Matt Striker and Hugo Savinovich to Provide English Commentary for TripleMania

Striker, along with Savinovich, will provide the soundtrack in English for TripleMania Photo Credit: WWE.com

Two familiar names will be manning the microphones for the English telecast of TripleMania, Asistencia Asesoría y Administración's flagship event. Matt Striker and Hugo Savinovich will comprise the English broadcast team. The announcers, both alumni of WWE's broadcast booths, have been working as play-by-play announcers for Lucha Underground's English and Spanish broadcasts respectively. They will join forces to call the biggest lucha libre card of the year for American audiences. I find the choice of Savinovich on the English side to be curious, and I thought that Striker was a lock to work the event with either his regular LU broadcast partner Vampiro or some other marquee bilingual wrestler in case administration wanted Vamp to work with Savinovich on the Spanish side.

This event will be the second extra-American promotion's flagship card which Striker has called in the English language. He famously did hybrid play-by-play/color commentary for the Global Force Wrestling-presented broadcast of New Japan Pro Wrestling's WrestleKingdom 9 on January 4. Between that and the gig doing perhaps the most critically acclaimed weekly television show on the slate, the year has been extremely kind to Striker, who was ousted from WWE after failing as a commentator on the main roster. I haven't heard Savinovich's English commentary, but because the only broadcast of Lucha Underground available to me is the Spanish feed, I am well-acquainted with his call en Español. I understand maybe five percent of the words he says, but he has such a rollicking, tone-perfect style that he complements the action perfectly. I'll be interested to see how his English style translates.

Also, a tag match was announced in honor of Blue Demon Jr.'s 30 years of active competition. He will team with La Parka (a different guy under the classic get-up, not the one everyone knows from WCW, who wrestles now as LA Park) to take on El Mesias and Electro Shock. Luchadores tend to last forever, this milestone might not be Demon's last. Still, he's been active almost as long as I've been alive, which is impressive. Additionally, the previously-announced Psycho Circus vs. Los Villanos match has been confirmed to be Villano III's retirement bout. The current patriarch of the Villanos will ride off into the sunset after TripleMania. These matches will occur in addition to the huge top two matches already announced. Alberto el Patron and Brian Cage will put their hair on the line in a huge, personal clash between cultures, and Myzteziz and Rey Mysterio will participate in a lucha dream match.

With SummerSlam looking less and less sure every day, TripleMania on paper is looking like the must-see wrestling event of August. Now that two familiar voices are confirmed to be calling the action, the event is looking more and more tantalizing for the casual fan as it is for the hardcore lucha devotee. I fall more in line with the former category, and I'm pretty sure I'll be there watching the action on August 9.