WWE has announced that the Hall of Fame pairing of Jim Ross and Lita will be the announcers for this summer's Mae Young Classic.
Starting this August WWE will stage the Mae Young Classic, a 32-woman single elimination tournament that will be broadcast live on the WWE Network. Up until now very little information has been confirmed about the tournament, aside from a few of the women who will be a part of it, but on Monday a lot more was revealed by WWE. The main story coming out of WWE's Monday announcement was that all of the action in the Mae Young Classic will be called by Jim Ross and four time Women's Champion Lita, both of whom are in the WWE Hall of Fame.
It was rumored that good ol' JR would be taking up play-by-play duties for the summer tournament, especially after the announcer was signed to a two year contract following his return to WWE at WrestleMania 33. It was also safe to assume that WWE would also bring in a female color commentator considering that it's an event made up solely of female competitors. Lita has done a lot of work on pre show panels for WWE recently so it makes sense that the company would call upon and put their faith in her to take up this position.
As well as revealing who will be calling the action for the Mae Young Classic, WWE also revealed some other details via their website. According to WWE.com the first four episodes of the tournament will be made available on August 28th, followed by the next four episodes a week later. Then the final match will be broadcast live from Las Vegas on Tuesday the 12th of September, presumably directly after SmackDown Live on the WWE Network.
The Mae Young Classic is the third tournament that WWE has staged in the space of a year that showcases one particular area of pro wrestling. Last summer Full Sail played host to the Cruiserweight Classic, in January sixteen of the UK's best offerings pitted themselves against each other, and come August 28th it will be the turn of the women. 32 females will compete altogether, but so far only nine wrestlers have been announced. Abbey Laith and Tessa Blanchard of NXT fame are included group.
PREVIOUSLY: HOW WWE'S WOMEN HELPED BUILD TO THIS MOMENT OVER A YEAR AGO
If the success of the CWC and UK tournament is anything to go by, the Mae Young Classic is all set to be another roaring success for WWE. The addition of an announce team including JR and Lita will have only added to the excitement that continues to build as it draws ever closer. It would have been nice to perhaps have an all female announce team considering it's an all female tournament, but the addition of Jim Ross to anything pro wrestling is really hard to argue with.