Jonathan Coachman Says Corey Graves Didn’t Want To Work With Him

Jonathan Coachman Says Corey Graves Didn’t Want To Work With Him

Former WWE Raw announcer Jonathan Coachman has said that his ex-colleague Corey Graves didn’t want to work alongside him.

Coachman has been absent from WWE since 2018, a year during which he announced Raw with Michael Cole and Graves before transitioning into presenting pay-per-view pre-shows.

Speaking on Ask Coach Anything Live, Jonathan Coachman opened up about his most recent stint with WWE and his departure, saying:

“I think at his core, Corey is a really good guy. I don’t think he ever wanted a three person booth. When I used to work with (Jerry Lawler) and (Jim Ross), we would actually work together. They would give me lines to say. You see some of the great stuff like when Kane’s fire would hit, I would fall over backwards. We all worked on that.

“Corey just didn’t want to do that. He just didn’t want me there. You could tell by the things he would say. There was certainly a lack of respect for me being a veteran and for me having that time at ESPN.

“I certainly never walked in and said, ‘I’m taking this over. This is my space’. I never did that. You can ask anybody. Every single week, it got more and more difficult to work with him. It was clear he wanted Renee because they are very, very good friends.

“To be honest with you, I didn’t enjoy it. I wanted to be the heel Coach. I wanted to bring that character back. Vince, and again, this was him trying to take care of me, but this is when sometimes I wish they would just trust us a little bit more because of my time at ESPN, he wanted to protect that credibility. He felt like if I went back to talking trash or being a manager of somebody, that they wouldn’t have the credibility on Monday Night Raw with me at the desk that I had, and I would lose it at ESPN.”

Coachman was replaced on Raw commentary in September 2018 by Renee Paquette (then Renee Young).

The Raw commentary team has undergone a lot more changes since then but WWE seems to have settled on the three-man team of Jimmy Smith, Graves and Byron Saxton for the time being.

Quote via WrestlingNews.co

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3 years ago by Liam Winnard

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