RAW announcer Johnathan Coachman appeared on Busted Open Radio and talked about WWE's television deal with Fox Sports. He credits himself for the work he did in ESPN to help WWE gain mainstream exposure:
"Three years ago, I get a call and [WWE was] like 'we really want to get on ESPN,'" Coachman said. "Not only because it was the right thing to do but they're like, 'can you help us?' Because other than the occasional Rock showing up for a movie promo there was no consistent content on any mainstream media. Because Vince and the executives at WWE knew that this day was coming.
"I knew if I wanted to do more than just ESPN, that this was a good way to help and to help facilitate. I got into fights, I pushed the envelope, and I got four other guys to help me and we called them 'Coach's Group.' We just got given credit by the president of the company to Wall Street for helping facilitate this Fox deal so they took our content that we did every single week on SportsCenter. Then we got stuff into SportsCenter every single week. They took that content they took it to Fox. They had meetings with ESPN and said listen, after the shock value of the few people who called in saying 'I can't believe they're having wrestling content on our beloved SportsCenter.' After that shock value wore off they came to it in droves."
"They started an entire website that still lives today. Because of that and I'm not saying it's the entire reason, but it's a big part of the reason that his billion-dollar deal was done. Because Fox executives looked at what we did at ESPN and said, 'imagine if you had a partner instead of just a platform.'
"That's why I'm so excited about what Fox can be and what we can do for the fans. We have an opportunity now to be with a huge company, a huge media company. They took what we did and said, 'we can make it bigger, we can make it better, and we can make it reach more fans the world over.'