SmackDown Announcer Takes Shots at Co-Worker on Twitter, Deletes Comments

This is getting to be a bewildering public mess, and we still don’t have a clue what’s actually happening.

If you’ve been out of loop on all this drama, it began Tuesday night when Mauro Ranallo wasn’t present for his usual duties as lead announcer on SmackDown. At the top of the show, JBL and Tom Phillips explained that Mauro was out due to the blizzard hitting the northeastern US–and, incidentally, that fourth man David Otunga was out filming a movie.

Certain folks in the wrestling industry–namely former former WWE (and TNA) announcers Josh Matthews and Taz–were openly critical of Mauro’s absence. Taz in particular said “When you miss a show – in no order of preference – you get heat with the locker room, you get heat with your boss, you get heat with your broadcast colleagues.” And it sounds like “heat with broadcast colleagues” has indeed happened.

JBL made some angry tweets at Mauro, which have since been deleted–but nothing ever truly gets removed from the internet. WrestlingInc quotes one message from JBL as “I made the show, everyone made the show, everyone. Maybe he shouldn’t have bashed me if he wasn’t going to show up.”

Reddit made sure we also saved Layfield tweeting Taz’s video comments at Mauro. “Great video-trying to shock me-We could have talked about it but you didn’t show up for work. Everyone else did.”

30 years in the making for Mauro Ranallo: SmackDown Fallout, January 7, 2016

Mauro’s supposed rivalry with JBL has been a frequent point of SmackDown programming, but this seems a bit more real. We’re hearing there’s more to his absence Tuesday night than just the weather, but we’re yet to get details on what exactly that “more” is. We’ll keep you updated.