The WWE Raw Commentary Team is Getting a Shake-Up
Monday Night Raw's commentary team is getting a temporary shake-up starting next week, as Jerry Lawler confirmed on Raw Talk this week that he'll be returning to the Red Brand's booth to sub in for Corey Graves over the next few weeks. Graves and Carmella have their wedding planned for later this week and he'll miss the next few episodes of Raw while on his honeymoon. Raw has been operating with the same three-man booth of Jimmy Smith, Graves and Byron Saxton since May 31 of last year after Adnan Virk departed from the company following six weeks of being Raw's play-by-play man. Lawler has not done commentary for the Red Brand since 2020.
"I am looking forward to it. I'm going to be back behind the announcer's table there on Monday Night RAW because that idiot Corey Graves is getting married!" Lawler joked.
Virk talked about how fans reacted to him during an interview with Sports Illustrated prior to his departure.
"One of the great pieces of advice Michael Cole said to me, 'Listen, whatever you do, please don't check social media.' I nodded," Virk said. "He goes, 'I'm serious about this because no one listens, and then they check it.' And either way it's not good. If they say you're great, well, that doesn't matter. If they say you're awful, that also doesn't matter. One man's opinion doesn't matter so don't lose sight of that. What was funny is this. I get home, and I took Michael's advice to heart. And I'm talking my wife. She's goes, 'How'd it go?' I thought I did alright. I made some mistakes. There's some stuff I'd like to get back, but Corey and Byron were great. I think I'll get better. I thought this was good, and I'll only get better by watching it. So I re-watched the whole show. I watched it start to finish. I haven't yet for the second one, but I will just. I go, okay, that was better than I thought. It was worse than I thought, and I think whenever you make a mistake — you'd like to make zero mistakes.
"You want to bat 1,000, but if you make a mistake, don't make the same mistake twice, just learn from it," he added. "My wife starts saying, 'Oh, this person tweeted this. No, I don't want to know this. Why would you tell me this? I called my parents Jimmy. 'How'd it go?' Same thing, some good, some bad. 'Yeah, your dad was checking Twitter,' and I go, for god's sakes. It's amazing to me that when people are looking for feedback, social media, as you and I both know, it's generally a place where people are spewing vitriol."