Ahead of the series’ premiere, WWE has released a trailer for “Corey & Carmella.”
The reality show is set to make its debut on WWE’s YouTube channel on Monday, February 28. It will consist of 10 four-minute episodes.
On their Bare With Us podcast last week, Corey Graves and Carmella said that the reality show is in conjunction with WWE and Glass Entertainment Group. It’s something Graves and Carmella have been working on for two years.
Graves and Carmella said they believe the entire series will be uploaded on February 28.
“WWE has been unbelievable about helping us maintain our authenticity as much as we can,” Graves said. “It’s called ‘Corey & Carmella,’ but for those of you that listen to this, you’re going to recognize a lot more Matt and Leah than what you see on Raw or SmackDown or anything WWE.”
Graves (real name Matthew Polinsky) and Carmella (Leah Van Dale) announced their engagement last October. Graves works as a color commentator for Raw, while Carmella is part of the Raw roster and currently holds the WWE Women’s Tag Team titles with Zelina Vega.
A reality show starring WWE couple Corey Graves and Carmella is coming to YouTube later this month.
“Corey & Carmella” will debut on WWE’s YouTube channel on Monday, February 28. Graves and Carmella made the announcement on the latest episode of their Bare With Us podcast.
Graves said on Bare With Us that the project is in conjunction with WWE and Glass Entertainment Group. The couple was first contacted by Glass Entertainment Group and they then took the idea to WWE. Graves and Carmella shot a pilot episode, which has been chopped up into 10 four-minute episodes. Graves and Carmella said they believe they entire series will be dropped onto WWE’s YouTube channel at once, but that’s subject to change.
Graves and Carmella noted that they’ve been working on the project for two years.
“WWE has been unbelievable about helping us maintain our authenticity as much as we can,” Graves said. “It’s called ‘Corey & Carmella,’ but for those of you that listen to this, you’re going to recognize a lot more Matt and Leah than what you see on Raw or SmackDown or anything WWE.”
Carmella said the couple’s podcast is thread throughout the series.
Graves said the project is still in its infancy and there’s a lot of room for growth — it’s launching on WWE’s YouTube channel, and who knows what happens from there.
Graves (Matthew Polinsky) and Carmella (Leah Van Dale) announced their engagement in October of last year. Graves works as a color commentator for Raw, while Carmella is a member of the Raw roster. Carmella & Zelina Vega are the current WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions.
Corey Graves is cleared to return to the ring, according to a new report.
Fightful Select reported this morning that Graves has had a major status shift over the last year regarding physical contact. According to the report, Graves was cleared by WWE doctors sometime in 2020 despite originally being on an internal no contact list that the company keeps. Graves is no longer on that list. Both Graves and WWE could not confirm nor deny any parts of Fightful’s report.
Graves was signed by the WWE as a wrestler and competed both in FCW and NXT. In 2014, after suffering a concussion, he was no longer cleared to compete and announced his retirement, shifting to a color commentator’s position on NXT. In 2016, he was called up to do commentary on the main roster. He currently works as a color commentator on Raw and has also been part of the SmackDown announce team in the past.
WWE color commentator/podcast host Corey Graves and former SmackDown Women’s Champion Carmella announced over the weekend that they are engaged.
The two began dating in 2019. This will be the 37-year-old Graves’ second marriage and the first for the 34-year-old Carmella (Leah Van Dale). Graves (Matthew Polinsky) has three children with his ex-wife. Saturday was also Carmella’s birthday which is when Graves proposed.
Their relationship has been featured on past seasons of Total Divas. They also co-host the Bare With Us podcast which tackles relationship issues.
Graves signed with WWE in 2011, beginning as a wrestler in developmental. He retired in 2014 after suffering multiple concussions, moving into a host, panelist and commentary role. He was called up to the main roster in 2016 to be a color commentator on Raw and has also spent time on SmackDown.
Carmella signed with WWE in 2016, starting in NXT as part of the Enzo Amore/Big Cass act. She was drafted in 2016 to SmackDown and has been on both brands. She held the SmackDown Women’s title in 2018 for 131 days before losing it to Charlotte Flair in a three-way. She is also a two-time 24/7 Champion.
Sportscaster Adnan Virk has joined WWE and will be the new lead play-by-play voice of Raw starting tonight. Corey Graves and Byron Saxton will join Virk on the Raw commentary team.
Tom Phillips, Samoa Joe, and Saxton had formerly been the Raw commentary team. WWE notes that Phillips will become the new host of 205 Live and will “oversee special projects for WWE’s programming on Peacock and at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando.” Phillips will also continue in his role as senior manager of on air talent.
Joe remains part of the WWE talent roster.
The Athletic reports that Virk has signed a multi-year deal with WWE. Their article on Virk signing with WWE notes that he was recommended to the company after Cole called television agent Matt Olson of CAA (Creative Artists Agency) looking to see if he had any clients that would be interested in working in WWE broadcasting. Virk had an audition for WWE in February and WWE also interviewed a handful of other broadcasters. In mid-March, WWE decided to hire Virk.
“I’m elated to be joining the premier sports-entertainment company in my new role with WWE,” said Virk. “As a kid who grew up idolizing WWE Hall of Famers like Bret Hart and Ric Flair, the opportunity to call modern legends like Drew McIntyre, Bobby Lashley, Randy Orton, Charlotte Flair and so many others alongside Corey Graves and Byron Saxton is truly humbling.”
Virk will continue in his role for the MLB Network this season, along with hosting his GM Shuffle with Michael Lombardi and Cinephile podcasts. Virk formerly worked for ESPN but was fired in 2019 for leaking information to the media about the company.
WWE president and chief revenue officer Nick Khan was formerly Virk’s agent.
Post Wrestling’s John Pollock reported that Mauro Ranallo is home with family in Canada and isn’t calling NXT TakeOver XXX tonight: “Mauro Ranallo is back home with family in Canada – he won’t be calling tonight’s TakeOver card.”
Vic Joseph, Beth Phoenix, and Corey Graves are the commentary team for tonight’s show.
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A special guest will be on commentary for NXT TakeOver XXX.
During a pre-TakeOver Q&A with Kayla Braxton, Paul “Triple H” Levesque announced that Corey Graves will be part of the commentary team for tonight’s TakeOver show. Triple H noted that Graves did commentary for the original NXT Arrival event and will now be a special guest for the 30th TakeOver special.
Triple H joked that Graves begged and pleaded to be part of the show and said Graves will be doing commentary all night tonight. The rest of the commentary team for the show wasn’t stated.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been so excited about anything that I’m having trouble sleeping,” Graves tweeted overnight.
The TakeOver XXX pre-show will begin at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time tonight, with the main card starting a half hour later. Here’s the list of matches for the show:
NXT Champion Keith Lee defending against Karrion Kross
Adam Cole vs. Pat McAfee
NXT Women’s Champion Io Shirai defending against Dakota Kai
Ladder match for the vacant NXT North American Championship (Bronson Reed, Damian Priest, Cameron Grimes, Johnny Gargano, and Velveteen Dream)
Finn Balor vs. Timothy Thatcher
Triple threat number one contender’s tag match: Legado del Fantasma (Raul Mendoza & Joaquin Wilde) vs. Breezango vs. Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch (pre-show)
After more than a week on the sidelines, Mauro Ranallo is scheduled to return to the NXT broadcast booth this Wednesday night.
Ranallo’s return was first reported by Pro Wrestling Sheet and confirmed independently by Dave Meltzer.
The 49-year-old was set to call some of the action at Survivor Series, but following a critical tweet by WWE color commentator Corey Graves, Ranallo did not work the event and deactivated his social media accounts. WWE said on the SS broadcast that Ranallo had blown out his voice at TakeOver and would be back that following Wednesday for NXT. Tom Phillips filled in for him instead.
Graves apologized on his WWE-produced podcast, claiming the now-deleted tweet was designed to play into the brand supremacy element of SS and that he was going to bring it up during the pay-per-view broadcast while the two were calling a match.
Ranallo, who has publicly battled bipolar disorder, missed time with WWE in 2017 and the two sides eventually parted ways. He re-signed with WWE a few months later, agreeing to call NXT TV and TakeOver events.
WWE’s four days in Chicago’s Allstate Arena were headlined by the Survivor Series, which drew the largest, but hardly the loudest crowd of the weekend.
A legitimate sellout of 11,500 fans on 11/24 indicated a few things.
First, the lowest rated brand by far drew the loudest reactions. The matches pushed the hardest on television got mixed reactions. Nobody seemed to care much for Raw and Smackdown, and were heavily into NXT.
And based on the fact they did a scoreboard on the seven interbrand matches, which ended with NXT winning four, Smackdown two and Raw one, you could very clearly see the priority right now is trying to market the NXT brand as not being viewed as developmental or lesser, and most importantly, use the show to increase Wednesday night ratings. From a strategic standpoint, they couldn’t have done better. Time will tell if the strategy works long-term but writing this without knowledge of how numbers will turn out, thus far the angles that built the show plus the appearances of main roster talent have turned around the NXT ratings. The idea is, at least for now, that you will no longer see the Raw and Smackdown talent on NXT as much, so getting the brand over is the key long-term. It should help and the race should tighten up. I would suspect NXT viewership to increase even without Raw & Smackdown talent, at least to well above the pre-SS build-up levels. The key was the push in making people like Shayna Baszler, Rhea Ripley, Keith Lee, Roderick Strong and Matt Riddle into stars based on booking here, combined with the fact that of the three singles title matches, the NXT title bout with Adam Cole beating Pete Dunne was clearly the best of the three.
On this week’s edition of his After the Bell podcast, Corey Graves addressed the tweet that he sent about Mauro Ranallo during NXT TakeOver: WarGames.
Graves addressed the tweet at the start of the podcast episode. He said that he never meant to offend, disrespect, or disparage anyone and apologized if it was taken that way:
Before we go any further, on a personal note, I need to address something. This past Saturday during the TakeOver: WarGames event, I sent out a tweet. It was an unpopular opinion, as I often do, with the intention of just stirring up a little controversy — maybe have something fun to talk about on TV or here on the show. It was maybe not the most professional way to go about things, and it was never meant to offend or disrespect or disparage anybody. That was never my intention. If it was taken as such, I apologize, deeply. That was not my intention. I would never intentionally cause anybody any undo stress, especially a co-worker. So, I apologize.
Graves had tweeted during Saturday night’s TakeOver show: “Just for the record guys, I know you wouldn’t know it, but there’s actually a WWE Hall of Famer AND a former Ring of Honor Champion on commentary. I’d imagine they have a lot to offer. #NXTTakeoverWarGames”
Ranallo, who has been open about battling bipolar disorder, didn’t make his scheduled appearance on commentary during Survivor Series. He also deactivated his social media accounts.
As a cover for Ranallo not appearing on the show, Michael Cole claimed during Survivor Series that Ranallo blew out his voice calling TakeOver but would be back on this week’s episode of NXT.
Post Wrestling reported overnight that Ranallo won’t be calling tonight’s NXT. Their report stated that “there has been communication over the past few days between Ranallo and those in the company but the decision was made that he would not be coming to the show this week.”
Post Wrestling also noted that it isn’t known if Ranallo will be back for next week’s NXT episode.
Mauro Ranallo will reportedly not be at NXT tonight.
John Pollock of POST Wrestling reported that Mauro will not be at NXT this week at Full Sail University. Ranallo hasn’t called any WWE events since NXT TakeOver: WarGames this past Saturday.
Triple H on the WarGames post-show said that Ranallo, who is the lead announcer of NXT, would be calling matches the following day at Survivor Series. However, Ranallo was not on the card. During the show, Michael Cole on commentary said that Ranallo was set to be at the event, but his voice blew out and was unable to be part of the show.
This stems from a tweet Corey Graves posted on Twitter during TakeOver where he wrote “Just for the record guys, I know you wouldn’t know it, but there’s actually a WWE Hall of Famer AND a former Ring of Honor Champion on commentary. I’d imagine they have a lot to offer.”
Ranallo has since deactivated his Twitter account.
WWE’s official podcast network is set to launch later this month.
WWE announced today that the podcast network’s first show will be called “After the Bell.” It will be hosted by Corey Graves, with the premiere episode being released on Wednesday, October 30.
The podcast is described as: “Each Wednesday, Graves will break down the action from WWE’s flagship programming, taking listeners on a captivating ride through the hottest WWE storylines while he catches up with the most noteworthy Superstars of the week.” A one-minute trailer for the show is now available.
Paul “Triple H” Levesque will be a guest on the debut episode of After the Bell.
“After the Bell will deliver unprecedented access to the biggest WWE Superstars and storylines week in and week out,” Graves said. “No other podcast can say that. As WWE’s first podcast, we have the responsibility to ask the burning questions, and it’s going to be a wild ride.”
In August, it was revealed that WWE and Endeavor Audio were partnering together to launch the WWE Podcast Network. WWE noted today that more podcasts for it will be announced in the near future.
Filling the spot that was left open after John “Bradshaw” Layfield announced his departure from SmackDown, Corey Graves will be joining the show’s commentary team starting this week.
WWE broke the news today, noting that Graves will also be staying on Raw and calling both shows going forward. Graves will be leaving his duties on 205 Live and Main Event, with Nigel McGuinness taking over those roles alongside Vic Joseph.
Graves will be reuniting with former broadcast partners Tom Phillips and Byron Saxton on the SmackDown announce team.
JBL revealed last Friday that he would be stepping away from SmackDown and no longer doing regular commentary so that he could focus more time on his role as a global ambassador in the Beyond Sport organization. JBL noted that he would still be part of the WWE family and that he would be appearing on shows like Tribute to the Troops and WrestleMania.
The Big News: It was Corey Graves’ last night so they aired a lengthy tribute video to him.
The Medium News: Tyler Bate made his first appearance since the UK Championship tournament and defeated Oney Lorcan.
The Little Beaver-sized News: Kassius Ohno returned in a backstage segment, consoling Shinsuke Nakamura after Nakamura lost the title.
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The show started with a video recapping NXT TakeOver: San Antonio. As I mentioned on Saturday, this show greatly exceeded expectations and I would make sure to check it out if you haven’t already.
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Corey Graves is still on the show. I know this was taped before TakeOver, but they did imply that Nigel McGuinness would be taking over this week.
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Ember Moon defeated Aliyah
Aliyah is seemingly an unknown babyface. She got almost no reaction coming out except for a few people booing who assumed she was a heel.
Moon used an abdominal stretch where she pushed Aliyah’s head down further, to the point that her body was completely bent over. Aliyah got some offense, just enough to show that she is far from ready for a bigger role. Moon walked up the ropes with a moonsault press for a two count and then finished off Aliyah with The Eclipse.
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We got an Eric Young promo from after TakeOver. Then they showed Tye Dillinger in the Royal Rumble and him being excited about taking part. They also had a post-match promo where he said that the whole experience was surreal.
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That brought us to the Asuka video package. Asuka said her match was tough, but she is still champion. Asuka laughed about Ember Moon challenging her, asking if Moon actually works here.
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Ember Moon cut a promo after being told what Asuka said about her. The interviewer recited the question in record speed. Moon said she is happy Asuka won because she wanted to be the one to dethrone her and Asuka will know who Ember Moon is.
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WWE United Kingdom Champion Tyler Bate defeated Oney Lorcan
Bate walked to the ring waving to everyone. This was a solid match that the crowd got into. Bate used the airplane spin and then the Tyler Driver ’97 for the win. Bate did the same thing he did in the UK tournament where he did the spin, stopped and teased being too dizzy, and then continued for a few more rotations.
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Roderick Strong cut a post-TakeOver promo, saying beating Andrade “Cien” Almas was a statement and he is continuing his quest to be NXT Champion.
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We move to the NXT Tag Team Championship match from Saturday. Paul Ellering, after the match, said they are the new sheriff, the new law, they will show no mercy and take victory at all costs.
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Then we got the recap of the NXT title match. We got footage of after the show went off the air where Shinsuke Nakamura was helped to the back and treated by the trainers. Chris Hero/Kassius Ohno made his return on TV, telling Nakamura that the situation really sucks.
Bobby Roode was elsewhere and offended that he would be asked if he still would’ve won if Nakamura hadn’t been injured. Roode said that when he debuted he said this was his NXT and now the Bobby Roode era has begun. Of course, he finished by saying his title reign would be glorious.
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Next week will be Bobby Roode’s glorious celebration.
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Tom Phillips wished good luck to Corey Graves, since tonight is his last night on commentary in NXT. We got a lengthy video package covering Graves’ career, from in the ring and then to the broadcast booth.
This was a really good video package. It’s available to watch below:
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No Way Jose defeated Elias Samson
Graves spent minutes flipping out that the last match he was calling featured The Drifter. As always, Samson got the go away heat from people not wanting to hear his song.
Samson ran across the ring with a dropkick at the start of the match, but Jose took over quickly. Graves was suddenly thrilled with leaving Samson, Tom Phillips, and Percy Watson behind when he was reminded that he still had to deal with Byron Saxton.
Samson finally got the heat when he crotched Jose on the top rope. Jose made his comeback, hitting chops and won with the pop-up punch to the face.
So that does it for this week. Thank you all so much for reading and until next week, remember to say your vitamins and take your prayers!
