Michael Cole called his first WrestleMania from the booth in March 1999. Cole was the voice of WrestleMania XV in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the present-named Wells Fargo Center. 24 years later, he will once again be the voice for the biggest spectacle in sports and live entertainment.
Cole confirmed to Richard Deitsch of The Athletic on his sports media podcast that he and color commentator Corey Graves will call the action on both nights at SoFi Stadium in Las Vegas. He also spoke on a variety of topics which included The Bloodline and The Emmy Awards, surviving in WWE for over 25 years, and retirement.
Cole, 54, can still call a great match. He has steadily improved over the years and become a recognizable, venerable voice for WWE television shows Monday Night Raw and Friday Night Smackdown. Retirement may not be on his mind necessarily, but he said he will know when to call it quits.
“People ask me all the time, ‘How long are you gonna do this for?’ I’ll tell you one thing, you know, 30 years would be a really cool goal,” Cole said, via WrestlingNews.co. “That’s four years from now. But I can promise you this, I will get out before I slip.”
“I’m not going to be, and no disrespect to anyone else, but I’m not going to be a 75 or 80-year-old man doing this week in and week out,” he assured. “I busted my ***. I made a really good living and I want to be able to get out while the going is good and still be able to enjoy the rest of my life. I don’t want to be a shell of myself. I don’t want to be that, ‘Man, that guy used to be good. He’s not good anymore.’ I don’t want to be that person.”
Michael Cole currently lends his voice to the Smackdown brand, a brand he’s become synonymous with since its inception in 1999.
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022