People who annoy me: Volume 2: BIll Goldberg, Stephen Quadros, and Mauro Ranallo

I'm a fan of combat sports. Be it boxing, Muay Thai, mixed martial arts or even American Gladiators if I want to reminisce about the early 90's, I just really enjoy them. That being said, established and hammered beyond all comprehension, I recently gave thanks to the referees in boxing because thanks to them is that we get good fights. Don't think so, just watch a fight with Jay Naydee and see if he isn't over officiating or if Dr. James Kim isn't in another stratosphere. But lest you think there's nothing else that can ruin a fight card, just look to an announcing team.

First off, football commentators and the ESPN broadcast crew have always been quite solid. Also, if you've ever watched soccer when a team finally gets in a fucking goal, to me it's a rush to hear that damn announcer scream Goooooolllll like 20 times since he's obviously been teasing himself for about 80 minutes to be able to say something really meaningful that isn't, well they almost got a point. Basketball is also pretty cool and baseball with Harry Caray is something I still miss because I was a big Cubs fan when Darrell Dawson And Ryne Sandberg made me have to be a fan. In these instances you had a great announcer or announcing team giving you the play by play and adding to the already euphoric experience.

When it comes to boxing though, you have three main teams to consider when listening to boxing: ESPN, Showtime and HBO. ESPN gets the job done and has some decent commentary, then again Teddy Atlas is no schmuck though I've never been a huge fan of his. Showtime has Steve Albert, Al Bernstein and Jim Gray which has pretty good chemistry and I really appreciate Bernstein's insight in regards to fighters since this guy has obviously been a pure diehard boxing fan for the longest of time. Then there's HBO with Emmanuel Stewart, Larry Merchant and Jim Lampley. Suffice to say that with the exception of two times where he's gotten stuck on one bullshit topic, I think that Jim Lampley is one of the best commentators in existence obviously shows whihch team I favor even if I have to put up with Manny's grammatical fiasco or Larry Merchant's bourbonesque tirades. These guys are the ones that give the oomph to an event and make me say, AW YEAH WHAT A KNOCKOUT. By the way, Harold Lederman always wants to be off camera so I kept him off the list.

Ok.. so then comes Elite XC, a mixed martial arts promotion for the Showtime Network. The problem is that their color commentators are as colorful as a greyscale. First up Bill Goldberg... the "wrestling" icon.. Suffice to say Bill is one of the reasons I stopped watching wrestling, the others being, HHH, the WWE way of thinking and the fact that I finally matured a bit. This guy has no idea of how to conduct an interview or pump a promo. He just talks with his raspy voice, looks like an old raspy snapping turtle and shows exactly what nerds think of jocks... but in realtime. The fact that I have to endure an interview after every fight is gruelling enough, but as if it weren't enough, there's pre-fight and post fight interviews. Fuck..... Second off there's Stephen Quadros, looks like a nice guy but he has that look like someone who masturbates too much and gets nervous around girls. I'm not saying being an announcer is easy, I'm just saying the guy looks like he's on foreign waters. Finally..... we have.... Mauro Ranallo... In a nutshell the guy is as much of a douche bag as his name sounds and he uses this freaking announcer voice with deep bullshit white guy. I swear this guy just pisses me off. Some people have a classic announcer voice and you go, yeah, that's classic. IE,Marv Albert just to mention one and his brother does a decent job on Showtime. But this douche bag takes it way too far and by way too far I mean....


This Sunday in the superlocious Terrordome of Terror... You'll see the magnanimos Goliath VS The Peruvian Assasin Sequinnnnnnnnnnn............

Someone get me a rifle and some hollow points. It's douche season