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.”
