WWE Commentator Being Replaced

WWE

WWE is reportedly set to replace Kevin Patrick, real name Kevin Egan, on the weekly SmackDown commentary team.

Patrick started with WWE as a backstage interviewer in 2021, but has had stints as the lead announcer for both Raw and SmackDown since October 2022.

WWE recently had Patrick working with both Corey Graves and Michael Cole – which meant Cole doing double duty each week – in an attempt to boost Patrick’s progress, but after a couple of weeks back to just Patrick and Graves, it sounds like Patrick is out.

On today’s Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer said:

“Kevin Patrick’s gone. Unless something changes. I don’t know details, I don’t know who’s gonna be replacing him. I’m not surprised.

“Like I said, I’m not surprised. Corey Graves has been totally carrying the SmackDown announcing. I don’t know who they’ll bring in, could be Vic Joseph.

“Nick Khan likes to hire sports people, but the problem is, announcing sports and announcing wrestling are very different.

“Jimmy Smith did a good job, but that’s because he announced real fights and tried to announce wrestling in a real fight way.”

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It’s possible Patrick will still call this Friday’s January 26 episode of SmackDown, and the change would then happen after the Royal Rumble instead of the night before, but we’ll keep you updated if specific details like that emerge.

As Meltzer noted, there are also no details yet on who would replace Patrick, with the obvious choice being NXT’s Vic Joseph, although the question is whether WWE would want to remove him from NXT where he’s Booker T’s broadcast partner.

Byron Saxton regularly leads commentary for Main Event, and there’s also his partner on NXT Level Up, Blake Howard, who himself has called a few Main Event episodes of late.

Joseph, Saxton and Howard are probably the most logical replacements from within WWE right now, but of course it’s always possible WWE could bring in someone completely new, or even move Graves to the lead commentator role and bring in a new color commentator alongside him.

We’ll keep you posted with any more info as it comes to light.

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• Commentary
• Vic Joseph
• wwe

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