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Former ringside announcer Jim Ross is back with a new blog on jrsbarbq.com. Ross talked about Mick Foley, Steve Austin, the Hall of Fame panel announced for Monday Night Raw next week, and more.
Here are some of the highlights.
On the Hall of Fame forum featuring Hogan, Flair and Michaels on next Monday Night Raw
“WWE announcing a Hall of Fame forum to kick off RAW this Monday that includes Flair, Hogan and Shawn Michaels. I guess I missed the call. LOL. I hope that the panel is hard hitting and thought provoking and refrains from eye ball rolling rhetoric as it’s a great opportunity to sell the Lesnar-Cena rematch coming in September. Let the talents use their old school promo skills and not how a writers rendition of what they ‘think’ these legends might say. Give them bullet points and turn them loose.”
On Mick Foley’s back surgery
J.R. mentioned that Mick Foley is talking about “major back surgery”, as he is in constant pain every day because of the brutal, hardcore style of wrestling he worked for many, many years. He also noted that he wouldn’t be surprised if Mick is looking at knee and/or hip replacement down the road. As we reported this afternoon, Diamond Dallas Page wants to use the hardcore legend as his new “project” for his DDP Yoga brand, so that could definitely help in the pre or post-surgery recovery.
Lastly, Ross revealed that he is working on some new “collaborative projects” with his good friend, WWE Hall of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Both Austin and Ross host popular podcast shows, but it’s unknown at this point if their potential projects would be podcast oriented, wrestling based, or involve some of their many mutual interests.
On Tom Phillipps getting promoted to Smackdown broadcast team
J.R. also commented on WWE announcer Tom Phillips getting the promotion to the Smackdown broadcast team.
“Congrats to WWE announcer Tom Phillips for getting promoted to Smackdown with Cole and JBL. Hopefully, the Penn State grad will continue to improve and can relieve Cole who is being worked harder than a government mule. The RAW and Smackdown announce teams should be totally different so the shows have a different sound track because as it is virtually every major, WWE broadcast sounds too much alike. I had a chance to get to know Tom while in NXT and he’s a quality young man.”
