Rich Bocchini Recalls Angry Vince McMahon On Headsets During WWE MSG Show
On a recent episode of The Wrestling Inc. Daily, Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman sat down with his fellow Warrior Wrestling commentator Rich Bocchini. Bocchini reflected on his time in NXT and SmackDown, as broadcaster Rich Brenna, and explained what the commentary term "traffic" means.
"Just the pace, the same thing that I had trouble with. That's a hard thing to do."Bocchini admitted. "It's not an easy thing to do on a live show. I had [Michael] Cole [in my ear]. I had Vince in my ear a handful of times. My favorite story about that is Madison Square Garden, the show they did from there, the Brock Lesnar – Big Show match. It was on a Saturday Night from The Garden. Originally, we were supposed to do that show out of the studio in Stamford. We were going to call it from there. 'Oh, come on.' They sent us to The Garden to do it, which was awesome. That's super cool. I was psyched that I got to do it.
"I'll never forget John Cena coming out, and he does the thing and he says something in the camera. I'm waiting for him to say something to the camera, and he starts talking and I don't hear him. So I'm thinking, 'Oh, the mics might have died. I guess I got to cover that.' So I just started to say something. All of a sudden I hear, 'LAY OUT! JOHN'S TALKING!' (Bocchini laughs) My a**hole puckered right up. I shut my mouth. John does the thing, runs down to the ramp. I didn't say a word until I heard Vince go, 'TALK!'"
Bocchini reflected more on having McMahon in his headset.
"Oddly enough though, he wasn't in my ear a ton that night. He really wasn't," Bocchini recalled. "Usually, Cole was there to filter things. Vince would yell at Cole, and then Cole would water it down the way that was palatable for me trying to figure this stuff out on the fly. Vince was fine. I've seen horror stories. I've seen Cole get yelled at while he's doing on cams. I don't know how he keeps it together.
"Seriously, I've seen that happen. When I was there, legitimately, I remember one night Cole is doing an on-cam, and Vince is giving it to him. And Cole's doing the tossing of a package like nothing. It is unbelievable. We've talked about this before, people give Cole a hard time, if they only knew. There's a reason why he's in that spot and why they keep putting him back in that spot. He's the best at what he does."
Warrior Wrestling presents it's first Stadium Series show of the summer tonight! For more information please visit www.WarriorWrestling.net. You can follow Rich on Twitter @RichBocchini. You can find the full audio and video from Rich's interview below: