AEW Announcer Jim Ross Discusses Working With Excalibur

Jim Ross has worked with a variety of legends. His partnership with Jerry Lawler is one of the most iconic pairings in wrestling history, and his love/hate (but mostly hate) relationship with Paul Heyman is often cited as one of the best elements of the 2001 Invasion storyline. Prior to his AEW debut in 2019, Ross had already worked with the likes of Tony Schiavone and Taz, both of whom would eventually join him in AEW, but he had never worked with the masked Excalibur. During a recent edition of the "Grilling JR" podcast, Ross had nothing but nice things to say about the masked commentator, calling him outstanding. 

"He has great product knowledge," Ross said. "He's helped me a lot with recognising Lucha Libre things, or New Japan — all Japanese [things] in general. He's been a great friend, and a great asset for me."

Excalibur received a number of negative comments in AEW's early years from people who were confused as to why he wore a mask, which he's done since his time in PWG. However, that hasn't stopped Ross from being a big fan of the masked man, who believes that he is an important part of the AEW product as a whole. 

"He's just a good guy man. A good guy, he's smart, he's fair, he's willing to share his knowledge. That's the one thing about being a broadcaster is that you've got to be willing to share and you've got to be a good listener so everybody...all the dots can be connected when need be, which is most of the time. So Excalibur was a great get, that was a good hire by Tony Khan."

Please credit "Grilling JR" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.