Mike Adamle was a successful football player with a seven-year career in the NFL, playing for the Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets, and the Chicago Bears. Following his retirement as a player he began a career in announcing. He also had much success in this line of work, joining NBC Sports, where he hosted SportsWorld, Grandstand, and many pregame shows and sports anthologies for the NFL. He was ABC’s sideline reporter for the United States Football League and was even a part of the primary broadcast team for Vince McMahon’s XFL.
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Adamle hosted American Gladiators for seven years, then he became a reporter for ESPN, covering the Winter and Summer Olympics. All in all, he was very successful in his line of work. Then he joined WWE.
Mike Adamle’s WWE Career Was A Disaster
January 27, 2008 was Mike Adamle’s first day on the job with WWE at the Royal Rumble PPV. Adamle appeared in the crowd to hype up the night’s WWE Championship Match, Randy Orton vs. Jeff Hardy. As he did this, however, he disastrously misspoke, calling Jeff Hardy“Jeff Harvey.” While he instantly corrected himself, the damage was done and the crowd started booing.
If that was the only botch, fans could probably look past it, but unfortunately it was just the start in a long line of mistakes. Instead of giving Mike Adamle more training behind the scenes, WWE instead pushed him to the forefront more and more. Not long after the Royal Rumble, Mike Adamle was bizarrely made lead play-by-play commentator for ECW, replacing beloved ECW commentator Joey Styles. And the mistakes just kept on coming.
Adamle's commentary drew the ire of ECW founder Paul Heyman. Heyman was not with WWE at the time and spoke to UK newspaper The Sun about Adamle’s performance, “Adamle’s performance was so terrible, it drew an intense reaction from even casual fans who couldn’t possibly care less, and who were ready to take a baseball bat and smash their television sets after listening to his butchering of the program.
Adamle is horrible. No one likes him. People at home actually loathe his presence on the show. AND THAT’S EXACTLY THE SORT OF PASSIONATE RESPONSE VINCE McMAHON IS LOOKING FOR!!! Do you really think Vince doesn’t realise how incompetent this tra-la-la-goon-de-yay of an announcer is?
The ECW show was TAPED. That means there was time for Adamle to grab a mic backstage and clean up the performance. Not the whole miserable, horrible, intolerable hour. Just the really obvious “branding” issues, like all 3 letters that identify World Wrestling Entertainment. Hey, that would be a start, don’t you think?”
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As the mistakes kept coming, WWE kept on featuring him more and more, and before long, Mike Adamle was made General Manager of Raw! Adamle had been with WWE for nearly a year at this point, and he was showing no sign of improvement. This fan forum at the time collated just a few of Mike Adamle’s botches:
- "Let’s look back to next week!"
- “You have the tendency to say he's built like Tarzan, but he hits like Jane!” (Commenting on John Morrison)
- Adamle: Did you see that move by Tommy Morrison? Tommy Morrison (John Morrison) just hit that, uh.... Tazz: Clothesline.
- He said "Katie Lea is definitely not a pretty face."
- He called Umaga “The Samoan Bulldog” (The Samoan Bulldozer)
- He called Melina, "Mickie"
- He called Miz, “Mike The Miz”
- He called Tazz, “The Tazz”
- He called Cody Rhodes, “Corey”
Was It Mike Adamle’s Fault That He Was So Bad?
In an interview with prowrestling.net, Mike Adamle said knew he was making many mistakes and wanted to improve. “I had asked them once they had decided that's what they wanted me to do is for my sake send me down to Tampa (Florida Championship Wrestling), and let me call matches till I'm blue in the face, until it rolled off my tongue.”
WWE instead made his mistake part of his character, “I got a lot of criticism from ECW fans, but you take it in stride. And eventually by just being man enough to get all the boos, they start liking you, and I think Vince (McMahon) took advantage of this guy who's a 'bumblehead' so they made me the 'bumblehead of ECW,' and a guy who was prone to make mistakes, and I went along with the gag. I actually liked it (playing the lovable dunderhead) and I grew to enjoy the ECW people.”
Mike Adamle asked for his release from WWE less than a year after joining. He took a lot of heat from WWE fans and still gets mentioned in conversations among the worst ever commentators. However, it’s good to know Adamle took it all in his stride and didn’t let the negativity get to him.
