Jim Ross left an unquestionable impact on WWE history during his Hall of Fame tenure as a play-by-play commentator. However, “Good Ol’ JR” has been with AEW on a full-time basis since 2019 and confirmed on a recent Q&A edition of Grilling JR that he has no plans of returning to WWE. The AEW Dynamite commentary booth initially debuted in October 2019 with JR running the play-by-play while Excalibur and Tony Schiavone provided color commentary. The booth has since undergone subtle changes with Excalibur, Tony Schiavone and Taz running commentary while Ross is brought in to either call the second half of the show or just call AEW Rampage alongside Schiavone and Chris Jericho.
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“Those rhetorical questions are hard to address. I’m a businessman and I’m very happy to be in the business with the company that I’m doing it with,” Ross said. “What would happen if I didn’t have that job and somebody else wanted me to work for them, work with them, or what have you? I take a case-by-case scenario, but that’s not something I’m looking at doing. I told Tony Kahn this that I’d like to finish my career, my full time career, at AEW. Maybe it’s coming in and doing a pay-per-view. Maybe it’s coming in at a special like Battle the Belts, or the pay-per-views.
“Like I said, it’s something that would be interesting to do. I don’t know. It’s hard to sort of position yourself there because the last thing I want to do is get another full-time job,” he continued. “I don’t want to be on the road every week at that stage of my life. I want to fulfill this contract as great as I can and earn my keep, and stay where I’m at until it’s time to move on. We have to be honest about it, realistically. At some point in time, you got to reevaluate. You just have to, and at my age, it’s especially important. I don’t know about another job. Would I want to do another full time job at AEW or WWE or anywhere else? Probably not. Again, if I was 40, or 50, or 60, I would probably reconsider that answer. But I’m not. We have to be realistic about s—.”
This week’s AEW Dynamite will mark the show’s first international episode, taking place in Toronto. Stay tuned for full updates on the show tomorrow night!
