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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Longtime pro wrestling announcer Jim Ross - widely believed to be amongst the best announcers in the history of that industry - has been working with Fox Sports recently, and appeared at a UFC event earlier this month. That's led to thoughts on whether or not we could see him announcing MMA at some point in the future.
It's certainly something he's considering, as Ross said in a recent interview with Submission Radio that he's already been approached by at least one MMA organization. Nothing's set as of yet, but if he's able to come to terms with someone, he says it's something he'll absolutely do.
"I have and you know we just haven't been able to come to terms. [There's] still ongoing talk about that," Ross said. "You know I'm working on a project now that may or may not happen. You know showbiz and contracts and lawyers, sports entities; you can't cash your money before the cheque's written. So yeah I've been contacted by several people, but the deal's not right. And when the deal's right I will give it a shot."
"I'd like to do the play by play for an MMA show at some point in my life time. [I] certainly feel like I'd do it, and if I only did one that'd be cool, but I'd like to try it. [It's] kinda on my bucket list of things I'd like to do, but thus far there are smaller groups and it just hasn't been in the cards yet. Not [saying] it'll never happen, because my agent talks to somebody just about every day about some shape, form or fashion of that whole conversation."
Ross was also asked which current announcing tandem he finds to be the best in MMA, and he went with the current pay-per-view team of Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan as his top pick.
"Well I like Goldberg and Rogan," he said. "I think Rogan is the star of that team, but Mike does a real nice job of letting Joe be the star in that respect, and they've got most of the big assignments. To be honest with you, I have not watched enough Bellator to give you an honest and educated opinion of their broadcast guys. I've listened to them some, I certainly don't think they're bad, but the other guys get more exposure. But they're finding [that] it's challenging because the play-by-play guy has to do some much work on the shows, and then the colour analyst has to understand the genre and be able to speak in sound bites, and I think that they're finding out that a lot of their former fighters or even their active fighters that are doing some of their studio shows are being challenged to be entertaining, and informative, and speak in sound bites."
"So it's not a layup, its challenging to do, but I would go with Goldberg and Rogan right now because they're the top team, on the top brand and doing the best shows."
Penick's Analysis: For as much as I've mostly enjoyed Rogan over the years, give me Anik and Stann any day. That said, I absolutely want to hear Ross on a UFC event at some point. It seems like it's certainly possible at this point, but who knows whether or not it will become a reality. Regardless, it would be highly intriguing to see.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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