Rich Brennan on Issues with Tom Phillips

It must be something in the water. We’ve heard extensively about John Bradshaw Layfield’s issues with Mauro Ranallo and the ensuing fallout. While all that’s been going on though, it turns out that there might be someone else who wasn’t the nicest guy in the world while doing commentary for WWE.

Former WWE commentator Rich Bocchini (formerly known as Rich Brennan) recently appeared on the “Intelligent Wrestling Conversation” podcast and discussed his time with the company, along with some issues with another WWE commentator. Here are some highlights with transcription courtesy of Wrestlinginc.com:

On Which NXT Talents Were Mishandled on the Main Roster

“You can probably look at a handful of guys. You can argue about the Ascension all day. That was a team that was obviously presented as this dominant force in NXT and then you debut them and you spend whatever – 3 weeks or a month or whatever it is -doing these vignettes that the Ascension’s coming. And then you put them out there and you immediately sh*t on them. I don’t know what the point of that is. Why would you spend all this time building these guys up only to send them out there and make fun of them? I don’t understand that…

“Tyler Breeze I thought they could have done more with. I guess he’s doing something with Fandango now. But he’s a kid… he’s amazing. We saw some of the matches that he was able to pull out in NXT. He had some amazing matches. But then again, does an amazing match translate to the main roster? And a lot of times it doesn’t. It’s more about the character stuff up there.”

And on Issues with Tom Phillips and Phillips’ Extramarital Scandal

“I’ll address that real quick. That tweet was sent to her by somebody. And to be honest with you, that was more in reference to someone else at the Performance Center than it was to me, or than it was with me… you know, if you want to say giving people a hard time or making it difficult for somebody to get ahead. There was somebody else who was at the Performance Center who was basically handcuffed from doing anything that the announcers were supposed to do at the PC, because… you know what…? To hell with it.

“Tom [Phillips] made it difficult for a friend of mine who was there. Quite honestly, my friend Alex [Del Barrio] who was hired, who was there. Now, at that point, I wasn’t at the PC on a day-to-day basis but I know Alex and I know he works hard and I know he’s enthusiastic and into the product and whatever.

“But there were certain things… for instance, when I got to the PC that I was allowed to do and that I was told to do because that was part of the learning process that, now that this guy is there, my friend is there, and he’s supposed to be going through that whole process, except he’s being told, ‘No, you can’t do this, this, this, this and this.’ Then what is he supposed to do? So that had more to do with that than it did with me. But politics… that’s part of it. Do I blame Tom and some of the other people involved? They wanted their guy. I wanted my guy. He won, so there you go.”

You can listen to the full interview here.

Opinion: I always found Brennan and Phillips pretty much interchangeable but if this is true, it’s not exactly painting Phillips in the best light. That being said, Brennan is kind of rambling here and it’s not entirely clear what all of his issues are. Either way, WWE seems very happy with Phillips and he’s certainly getting a lot of TV time at the moment.

Which WWE commentators do you like? How many should there be per show? Let us know in the comments below.