Pat McAfee has been a member of the WWE SmackDown announce booth for two weeks now and he recently released a special behind the scenes vlog detailing his first appearance for the blue brand. Pat kicked off the video by showing the process him and his crew went through setting up their mobile studio that allows Pat to do his regular Friday afternoon podcast from Tampa.
Pat revealed that WWE was supposed to announce him as the new announcer on Thursday, April 15. He said, “Basically, everything went incredible. The only thing that did not is that we did not know that WWE was going to be firing people. Five of the top six trends on Twitter were WWE related. Me, Bad Bunny, Samoa Joe, Billie Kay, and Peyton Royce. WWE was trending. Today was supposed to be a celebration but now its almost like the entire wrestling community is up in arms.”
Pat acknowledged that they only had 30 hours left to make the announcement but admitted that doing it on Thursday night (April 15) was not the best idea. Michael Cole would then call him on the phone and come to an agreement that they would hold off on the announcement until early Friday morning (April 16).
When it came to the popular hashtag ‘#PatsUpToSomethin’, McAfee tried to tease the announcement by going out and kicking footballs. He said, “I only kicked six balls the night of that video. What you saw was the final two. I said my leg felt great but that was a lie.”
McAfee showed up to SmackDown and engaged in conversation with both Sami Zayn and King Corbin that can be seen in the video below. Michael Cole joked with McAfee by saying that he dressed much better than expected (this goes back to an altercation Cole had with McAfee regarding McAfee wearing tuxedo shorts backstage at WrestleMania years ago). Cole then told McAfee that if he could successfully tie real world events into WWE, he would be extremely successful early on in his career.
Doing an interview for McAfee’s vlog, Cole said, “I told him that I believe he and I can be the next Gorilla & Bobby in WWE as long as Pat puts in the time and work into this.” As the show started and entered its first commercial break, McAfee took back to his blog and admitted that he made a few mistakes early on but was ‘enjoying the hell out of it’.
Towards the end of the show, McAfee said he did not realize that the announcers do not get a break during the show to use the bathroom. Pat had to use the bathroom and sprinted to the back to use the bathroom in order to make it back before the show returned to TV. As the show ended, Cole was very impressed with McAfee, saying he was a very fast learned and ‘killed it’.
As McAfee wrapped up the experience, he said “Everyone was so hospitable, so nice. Hopefully I don’t mess this thing up.” You can watch the full vlog below. McAfee implied he would be doing regular backstage vlogs moving forward, so stay tuned to WrestleZone for more updates.
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