Corey Graves on Coachman and Saxton, Working with Coachman, & FCW

Recent episode of the Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast show had Corey Graves as the guest discussing his thoughts on Jonathan Coachman and Byron Saxton, working with Coachman on RAW, and his FCW career.

On the topic of if he dislikes both Jonathan Coachman and Byron Saxton, Graves stated if it was true then he would never talk about them during shows. Instead, he stated both have been very helpful to him and any insults or jabs he makes are not done out of spite.

“Usually if I am not into somebody, then I just won’t talk about them. I wouldn’t have anything to say. I have gotten to the point now where I am kind of tired at points. I still am on such a roll non-stop and I haven’t had a week off in any way shape or form in like 4 years. I love it though, that is what keeps me going, I am finally at a point now where I think to myself that I don’t have anything for this segment so I have to catch my breath, my throat hurts, which still hasn’t recovered from WrestleMania, and every once in a while I will tell Byron [Saxton] to take this segment, or Coach, help me out here. Usually I am so take charge, it’s either Tom [Phillips] and I or [Michael] Cole and I. We have instant chemistry and we can read each other’s minds and finish each other’s thoughts, but a lot of times I tend to forget that there is a third guy there. It is nothing intentional but you get in the zone and you get excited and fired up, but every once in a while I remind myself to breathe. I get burned out sometimes.”

On the topic of working with Jonathan Coachman, Graves stated he has struggled trying to adjust to Coachman’s style of commentary but believes he simply just needs more time to develop better chemistry with Coachman in the booth.

“I don’t know Coach on a social level. I am cool with him and have hung out with him a handful of times socially, but I don’t know him, which is different because with Booker T, by the time we were doing Raw together, I had worked with him in the studio every single week for a year and a half and spent all day with him. We had a chemistry, where we would go to the hotel bar and just talk business and have fun so I had a rapport with him, but with Coach, he was the square peg in a round hole, so in the first few weeks I told myself that I wasn’t going to come at him too hard because I wanted to have him get back into it. It’s not something you just pick back up overnight and say that you are doing Raw commentary. He and I are cool. My thing is that you can tell when he is live Tweeting on the air because he will literally repeat something or say something that means nothing, and then you will scroll through Twitter and then you see Coach sending a ‘Coach em Up’ Tweet, and then he’ll talk about how great the match is going to be, and I say something like, ‘thanks Coach.’ We just spent the last five minutes saying that. The longer we work together the better it is going to be.”

On the topic of his career in FCW, Graves stated the biggest issue with WWE’s developmental system during his time there was the feeling of disconnect between FCW and the main roster. He praised Triple H for fixing those issues with NXT and the Performance Center.

“There used to be this weird disconnect between developmental and the main roster. This is before NXT, this is Florida Championship Wrestling days. We were kind of an island unto ourselves. You had guys like myself, Roman Reigns, Bray Wyatt, Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, I mean a who’s who of who is up there now. Nobody told us anything. Nobody knew if anybody was ever going to get called up. I used this comparison in the past with Toy Story, with the claw and aliens. Everyone is kind of in this thing where everything is better up there but nobody knows the master or creator is going to come get you. Then, all of a sudden a claw comes and you think, ‘oh, there goes Cesaro, and you never see him again until he is on television.’ Once NXT started and Triple H took over, there is a lot more synergy. Now, I go down to the Performance Center, I don’t even know half the people over there. I may end up meeting them when they come to Raw. It’s gotten so tight so fast. There seems to be more rhyme or reason compared to back in the day when it was very, very weird.”