Jonathan Coachman: Scottie Scheffler is the modern day Tiger Woods

Sports commentator Jonathan Coachman spoke exclusively to Hard Rock Bet and reviewed the weekend’s action in the FedExCup Playoffs where Scottie Scheffler won by eight shots.

Coachman also previewed the possibility of a PGA return for Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm, predicting they could both rejoin by 2027.

Outside of golf, Coachman discussed Jake Paul’s entry into MMA as a promoter and the possibility of him fighting Francis Ngannou.

The 53-year-old is most known for his time at WWE as an announcer and commentator before becoming the interim General Manager. Known most for his interactions with The Rock, Coachman also revealed one reason why Dwayne Johnson could return for WrestleMania next year.

Scottie Scheffler is today’s Tiger Woods

Looking back at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, how impressive was Scottie Scheffler, and how important was it for him to win a tournament again?

Oh, he was fantastic. Scottie is one of those guys that kind of defies the odds. The stats don’t really match up with normally what a player does to be the number one player with all the points.

It was only his second win, but I wrote it down earlier, he had 17 top 25s. He has five second-place finishes, finished third twice, and has 12 top fives. The man is just incredible. It’s almost unlucky that he only has one win this year before the weekend.

It’s almost unlucky. He should have five or six. He should have one or two majors too. Watching him in person is absolutely amazing. He’s kind of the Tiger Woods, just kind of the softer type of athlete than Tiger Woods when he wants to step on your neck.

Now he becomes the third-youngest player to ever get to 21 wins, as well, behind Jack and behind Tiger. He’s right there and it’s amazing to watch him up close and personal.

I’ve been with the PGA Tour for about eight years now, so getting to be behind the scenes and behind the curtain, Scottie Scheffler is an absolute dog. Scottie Scheffler is an absolute beast, and the last couple of years, he had six wins in ’24, six wins in ’25.

Even though there’s this narrative out there that Scottie is unbeatable, that Scottie’s going to just walk it, and he won by eight shots on Sunday but that has not been the case in 2026. He only has one win.

He wants to win. He wants to have all those great types of numbers and to only have one win, he wants to be the player of the year as well. If there’s a couple of other players that have three wins, he needed to have a win, and look what happened.

Then he’s going to go to St. Louis, and I think he’s going to win there, and then he can make history. There’s never been a player that has won every single FedEx Cup event, and he has the opportunity to do that.

The PGA must bring Bryson DeChambeau back

LIV Golf looks set to call time. Do you think we could maybe see Bryson DeChambeau back on the PGA Tour?

I think we need it. In 2028, anybody that follows golf knows that we’re expanding. There’s going to be basically two tours and then still the Korn Ferry Tour. So, three tours, essentially, and I love this saying. There is no substitute for star power.

Whether you’re talking about Bryson DeChambeau, whether you’re talking about Jon Rahm, who’s already made it known that he’s going to go back to the DP World Tour at the end of this year, you can’t go to players that you offered $100 million, $200 million, some $300 million, and then say, “Hey, we don’t have any investors now, but we’re going to give you equity in the league.” So long term, you can really cash out.

Well, I don’t know about you, but when I hear equity, I need equity in something that has value, and right now, LIV has no value. This was a “We’re paying stars to come and play golf for us, and we’re paying a few of them a ton of money.”

When you pull that and now all of a sudden Saudi Arabia looks at all their stuff, whether it’s LIV, NASCAR, soccer, WWE, whatever it is, they want a return on their investment. They don’t just want to spend $100 million anymore and not get anything back.

So, 1000% we’re going to see Bryson. I think we’re going to see Jon Rahm. I think they’re going to do whatever they can, whatever in their power they can, to get the PGA Tour to welcome them back. If not by 2027, certainly by 2028.

Jake Paul can compete with Dana White, expect him to fight in MMA

Jake Paul’s got involved and has merged PFL with MVP. How big do you think that is for MMA?

I think he can make a really big difference. I said this on a couple of my shows the last few weeks ever since they announced the Strategic Partnership between PFL and MVP, and now I think it’s just going to be called MVP moving forward.

If you look at it right now, John Martin is making all the right decisions, because to me, without the MVP partnership, I don’t think the PFL could have survived. There’s no, and I told them when I walked out the door, I said, “Listen, guys, you need some juice.”

I believe that if they get a little more out there and a little more publicity, that they can be somebody that people think of first instead of, “Well, it’s the UFC and everybody else” because let’s be honest, ever since the UFC got the money from Paramount+, there is no incentive to give great fights every single time out.

There is no incentive to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent out an arena when you have the Apex, and you can put four or 500 people there in Las Vegas. So, to me, for the PFL, there is incentive. So now they can potentially have a partnership with Netflix.

They can potentially have a partnership with ESPN, because of Jake Paul. To me, there’s been great people over the years that have defied the odds. Jake Paul, nobody wanted to give him respect but then he makes a great partnership with a guy that used to be at the UFC.

All of a sudden, he’s now producing numbers for Netflix with Mike Tyson, with Anthony Joshua. The guy, give the guy credit. He steps in there against some of the baddest dudes. Anthony Joshua’s a bad dude. He’s a former world heavyweight champion.

Jake Paul is also not scared of Dana White. He is willing to do his own thing. He backs females, which nobody else has ever done at this level, so he has a deal now with ESPN. So to me, Jake Paul should be given all the credit in the world, because when you think of all great promoters and great companies, guess what?

At one point they had to start at ground level. And I think that’s where a lot of fans don’t want to give Jake Paul credit. They think that he needs to be where the UFC is today. That’s not how you build up no matter who you are and no matter who you’re chasing after.

Do you think Jake Paul will fight in MMA?

He’s crazy, but he also understands that’s the big money. I think we forget sometimes that this is prize fighting. Boxing, MMA, bareknuckle boxing. It’s prize fighting. You’re out there to fight for a living.

And if you’re going to step in against Anthony Joshua, or Francis Ngannou in MMA, you want to do it for the biggest check because you don’t know you’re going to walk out of there in one piece. So, to me, that’s the other part about Jake Paul. He’s not scared.

He was a big-time wrestler when he was younger. He’s got a wrestling background. But we also, I think we’re getting into an era in the UFC and PFL and all MMA, where we’re starting to try and phase out wrestlers.

I don’t know how great of a striker he is, and I know he’s had a lot of boxing, but to me, if he’s going to step in, it’s going to be once or twice, and everything he does is so strategic, that if the reason he did it on Netflix, it is so that he gets other people promoted.

So if he’s going to do it, it’s going to be against somebody big. And Francis Ngannou would be absolutely amazing. I would be terrified, and I’ve been in the ring when I was in WWE with Brock Lesnar and some of the biggest. I think I would be absolutely scared to death to step in there with a Francis Ngannou or an Anthony Joshua.

I give them all the credit in the world. Do I believe that he will do an MMA fight in the next, let’s say the next two years. I really believe that.

Brock Lesnar is the most underrated wrestler of all time

Brock Lesnar has retired from WWE, what is his legacy?

He is maybe the most underrated superstar of all time. I think a lot of people think he’s so scary that he’s not a good businessman in wrestling. When I say a good businessman, I think of the likes of The Rock. I think of Hulk Hogan. I think of Brock Lesnar.

Fans have to understand when I use those names, you’ve got to be able to separate how you feel personally about the talent and what they actually did in the business. We’re all human beings.

We all are flawed. We all make mistakes. We all say things at certain points in our careers when you have a camera in front of you at all times.

I think there’s a perception with Brock that he has come and gone as he pleased, that he did what he wanted to for the most money. Guess what? Vince McMahon allowed him to do that. When I worked for Vince and I was next to him on his private jet for three or four years, every single week, I learned a lot about the man, and he loved big guys.

He loved guys like André the Giant and Big John Studd, the Undertaker, Kane. And Brock Lesnar falls into that category because he’s 330 pounds and 2% body fat. But this guy is probably as smart as a worker in wrestling as you’re ever going to find. He really is.

At the end of the day, he wanted to make a ton of money, which he did, and he didn’t want to work very much, which he did. I think that he probably feels pretty good about himself because he walks out, he retires by putting a new young stud over in Oba Femi.

I think now Oba can walk in and become one of the new young faces, and Brock can feel really, really good about himself that he did what we call business on the way out of the door.

Experiences with The Rock and Stone Cold

What was it like working with the likes of The Rock and Stone Cold in particular?

It was a dream. It’s not something that I dreamed of doing. I grew up wanting to be a sportscaster. My dream was ESPN, which ultimately, I achieved but with a 10, 11-year detour to the WWE.

But what I think working with those guys did for me was, specifically The Rock, taught me about performance. He taught me about pausing, he taught me about talking, eye contact, all those formative things that when you watch a lot of people that are interviewed, that are on camera, they don’t do a lot of those things.

And I like to say that I can separate myself as a high-level talent as opposed to other people that just haven’t been trained. In 2026, you have a lot of people that just go out there, and they make a nice living, they haven’t been trained to do this as a high level.

That’s what The Rock always taught me, and he also taught me this, which a couple other people have as well. This is why I’m so bullish when I do my own wrestling shows. Roman Reigns, Cody Rhodes, CM Punk, who was gone for three months, I’m adamant that they have to show up. I said this on my golf broadcast with Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, who doesn’t have to play next week, but they are.

To me, when you’re in entertainment, and you make a ton of money like The Rock did, or Stone Cold Steve Austin, and you’re coming to the Quad Cities, or you’re coming to Minneapolis, or you’re coming to Dallas, Texas. If I’m a young kid or a young adult, or just a fan in general, you deserve to see the biggest stars in the company that you support.

That’s the one thing The Rock, when he was at his peak, he was on the road 28, 29 days a month between wrestling shows and autographs, and he would take every time. If he was offered $25,000 or $50,000 to sign autographs, he was going to take it. And Stone Cold was the same way, but Stone Cold was different. Stone Cold took it very, very seriously.

Stone Cold took his character very seriously, and if you use the word fake around him, oh, I would run for the hills. This guy, to him, he’s had neck surgery. This business is very, very difficult on your body. It can be to the point where you can’t walk again sometimes. We’ve seen some devastating injuries over the years.

That’s how Stone Cold looked at wrestling. To get to work with them, then to ultimately be in the ring with them, and I still believe this, I took one of the best Stunners of all time. Scott Hall, The Rock, and I think The Coach is right up there with that.

Favorite moment in WWE

What was a standout moment in your WWE career?

Well, I think after 2003, my first four years, I came in as a commentator, I came in as an announcer, I came in as a guy who was just the microphone backstage. I knew at 6’3″, 250 pounds, that maybe I had more to offer.

But the last thing I wanted to do was go train to try to get on the level of The Rock or Stone Cold or any of these guys that wrestle full-time. But I knew when Vince approached me in 2003 about becoming a character, I was like, “I can do that.” And he said, “But you got to learn how to work.” I said, “I can do that, too.”

But that way, I won’t have to wrestle full-time, but I’ll still know how to do it. And I thought I was like the perfect hybrid between being one of the boys and being just an announcer.

When we were in San Diego, I believe it was 2006, and I kind of knew that I was on my way out. I knew if I signed another deal to stay here past the 10 or 11-year mark, that I’m going to have what I call the wrestling stink on me for a minute.

I’m never going to be able to do regular sports again. So, I knew I couldn’t sign another deal. When I had a rivalry with Eugene, The Rock called us one day when he was in LA, we were going to be in San Diego.

He’s like, “Hey, man, I’ve been watching what you’ve been doing with Eugene.” He called the office. He goes, “I would like to do a segment with you guys in San Diego.” It was scheduled for 11 and 12 minutes.

The Rock gets there. We stuck him in a car. Nobody knew he was there, and it will always be the favorite moment of my career because it was the first time that he comes out, brings Eugene back down and I’m standing in the ring as I had just gotten rid of him.

It was the first time, and this was The Rock’s idea, that I was able to back-talk to The Rock, that I was able to say something back to him, and it was scheduled for 11 or 12 minutes. It went 26 minutes, I think.

The other thing that The Rock taught me is, if you’re going to go long, because this is TV time we’re talking about, you’re taking somebody else’s match time. He said “Well, you better make it good. You better make it great.” That segment was one of the best segments I think there’s ever been. I’ve said this. I don’t know that my wrestling career is over.

I think when I watch wrestling today that there’s a place for somebody as talented as myself. Right now, you only got Paul Heyman, who’s the manager. Not a lot of other people are great talkers. My wrestling shows that I do are getting really, really big as well.

The Rock’s future in WWE

Do you think The Rock will come back for one final fight at WrestleMania?

I’m 50-50 on it because here’s where a lot of people don’t understand. He is a social media beast. Since February last year, he has not made one, not one social media post about wrestling.

He’s on the board of directors and they have paid him upwards of $80 to $100 million to be on the board. And if you and I were on the board of any company, and they’re paying me $80 million, you best believe I am putting out social media posts probably every single day.

The fact that he hasn’t since basically the John Cena debacle tells me there’s something else going on. There is only one thing that can get him back in the fold is this: The Rock loves a big payday. He also loves an easy payday.

If it’s $15 or $20 million for one trip to Saudi Arabia for WrestleMania next year, I most certainly think that could happen.

Possible return to the wrestling business

Would you be open to a WWE return or AEW?

1,000%. To me, it’s not all the same, but it’s all the same. We just had Tony Khan on my show with me and Vince Russo, who’s one of the great writers of all time. We call it the Coach and Bro Show. What we do is we call it down the middle. If something stinks, we’re going to tell you. If something’s great, we’re going to praise it.

And WWE doesn’t necessarily like that. I just had a SiriusXM show that was a hit. Then they re-ran WWE radio, and I’m the only guy that’s on the outside looking in because a lot of times people never want to be honest looking at themselves.

Well, AEW, we were equally as critical, and Tony Khan agreed to come on our show, and he did come on our show. We did ask him a very difficult question because he does things that are different mistakes, I call them, than WWE, but he’s also a guy that’s a gentleman.

People love working for him, and that’s not necessarily what you could always say about Vince McMahon or some of the new people in charge now. So, 1,000 percent I would be open if the opportunity came up to go to AEW for sure.

Direction of WWE

How do you rate WWE right now?

Well, here’s the problem: wrestling is based off of storylines and if you only have matches, can you imagine watching your favorite TV show without storylines?

To me, the great wrestling storylines are The Rock and Austin, or The Rock and Cena, or Kane and Taker, or TLC with the Hardys, the Dudleys and Edge and Christian. But you have to have emotion.

To me, part of the reason I think I’ve lasted this long is that I have emotion. Like, I’m excited right now sitting here talking to you. This excites me, because the subject matter excites me. I think right now at WWE, when they were bought by TKO, a lot of times in sports and entertainment, you get caught up in the money as opposed to what got you the money.

When you get a deal that’s $5 billion from Netflix, $1.6 billion from ESPN, UFC gets $7.7 billion from Paramount+. So now you’ve got all these billions of dollars that are coming into one company. What is their incentive to put the best product out there or bring in the biggest stars? Or to have a bunch of high-paid guys? Because every dime you spend, think about this in your own business or in my business.

If somebody pays me up front, $100 million. Now, every dime I spend is now coming out of that $100 million instead of the old pay-per-view model that everything you promote, if you get 100,000, 200, 300,000 buys, now you’re making money, that’s a different feeling than spending money that you already have.

I think creative too [has an issue], and I know all these guys, and I don’t want to be hypercritical, but when I work with Vince Russo, he has a solution for everything that we talk about on the show. Why didn’t you like this storyline? “I didn’t like it, and here’s why.” We’ve gotten to a point where we actively see WWE using the stuff we talk about on the show.

We said the other day, “Chelsea Green, she’s hurt? Well, don’t take her off the show. Let her stay on because she’s incredibly entertaining. Let her work with a mask. She doesn’t have to work matches.”

And what did they do? They did exactly what we said. I’m not saying they did it because of us. But they did exactly that and all of a sudden she became the biggest babyface in the world because she’s like, “listen, this means something to me.” And then she gets Nick Aldis to get over, too.

To me, it’s all about, do you have the creative ability? And I don’t think in that room, because when you watch WWE Unreal, and they had this one scene in Unreal where they were talking about who’s going to win one big match. And it was like puppets. It was like Punk, Punk. Punk, Punk, Punk. And I was like, does nobody have a mind of their own?

Well, there was only one person that ever spoke up in that meeting with one Unreal. And guess what happened to him? Road Dogg got cut. He got fired and he is one of the best friends of Triple H.

So right now, they have to reevaluate everything. To me, if you’ve been in that room over 30 years, like, a lot of them have Michael Hayes, Bruce, Ed, I never want anybody to lose their job, because it sucks. It’s happened to me several times.

No matter how good you are, it sucks when you do. But if you’re not actively trying to be better, if you’re not actively trying to do your job, why is it the talent that is taking it on the head instead of the creative that’s giving the talent, the storylines to go out there and try to execute?

And to me, right now, none of the creative has gotten the axe outside of Road Dogg, and he didn’t get the axe because of anything other than fighting for Chelsea Green. So I think right now, they need to do a complete overhaul, and if they do that, I think that it could be a much better atmosphere.