just saying shit for the sake or it (for the record, they don't do that only, they are actually a really great duo of announcers). This is something I always loved in my pro-wrestling and that the corporate environement (or the über serious stuff I hear in NJ in English or this week-end on the EVOLVE shows, which had awful announcing, for instance) really ruins for me.

 

Maybe it's a French thing, I know that Roger Couderc always had the kinda tongue-in-cheek tone to his announcing in the days of classic french wrestling in the 50's and 60's.

 

 

Major shoutout to you for the Édouard Carpentier & Guy Hauray love. Those two were my whole childhood. In my early teen years, Guy Hauray even played heel color commentator alongside Raymond Rougeau for the French Canadian version of WWF Superstars. I never thought Hauray could pull off being a heel so good but good grief, was he awesome.

I saw that Matt Striker shoot interview preview and he just came across as Michael Scott.

Major shoutout to you for the Édouard Carpentier & Guy Hauray love. Those two were my whole childhood. In my early teen years, Guy Hauray even played heel color commentator alongside Raymond Rougeau for the French Canadian version of WWF Superstars. I never thought Hauray could pull off being a heel so good but good grief, was he awesome.

 

Hauray & Carpentier were probably half the reason I became I fan (because really, sell me Beefcake squash matches & Volkoff vs Zukov as something exciting). I adored heel Guy Hauray, he was indeed awesome. To this day I still drop some of his lines around my father, who used to watch with me sometimes. His performance at Rumble 93 mocking Bob Backlund was Heenan-like. It's really too bad he quit after Mania 10, it was never the same after he left. Jean Brassard seemed like a nice guy but he was clueless (it's crazy to think they got him & Ray back now, although I admit I find it kinda cool).

Well, they basically picked an actor in Jean Brassard (I legit saw him in a L&O SVU episode a few years ago as well as Broadway shows) and turned him into a heel faux French color commentator (he's as Quebecer as I am). But to me, it still worked because the chemistry between he and Ray Rougeau has always been great. Does it top Guy Hauray & Édouard Carpentier? Never. They're my French equivalent to Gorilla & Brain in terms of epicness. But over the years, we haven't been treated too kindly in French Canadian play-by-play right up a few months ago for both WWE & ROH.

Is this thread looping or what ?

 

Well, they basically picked an actor in Jean Brassard (I legit saw him in a L&O SVU episode a few years ago as well as Broadway shows) and turned him into a heel faux French color commentator (he's as Quebecer as I am).

 

Yeah, I was very surprised when I learned he was from Quebec. Back then, I would have never guessed.

I saw that Matt Striker shoot interview preview and he just came across as Michael Scott.

😆 😆 😆

 

That's awesome & absolutely on point. I'd never made the connection before, but that's totally the perfect description of Striker in my eyes.

 

I finally caught a couple of hours to catch the rest of Takeover. Mauro was surprisingly much better toward the end of the show for some reason.

 

He started off as terrible as ever - continuously going back to some strange talking points about "players one and two" and each wrestler turning into a "pile of coins" after each strike. Fucking bizarre one, that guy.

 

But you could tell AS SOON as he got caught up in the action - right around the time Almas scored with that sweet corkscrew dive to the outside. After that, he abandoned the weird bullshit almost altogether.

 

Actually, I can't recall a single reference or anything from the main event. His calls were pretty focused and straightforward for the most part. He wasn't his usual, intolerable self. Didn't mind it a bit.

Someone in WWE really hates Mauro, they could not put together a video making him look worse.

Though the best thing is the fan in the green t-shirt at the end shouting clearly audibly "mamma-mia" from the top of his lungs even though they tried to mute all sounds not coming from Mauro here. You could here that guy on the live feed as well.

Honestly the reaction I've seen has been just the opposite, lots of fans praising how enthusiastically Maura was into the show. I know Mauro is nails on a chalkboard to some, but generally fans seem to actually like him and the fact that he's not at all robotic, even if he does shoehorn in cringe-worthy lines.

Mauro sometimes overdoes it, but I'm a fan. I'll take him over the fake enthusiasm of Cole or the monotone of Coach any day.

 

Corey Graves has really been dragged down by those two.

 

I wish we could get a Mauro-Graves partnership with the leash off.

He was quite good toward the end - for the majority of those last two matches - once his meds kicked in or whatever. He settled way down after that.

Phil and I wrote up TakeOver and I was totally blown away. If we get a wrestling show better than this in 2018 then it will be an amazing year for wrestling. Andrade and Gargano are amazing, really blown away by both of them right now. I rarely liked indie Gargano and while I was a Sombra fan (especially as Rush's lackey) I never would have guessed he had THIS in him. Add in one of my all time favorite WWE women's matches and this was a scorcher.

 

http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2018/04/nxt-takeover-new-orleans-4718.html

 

I'm on board for at minimum all the TakeOvers from now on.