The Professional Wrestling Encyclopedia of Failure: A is for Adamle

"Everyone in anticipation of tonight's Royal Rumble here, another man who has been waiting anxiously in anticipation, his name is Jeff Harvey" Mike Adamle (Royal Rumble 2008)

People have been saying that commentary in the WWE is at an all-time low ever since Jim Ross left the announcers table but my good are they wrong. How could they have forgotten about the disastrous Mike Adamle. Not only did he destroy the credibility of the commentary teams for the WWE, become a terrible GM of Raw but he also made one the single worst debuts the company had ever seen. Royal Rumble 2008 all he had was a few lines to say to introduce a promo for the Jeff Hardy/Randy Orton match and he went and called Hardy, Harvey. The match that followed was pretty good for a PPV in the current PG era but YouTube videos will only remind you of the horrible mistake by the one and only Mike Adamle.

Adamle started of as a below average NFL running-back and played for the Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets and Chicago Bears before taking up Announcing where he earned a name as the co-host of American Gladiators. He was the only host to remain through all 7 of the seasons before it was cancelled in 1996. From there he did a number of on/off hosting of different television programs before he eventually winded up on WWE as an interviewer, little did the viewers know he would become so much more!

As well as his infamous Jeff Harvey mistake Adamle went on to make another blunder that could only be made by him, getting the name of the company wrong. Its not even than hard to remember three simple letters, W.W.E, though some how he managed to botch the easiest of tasks by referring to it as the WEDF. I mean seriously even Matt Striker isn’t that bad.

Soon after Adamle was then made play-by-play announcer for the WEDF’s (WWE’s) third show, ECW, replacing the irreplaceable Joey Styles allowing the audience at home to here mistake after appalling mistake all show long. Some say that Mike Adamle is one of the reasons the ECW brand eventually got cancelled and can’t help but thinking that they might be right. After leaving the ECW due to his terrible match calling he issued an apology to the fans which is personally horrible to watch as he gets continually booed throughout the whole speech.

However a few months later Mike Adamle was revealed as the new General Manager of Raw, the company’s A-show, by Shane McMahon. What was going on in the creative team’s minds when they decided to give the job to a guy who was universally hated by the WWE fans and also try and make him a face character. It didn’t work. He was even allowed to bring a script into the arena so not to forget his lines or call someone by a different name but he still manage to defy the odds and make a mistake. And if that wasn’t bad enough we had to put up with him rave on about his ‘Adamle Specials’ which were hands down worse than any ‘And I Quote’ from Michael Cole.

He eventually left the company with no real reason behind it, the WWE universe didn’t care, and went on his way leaving behind his legacy as the worst play-by-play commentator of all-time.