– As noted, former WWE announcer and current ESPN anchor Jonathan Coachman will be covering WWE SummerSlam from outside of the Barclays Center on Sunday, for ESPN SportsCenter. Coachman will broadcast live at 11am EST, 12pm and 6pm, then do a wrap-up when the show is over. Coachman will also be interviewing various WWE Superstars who had other connections to sports or entertainment like The Miz and Roman Reigns.
Coachman recently spoke with Sports Illustrated’s Extra Mustard blog about the gig. The full piece is at this link. He commented:
“We’re doing a lot of sit-downs on Saturday with guys who have cross-over appeal. We’re going to sit down and talk with different wrestlers that either played football in college, like Roman Reigns or John Cena, to the Miz, who was a reality star, so there are a lot of guys the casual sports fan would know. We’ll meet with them on Saturday, and those interviews will be on ESPN.com and our SportsCenter feed on Twitter, and then we’ll be doing live shots on Sunday morning from outside the arena to show people the atmosphere. Then we’ll interview a few people about what Sunday night means to their careers.”
“We’re used to dealing with athletes and asking, ‘What does this game mean to you?’ Well, performing at SummerSlam is just like performing in the NFC Championship game. You’ve got to bring your top game so you can make it to the Super Bowl in WrestleMania. We want to introduce a lot of these guys to the part of the sports world who don’t watch Raw.”
“ESPN is not a place you come to take the next step, it’s a place you come to spend your career. I plan on retiring at ESPN, but I would love to be involved with ESPN and WWE. The biggest network in America for credibility in sports and entertainment is ESPN, so the best way to make your product credible is to be on ESPN. I’m proud of the fact that I am the liaison for the WWE. I appreciate the executives at ESPN opening their hearts and their minds, and I can’t think of anything cooler than what we’re doing this weekend at SummerSlam.”
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