Tony Schiavone Discusses Working For WCW & WWE, The End Of WCW

Tony Schiavone recently appeared on WOOOOO! Nation w ith Ric Flair, here are the highlights…

On Working For WCW & WWE: “I remember watching [WWF Prime Time Wrestling with Magnum P.A.] and I went back home and my wife said JJ Dillon just called, so I called JJ back and JJ said, ‘I just signed to work for Vince [McMahon] and he’s very interested in having you come work for him, so can I have him call you?’, and, of course, these were the days before cell phones, so I said ‘yes’. So, Vince called the house the next day, flew me up there later that week to his house in Greenwich [Connecticut]. And, of course, needless to say, I had stars in my eyes back then and I accepted the job, went to work there in April of 1989 and worked there until April of 1990. At the end of ’89, I got a call from Jim Barnett to come back to WCW and they offered me almost twice the money Vince was. And we really didn’t like living in Connecticut, and, so, based on the money they were offering me, and the chance to move back south, I took it.”

On Having Someone in His Ear When He Announced: “Vince never did produce me at all. He always had Bruce Pritchard produce me, so Bruce would always tell me what to say and remind me of things. But as far as anybody being in my ear during a pay-per-view, it was always Bruce Pritchard. It never was Vince. I did [WWF] Wrestling Challenge with Gorilla Monsoon, which was one of the two syndicated shows Vince had back then. And we did all the commentary back at the studio, so that was before the days of the live [WWE Monday Night] RAW and what they’re doing right now, the live taped RAW or whatever they do. So, no, he didn’t produce me that much at all. But, of course, working with Gorilla Monsoon, he wouldn’t dare tell Gorilla Monsoon what to do, I don’t think.”

On The End of WCW: “Turner Broadcasting was never going to win this war because it wasn’t Turner Broadcasting’s only thing. It was Vince’s business. He was all into the business and he was always going to win it because of that.” Schiavone continued, “I really thought that there were many days where, and this was early on when Jim Herd was running it, there were many days where I would go to work thinking, ‘well, they’re going to close us down any day now. I think we’re all lucky that Vince did win out because God only knows where we’d be if we’d gone in the same direction we were going in.”

On Getting Out of Wrestling: “I didn’t want to go the route of the small time promotions and things like that. I tried to go a different route,” Schiavone admitted. “At the end of WCW, it was not good. It was not a good working atmosphere. Yeah, it was horrible! And I could only imagine what [the professional wrestlers] went through because I know what I went through. And I work with such good people – I’ve been working with such good people now for 14 years that I really don’t want to leave them. They’re just too good to me and the benefits are too good. The lifestyle’s too good.

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