Chicago White Sox & Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf is famously quoted for having said that organizations win championships not players. Of course the Bulls haven’t won any championships without Michael Jordan, so perhaps players do have a little something to do with it, as you just can’t replace a player that special easily.
Now WWE Hall Of Famer Jim Ross is the Michael Jordan of wrestling announcers in that if he’s not the greatest of all time it will take a hell of an argument to convince most people that someone has been better at his profession than him.
Of course it seems Vince McMahon has been oddly trying to replace JR since the moment he got in the WWF/WWE. Why is that? Just to speculate it seems there’s a lot of reasons.
Style: Jim Ross doesn’t quite have the WWE style McMahon favors, partially because he tends to use old school wrestling psychology and partially because he’s a southerner and McMahon is scared to death of having his product labeled southern Rasslin’. McMahon doesn’t like his product called like a sport, he just wants the story told, which has it’s advantages and disadvantages.
Jealous: JR is more respected as an announcer than McMahon was and deservedly so, since he’s much better. For someone as competitive as McMahon, who’s acutely aware of that perception, I doubt this sits well with him.
Personality: I’m not sure many people really have a true understanding of JR’s personality back stage since it’s colored by his on camera persona and he’s so loved by the fans. McMahon tends to favor Superstars who show balls and stand up to him, but in his inner circle, while he can respect you for that, he generally likes to have yes men around him such as Jerry Brisco. JR is famously gruff with a no nonsense personality and minimal humor who will treat you with respect as long as you do the same to him. He’s neither aggressive enough to stand up to McMahon and get his respect doing so nor comfortable enough just kissing up to McMahon. In other words Ross is his own man, and just not the type of personality McMahon necessarily prefers.
Age: I’m sure you’ve heard it many times before but McMahon wants a young image on TV and doesn’t feel JR presents that. More than age I believe it’s looks, McMahon believes in the idea that TV should be full of good looking people, the TV news anchor theory. Both os these beliefs are moronic mind you, look at the NFL announcers, NBC’s lead is 67 year old legend Al Michaels, a full 7 years older than JR, and at no point when watching a game do I believe anyone is thinking about how handsome he is or isn’t.
So how do you replace Jim Ross? Do you need a young handsome guy with 
minimal wrestling knowledge trained in the WWE style who McMahon with his mean spirited humor can rib and bully? I’m sure McMahon thinks so.
Honestly they shouldn’t even be looking to replace JR, announcers unlike athletes don’t lose their ability to excel due to a failing body. At some point their mind isn’t as quick but lord knows JR is far from that point.
But let’s face it, WWE will be looking to replace him again quickly, and if not for Jerry Lawler’s health issues he wouldn’t even be on TV now, and with Lawler’s imminent return I’m not sure how much longer we’ll see him.
And as soon as he’s off TV Michael Cole becomes the best play by play announcer WWE has, and he’s someone who’s work over the years has varied from quite good to very poor, and the lack of depth present in trying to find a high quality 2nd announcer over the years has been scary, but this stems from 
the same problems we’ve been saying about the the wrestling training in developmental. It’d be nice to think they are studying announcers from over the years, good and bad, from multiple territories as well as other mediums to improve. But in fact they train the announcers with the same philosophy the train the wrestlers. Learn what we tell you and do it the way we want it, don’t show any true personality of your own, and if you stray from this in any way, like Joey Styles, we can’t use you.
So, once again, how do you replace Jim Ross? Well the point is they’re not training someone to replace JR, they’re training him to one day replace Cole, because he’s the vision of what they want. The Bulls have never replaced Michael Jordan, and it took years before another truly great player put on their uniform in Derrick Rose. And while he’s a great player there’s a world of difference between him and Jordan and likely always will be.
The point of all this is unfortunately lowered expectations. If we get another guy as good as Cole in the future, who at least I can listen to and still watch the product and enjoy if it’s good, we should accept that, and if someone is better than that and comes along we should be ecstatic.
Because you just don’t replace a Michael Jordan… or a Jim Ross.
