Lawler talks about the development of Smackdown back in 1999. He notes that he was only working one day a week prior to Smackdown, but once Smackdown started he had to work an extra day which didn’t really bother him because he thought Smackdown was fun. He was one half of the original Smackdown commentary team with Jim Ross when the show debuted.
Once the show got up and running and built a following of its own, the company wanted to separate RAW and Smackdown as much as possible and that resulted in him and Ross being taken off of Smackdown. Ross was famously drafted back to Smackdown during the 2008 draft, and Ross was not happy with that at all.
Lawler thinks Ross was most upset about not being told about the move. To this day, Lawler thinks the entire thing was a rib on Ross, in order to see how he’d react to the news live on the air. Lawler also thinks that move actually helped both shows overall because it put a lot of pressure on Michael Cole at the time, and Cole eventually ran with the opportunity and is still the voice of RAW to this day.
Lawler admits that he had to adjust his commentary style when he started to work with Cole. Ross and Lawler would often scuffle with one another throughout the broadcast, but Cole was somewhat intimidated by Lawler and didn’t always have a comeback for Lawler’s jabs. Lawler could tell that he was making Cole somewhat uncomfortable from time to time and he had to tone it down a bit.
