Adamle can't fill Joey Styles' shoes

No doubt many WWE fans thought it was a late April Fool's joke when they tuned in Tuesday night for their weekly fix of ECW action on the SciFi Channel.

One of the last vestiges of the once-revolutionary, now watered-down brand bid farewell to his audience when Joey Styles, the voice of ECW throughout most of its two eras, announced that he was leaving the broadcast booth.

Mike Adamle, about as "un-ECW" a replacement as one could imagine, was introduced as Styles' unlikely successor, handling play-by-play duties alongside ECW mainstay Tazz.

Let it be noted that the early results weren't pretty.

More aptly, to quote a veteran wrestling announcer, Adamle's performance was "bowling shoe ugly."

Adamle, who joined the company in January, was like a duck out of water in his first major WWE announcing stint. From calling his new broadcast partner "The Tazz" to describing a legbar as a "figure four leglock" and a dropkick as a "legkick," Adamle's initial outing as the new voice of ECW was far from a success. Fortunately for the viewing audience, "The Tazz" carried the ill-prepared and flustered announcer for most of the show, calling the action when it was apparent that Adamle was out of his element.

Tazz, meanwhile, congratulated Styles on his dubious "promotion" as a content provider for the WWE Web site. It wasn't explained just how the move would be considered a promotion, but it's hard to imagine Styles preferring to be behind a computer than in front of a camera.

Styles, whose real name is Joseph Bonsignore, has been synonymous with Extreme Championship Wrestling since the early days of the original company. From June 1993 through January 2001, Styles hosted and performed play-by-play duties for ECW's pay-per-views, television programs, home videos and video games.

He was brought in by WWE for the ultra-successful ECW One Night Stand pay-per-view in 2005. He returned to ECW when the promotion was resurrected on the SciFi network following the second One Night Stand pay-per-view. But when WWE owner Vince McMahon decided to establish a third brand in his company, he developed his own version of ECW, which bore little resemblance to the one Styles and ECW mastermind Paul Heyman had been a part of.

Heyman, incidentally, is far removed from his days in ECW and WWE, but offered his theory on the "indescribably amateurish" Adamle.

"Adamle is horrible," Heyman wrote on his UK Sun blog last week. "No one likes him. People at home actually loathe his presence on the show. And that's exactly the sort of passionate response Vince McMahon is looking for!"

Heyman suggested that McMahon and company had plenty of time to clean up the announcing debacle last week since the show was taped and subject to editing. He also half-heartedly implied that it could have been a ratings ploy to entice viewers to tune in for next week's ECW show just to see if Adamle was as bad as advertised.

"Do you really think Vince doesn't realize how incompetent this tra-la-la-goon-de-yay of an announcer is? The ECW show from the UK was taped," wrote Heyman. "That means there was time for Adamle to grab a mic backstage and clean up the performance. Not the whole miserable, horrible, intolerable hour. Just the really obvious 'branding' issues, like all three letters that identify World Wrestling Entertainment. Hey, that would be a start, don't you think?

"Vince McMahon is not only keenly aware of just how bad Mike Adamle is, he's counting on it. That's why there was no editing done to clean up Adamle's embarrassingly bad performance."

McMahon's decision to replace Styles falls in line with a recent change in philosophy regarding how matches should be called. All the announcers have been told in recent months to cut some of the excess background banter, and allow the matches to tell the story as the action unfolds. Styles, whose screeching, sometimes over-the-top histrionics earned him a faithful following during the heyday of ECW, found those same traits at odds with the prevailing WWE style when he was hired to be the voice of WWE's revamped ECW in late 2005.

Styles, though, adjusted over time and settled in nicely with partner Tazz (Pete Senerca). His removal from the broadcast booth surprised a number of insiders who felt Styles was as good a fit as any in his ECW role.

McMahon's choice of the 58-year-old Adamle as the 36-year-old Styles' successor has raised questions that have become more pronounced in the wake of last week's show. Officials, though, maintain Adamle has the credentials McMahon likes.

Co-host of the original American Gladiators series (1989-96), Adamle was an NFL running back in the early '70s who parlayed his football fame into a lengthy run as a Chicago-based sports broadcaster. His pro wrestling connection is somewhat of a question mark, but McMahon apparently believed he could be groomed for a main announcer slot in WWE. Hopefully McMahon is not grooming Adamle to be Jim Ross' heir apparent.

Adamle signed a lucrative contract reportedly in the $300,000 range, and his quick promotion to lead ECW announcer may simply be a move to justify that excessive salary.

Hall of Famer Ross was more reserved in his early appraisal of Adamle's work.

"Wrestling fans can be tough to please at times and there is no doubt that Mike will have to earn the audience's confidence, which will be a work in progress," Ross posted last week on his blog. "Hopefully, wrestling fans will give Adamle the opportunity to settle in and develop his wrestling broadcasting skills.

"This business is not about what one has done in the past and any broadcaster is only as good as his last outing. I still get nervous before every show and feel it is my responsibility to get better every week at what I do for a living. 'Next week' is guaranteed to no one."

It will be interesting to see how long Adamle's on-the-job training lasts. Exposure on the company's lowest-rated brand could be McMahon's way of letting him sink or swim.

Other behind-the-scenes dealings have been afoot in WWE in recent weeks.

Dusty Rhodes, a key member of the WWE creative team, has been moved from that position to take over duties at the company's Florida Championship Wrestling developmental facility.

Rhodes, citing the stress and travel that accompanied the high-pressured writing job, had been lobbying for the change for some time now.

--Bobby Eaton, formerly half of one of wrestling's greatest tag teams, The Midnight Express, was hospitalized in Kingsport, Tenn., with heart-related issues.

Eaton, 49, reportedly suffered a recurrence of a prior health problem. He was hospitalized in September 2006 with what originally was believed to be a heart attack, but what Eaton later claimed was a case of high blood pressure and diabetes.

Eaton reportedly was moved out of the intensive care unit late last week.

--Former women's wrestling star Susan "Tex" Green also is in an intensive care unit of a Columbia hospital after developing a serious staph infection following a surgical procedure back in February. The infection reportedly has affected her left side where she is partially paralyzed.

--Legendary mat villain Wladek "Killer" Kowalski also was hospitalized in Massachusetts after injuring his knees in three separate falls, according to a report in the Baltimore Sun. Kowalski, 81, was moved to a physical rehabilitation center following a two-week stay in the hospital.