WWE Rumor: Michael Cole Possibly Moving To Off-Camera Role Soon

Michael Cole has been a WWE employee for 20 years after starting with the company in 1997. The majority of that time has been spent as a lead announcer first on Smackdown and then on Raw. He also handles pay-per-view duties. According to a report from PWInsider’s Elite section, Cole could be transitioning to an off-camera role soon.

According to the PWInsider report, Cole has reportedly become more interested in moving to an off-camera role as he continues with behind-the-scenes duties. Cole works in WWE production and helps to groom the up & coming announcers in WWE, such as Nigel McGuinness, who he worked with on WWE’s UK Championship tournament this past weekend.

There’s no word on when this might happen, but apparently there is more talk of it becoming a possibility.

When WWE hired Mauro Ranallo as the Smackdown play by play announcer last year, Ranallo spoke about how Cole was the one that reached out to him to bring him into WWE.

TJR Thoughts: I’m a bit surprised because I thought Cole would be calling matches for many more years. He’s 48 years old and does a good job even though a lot of fans don’t like him partly because anybody that had to replace Jim Ross was going to be hated. However, doing that job for 20 years is a long time and it’s understandable that somebody would want to do something different if they could. He could probably fit in well as a producer of the announcers and help in other areas of the company as well.

If Cole were to step aside, it’s likely that Mauro Ranallo would call one show and Tom Phillips would call the other. Right now Phillips is the main announcer in NXT. He works on Smackdown too, but it’s just as the guy that sets up replays or pushes storylines without actually talking about the matches because Ranallo does the play by play.