Former WWE ring announcer Justin Roberts recently spoke with Sports Illustrated’s Extra Mustard, and talked about his WWE announcing career, and some of the positives and negatives of working for the company.
Justin Roberts Talks WWE, Not Listening To Crowd At 2014 Royal Rumble:
“The Royal Rumble was always my favorite pay per view, but that was a really weird night. I was sitting there at the show, thinking to myself, ‘Why can’t they just listen to the crowd?’”
“The crowd tells you what they want, but again, Vince was doing what he wanted to do. And that hurt a guy like Rey [Mysterio] and hurt Dave Bautista. Everything about it was wrong. I was hoping they would really do what’s best for business. But [the WWE] wants to show that they controlled the show, not the crowd.”
Roberts on the final months of his tenure:
“Live events used to be really fun. It used to be myself, a production manager, and a road agent. We would make decisions and the shows would be great, but they became a lot more complicated in the last year-and-a-half. Writers who are so out of touch with wrestling fans and wrestling in general were making decisions, and it became really hard to show up to work knowing the product was suffering because of it.”
Roberts explains his views on WWE:
“People ask why I talk bad about the company that put me on the radar. The best analogy is waiting to meet your hero, but then finally doing so and discovering they weren’t who you expected. WWE was my hero. I was made fun of as a kid for liking it while everyone else grew out of their phase. When I finally got there, I found out the company—who I expected to love pro wrestling more than I did—didn’t love pro wrestling any more, if they ever did to begin with. It was just something they built their shows around while trying to get slowly away from it.”
Roberts also talks about being friends with CM Punk, how Triple H taking over NXT is affecting the main WWE roster, Vince McMahon getting the final say on decisions, and much more. Click here for the entire interview.
