What’s the story?
WWE SmackDown LIVE announcer and former champion JBL seems to be slightly annoyed with Mauro Ranallo for missing SmackDown LIVE this week. The former APA member took several, tongue in cheek, shots at Mauro on Twitter for missing the show this past Tuesday night.
In case you didn’t know...
This week’s SmackDown LIVE on-air commentary team was reduced to JBL on the microphone alongside Tom Phillips. Mauro Ranallo was visibly missing from the announcer’s desk due to a snow storm that was going on in the area. David Otunga was reported missing from the Smackdown broadcast team as well because be was shooting for a movie
The heart of the matter
JBL took to social media to express his disappointment with Mauro for not showing up to work. He took random shots at the Smackdown LIVE play-by-play commentator on Twitter. Some of the tweets are as follows:
Earlier on ‘Bring it to the Table’, JBL sounded off on Mauro Ranallo for retweeting a poll that rated Mauro as the best announcer in the business, closely followed by Corey Graves. The list, however, did not feature JBL in the top 10.
What’s next?
Mauro will resume his role as the play-by-play announcer on the blue brand next week. With Mauro back at the announcers’ desk, we might expect JBL to make some references to Mauro missing the show this past week. This will give Mauro an opportunity to shed more light on what happened that led to him taking the day off.
Author's Take
The WWE Universe certainly missed Mauro on the commentary team who is one of the best announcers in WWE alongside Corey Graves. However, two announcers on Smackdown was a reminder that the show did not need four members at the announcers’ desk as had been the trend with the blue brand for the past couple of weeks.
The passive aggressive tweets may be indicative of some heat that JBL and Mauro share. Or it might just be a case of typical JBL ribbing and messing with Mauro Ranallo.
David Otunga was not missed by the fans mostly because he has not been entertaining with the microphone. WWE can certainly cut costs by thinning out the herd at the announcer’s desk with the omission of guys like David Otunga and Byron Saxton.
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