Tony Schiavone was a guest on the most recent episode of The Ross Report and talked why he never went back to WWE, if he’d be open to a WCW One Night Stand-type event, and more. Here are some of the highlights:
In response to a Twitter question asking why Tony didn’t go to work for WWE after WCW went out of business in 2001, he and JR discuss the fact that he wasn’t asked. JR then asks, would he have gone if he were offered a job?
“Yeah, you know, I probably would’ve, but they didn’t. I was making a good living (in WCW) but with the exception of doing a little bit of minor league baseball, wrestling was all I knew. It was my business, so I wouldn’t have minded staying in it. But they didn’t want me. And to be honest with you, I understood that. I really did.
“I don’t know if you remember, but you guys were in Fayetteville, NC, and I came to see you. I wanted to talk to Vince, and did. Talked to Kevin Dunn. There was no interest in me. I understood that, because I didn’t think my work was that good (at the end of WCW) and as it went along, I think it was probably the best for me that I left the business because I probably wouldn’t have done good work for them, because I was spent.”
If WWE was to hold a One Night Stand-type event for the WCW brand, would Tony be interested in calling it?
“Yeah, if it wasn’t on a college football weekend (laughs). The University of Georgia is my number one job. But I wouldn’t mind coming back and doing something remembering WCW. They had me come up, (to work) on the Monday Night Wars (Network feature), do a couple little interviews for them, up in Stamford a couple of years back. I know you’ve been calling some matches and stayed with it. I don’t know if I could still do it.”
Feeling blacklisted from WWE:
“I worked for Vince for a year. It was a great year. I came back, and you know the story there. I get the impression, and I may be wrong, and this is just me free styling here, and Vince has never done anything to me to make me think that this is true. When I went to Fayetteville that time, he was very nice to me, but I get the impression that I have, for some reason, been blacklisted from the WWE. I don’t know why I get that feeling. I don’t think they would ever call me back for any reason. They called me back to do that one thing on the Network recently, and that was not even Vince or Kevin Dunn. That was somebody else. I just recently, when I lost my job at WSV a couple years ago, I called and I wanted to see if I could get on as a producer, because I love producing, almost as much as announcing.
“As we know, announcers make more than producers, normally, so that’s why announcing was where I made the money but producing is what I love. So I called and I got in touch with a number of people including Mark Carrano (current WWE Senior Director of Talent Relations) and I said ‘Mark, I’d like to entertain coming back, but I want to be a producer. I’d love to produce for the Network,’ because I’d just like to go through old tapes, old shows. That’d be just right up my alley. He said ‘ok, I’ll get in touch with Vince and Kevin Dunn and someone will be back with you.’ Kevin Dunn called me back and said ‘we don’t have any room for any more announcers.’ I said, ‘Kevin, that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to be a producer, I didn’t want to be an announcer.’ He said ‘well, we need producers, I’ll be back in touch with you’ and he never returned my call. So that made me think that, either they’re disorganized, which I know they’re not, or he really didn’t have any time for me. So to answer that question, I wouldn’t mind doing something like that, I don’t think I’d get a call from WWE. I may be wrong, but that’s just the feeling I get.”
For the full interview with Tony Schiavone, check out The Ross Report.
Transcription by Jeff Rush, PWPodcasts.com Specialist.
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