I'm not saying Graves is on the level of Heenan or Ventura(who for my money is the GOAT of wrestling announcers) but he does things those guys did, and that makes for a far better announcer than the cliche soundbite machines on Raw, who seem to only care about hashtags.Vocally, there is minimal delineation between these guys... and Phillips doesn't have the next gear to carry the rising action. Nuts and bolts, he's fine.
Graves hasn't shown me what you're saying, but to put him in the same breath as Ventura or Heenan is a joke. Those guys were supreme wits who ALSO got guys and angles over for some of their biggest box office.
Lawler as a heel announcer I would also put ahead of Graves, but whatever they've done with Lawler absent JR is pointless, he's weak.
Ditto JBL outside of that inital first good six months. I think there's a good announcer in there but with Vince his ear he loses it.
I appreciate that the NXT style allows a greater focus on the work, but if you subscribe to the theory that the wrestling is the music and the announcers are the lyrics, that Nakamura match was Jimi Hendrix doing a solo while Bieber was on the mic
Admittedly, I don't remember a thing about the announcing during Zayn-Nakamura. I'm surprised you were even able to hear it, all I had was the crowd going nuts for everything. Maybe they weren't great during that match, but they were outstanding during Balor-Joe. Absolutely on fire during the ref stoppages, with Graves going on about how the stoppages were just making Joe madder and more focused, and how it gave Balor time to recover from Joe's onslaught, so Joe felt he had to be even more aggressive to try to get back to where he was before the ref stepped in. It took what could have really killed the momentum and turned it into a big part of the match's story.