Bleacher Report Disses WSOP Host Lon McEachern
July 21st, 2010
No matter what Bleacher Report says, Lon McEachern is the man.
Poor Lon McEachern. The man just can’t get any respect. In the world of poker he’s often overlooked because of his World Series of Poker broadcasting partner, Norman Chad, getting all the attention. After all, Chad gets to make all the wacky ex-wife jokes and to coin terms like “squa-doosh” while McEachern has to play the role of straight-man. But even on the outside it seems that the voice of the WSOP still can’t get any love.
The Bleacher Report published its list of the 50 Worst Sports Personalities of All Time today, and Lon McEachern ranks as number 36. You’d figure that rating that strongly as a bad commentator would at least garner you a laundry list of your sins against sport, but McEachern doesn’t even get that. Instead, he gets this terse description:
When your coverage of poker is your claim to fame, being on this list is inevitable.
Ouch! That’s pretty insulting, especially considering some of McEachern’s company on this list who get much longer descriptions. Boxing commentator Max Kellerman, for instance, gets four long paragraphs explaining why he is the 28th-worst sports commentator around. Former NBA star (and occasional Saturday Night Live host) Charles Barkley gets a few paragraphs and a clip of comedian Frank Caliendo imitating him. Lon’s lone sin is apparently just being involved with poker, which can’t possibly be as bad a thing as half of the “real” sports commentators mentioned in the list – and he can’t even get a detailed write-up.
And let’s face it, just in the world of poker there are many bad commentators, and none of them are named McEachern. Go back and watch any of the Poker Superstars, Poker Royale, Ultimate Poker Challenge or Professional Poker Tour episodes and you’ll find much worse than anything McEachern’s ever done. And for the sake of brevity, if nothing else, we’ll just leave the World Poker Tour’s Vince Van Patten completely out of the picture.
So here’s to Lon McEachern, the voice of the WSOP – even if the Bleacher Report doesn’t love you, we do!
