Corey Graves On Preferring Raw Over SmackDown And WWE’s List Of Banned Terms

Corey Graves might be best-known for his role on commentary during WWE television at this point. But he will always be the Savior Of Misbehavior to many fans who remember him from NXT. The fact is if he wasn’t injured then Graves would have been a contemporary of many top names on the current WWE roster.

But when he transitioned into the new role in the company he explained to E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness that the switch between the NXT announce booth and moving to the main roster took a little bit of an adjustment period.

“Oh, that’s a whole different ballgame!” Graves exclaimed. “It was a bit of an adjustment because I went from NXT where it was obviously a taped show, so I had my producer in my ear and I heard my partner. That was basically the only two voices I had to worry about. Every once in a while, [Michael] Cole would jump in and say something but generally, it was very easy. You didn’t have to worry about live counts to commercial breaks or anything like that, so fast forward to RAW, now I’ve got Booker, I’ve got Cole, I’ve got Kevin Dunn, I’ve got any number of people sitting in gorilla who have information that they want to pass on to me, and then, we’ve got the wacky 71-year-old billionaire who decides to spew things out when he feels like it, and when he says it, you’d better say it! Yeah, and so, it’s weird. That was the hardest thing because I think on a human level when you have someone talking in your ear, you stop, you stop talking, and that’s your instinct.”

Graves is currently on both WWE main roster shows and he’s a great fit for both teams. Nothing needs to change about that because Corey Graves is the best part of both of those announce tables by far. But Graves got pretty candid when he revealed that out of both shows, he prefers the Red Brand.

“I have more fun on Mondays because I can really help delve into a story or a character with some layers, some depth, because that’s what’s fun to me.” Graves added, “I make most of this stuff up. Some guys will come up to me and give me little tidbits here and there, but usually I’ll just go into business for myself and try to make myself laugh.”

Graves then went into WWE’s infamous list of banned terms. Apparently, the list is known to change often. Apparently, the list of banned terms isn’t the only thing that changes either as procedure and format are often switched up as well.

“Even though there’s a list of things you’re not supposed to say or you’re not supposed to do,” Graves explained, “that changes on an hourly basis. Yeah, it happened on back-to-back weeks! We had this edict in a production meeting a couple of weeks ago where, after a backstage pretape, there’s a wide shot of the crowd, and just let everything breathe. Don’t talk over it. Don’t react to it. Just kind of let everyone digest what they just saw. Makes sense. That’s perfectly logical. Last night, something happens, there’s a live shot [of the audience]. The three of us [on commentary] shut up. ‘Why didn’t anyone say anything?’ ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry. Clearly, I made up this idea in my head that we weren’t supposed to say anything. I don’t know.'”

Credit for the quotes in this article goes to E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness and Wrestling Inc for the transcription