Posted on 2/04/126 by Colin Vassallo
The Tribune-Review news website has a story about WWE
commentator Corey Graves starting a new job as a professor
at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Graves, real name Matthew Polinsky, was originally invited
to deliver a speech to the university’s broadcasting
students and he was asked to come again by the dean of the
school of communication.
After knocking it out of the park, twice, university
officials asked him if he would be interested in teaching a
class, something that he thought was “the most absurd thing”
he’d ever heard of.
The dean, Dr. Bernie Ankey, was impressed with Graves in how
he interacted and mentored students, bringing energy to his
speech and presentation.
“I thought it would be worth looking into Corey teaching a
class. Somebody like that, if you put him in the classroom,
students are familiar with his work,” he said.
Graves and Dr. Ankey worked together for several months the
details of the class and curriculum, now called Live Sports
Production.
Graves teaches the three-hour course every Wednesday to 12
students and has the full blessing of WWE as well.
“TKO has seemingly been a lot more open to collaboration and
allowing talent to step outside WWE, more so than the old
WWE regime,” Graves told Tribune-Review. “Anybody who works
for WWE has had an opportunity of some sort that they’ve had
to turn down because they couldn’t get permission, or it was
a conflict of interest. This really isn’t a wrestling class;
it was a broadcasting class. I took it to my manager, and
they’ve been supportive to help me with making this happen.”