Adnan Virk On His WWE Commentary: “They Didn’t Give Me Any Training”

Former WWE commentator, Adnan Virk recently spoke with the Couch Potato Diary where he spoke about being offered the chance to audition for WWE, which he was never going to turn down. However, he confessed there was a big difference between his auditions and actually doing the role every week.

"You get offered this opportunity to audition for it and I'm like, 'why not, of course, I'd love to do this.' So, they sent me a few matches to look at and I would describe it kind of like an actor. You're getting a few scenes from A Street Car Named Desire so I studied really hard and I nailed those three scenes but then you have to do the whole play on Broadway. That is, of course, a much different thing than doing a scene study of three scenes, now you have to be Stanley Kowalski for an entire run every week. The biggest challenge for me was that it's hard to be really well versed in the sport when you're trying to catch a freight train that's already going 100mph, right?"

While Virk may have admitted to struggling in the role with WWE, one element of things he did appreciate was the fact that he didn't have to recall detailed history from a long time ago.

"The one thing that helped is unlike baseball or other sports, you don't have to say 'remember three years ago at WrestleMania what happened.' Actually, you never do that, which is very different from normal sports. You're only looking, when I was broadcasting on Raw at what happened the previous week or two weeks, that's it. So, in that instance, you don't really need to know the history of wrestling. But as a play-by-play guy, you've got to know the moves, you've got to know the mechanics and I think in all honesty I kind of struggled to adapt to that and in all honesty, I wasn't good enough for that position.

Virk also put over several people that he worked closely with, noting how helpful Michael Cole was in getting him up to speed with WWE's commentary style, providing him with feedback.

"Everybody there was awesome. Corey Graves is phenomenal; I think he's a huge talent. I think Byron Saxton is a huge talent, you and I both know you never want to be in a situation where you're the weakest link and I knew I was, and that's never a good feeling to be in. But those guys were such good teammates because they knew, 'hey, listen, man, it's kind of like a baseball team. We know you need some help here, so we're here to help you out, just lean on us and we're good to go,' which was so generous of them. Kevin Dunn is obviously a great producer. Michael Cole was very, very generous. Michael Cole is not only the voice of SmackDown, or the voice of wrestling, but he oversees the talent so Michael was so helpful. Every week I would do the show, I'd watch the show and I'd call Michael on a Thursday and we would go through stuff, go through notes. I would try to make as many notes as I could."

Finally, Virk also discussed his first meeting with WWE Chairman, Vince McMahon, revealing that he was polite to him, although he didn't see Mr. McMahon until after his second episode of Monday Night Raw.

"He was great. I didn't see him my first show. Here's the other thing, they didn't give me any training, which I know some people would point out as a little bit unfair. I don't think you hire Jason Witten on Monday Night Football and not give him any training, but I recognize that's the way WWE does things. No excuses, that's my fault that I wasn't good enough. But, to your point, it's not like I met with Vince before my first show, I was kind of just like prepping on my own, doing my best and Michael Cole was helping out. The first time I met Vince, my first show was on April 12, I did not meet Vince there. I heard his voice at one point, he was giving some direction during the show, I met him after the second show. He summoned me in and I met him and he was very polite and very respectful and he just gave me really good feedback."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit Couch Potato Diary, with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.