All Elite Wrestling commentator Tony Schiavone recently spoke on his podcast, “What Happened When,” about a number of professional wrestling topics, including why he had a falling out with Bobby Heenan after Heenan’s WCW departure.
Schiavone said, “Bobby Heenan was fired — I’m thinking ’99, maybe 2000. And I got a call from Craig Leathers that told me, and I was home because I’d kind of checked out. And Craig Leather said, ‘We’ve just fired Bobby Heenan, and I think you should know.’ And I said, ‘Well, I guess you want me to call him.’ Because I was the guy in charge of the announcers, which I hated that job. And that basically — that job was only to kind of approve their expense reports, because being in charge of the announcers, you didn’t make the call about who announced what show. That was Eric’s call. And so I said, ‘I guess you want me to call him.’ He said, ‘No, he’s been called.’ And he said, ‘I just wanted to call you let you know he has threatened a lawsuit against WCW. So I’m telling you as your supervisor, you should have no more contact with Bobby Heenan. It’s best not to.’ So I hung up and I thought about a little bit. And I said, ‘Well you know what, I’m going to do what a good employee should do. My supervisor Craig Leathers said not to talk to Heenan. I’ll just not talk to Heenan.’ I should have said, ‘Okay, I won’t talk to him,’ hung up and called Heenan right back. That was the right thing to do, which I didn’t do at that time. Heenan got very angry at me — very, very angry at me. There’s some stories in there I’ve told before, I don’t need to go into it. But it was my fault that he got mad at me, and I take full blame for his anger. But I do know that within the midst of his anger, he did lie about me, said many, many lies about me. And that’s fine; that’s fine. We did get together in 2003, I think. We went to Cincinnati and did voiceover for a video game, and his — you know, his mouth was in bad shape by that time. But we did voiceover for a video game, and we kind of made up at that time. But I take full responsibility for it, for him being mad. He had a right to be mad to me, but didn’t have a right to say all that he had to say. But you know what? The man’s gone now, and I’m not going to speak ill of the dead.”
On cruiserweights like Dean Malenko and Ultimo Dragon helping WCW stand out:
“Yeah, I would agree. These are the guys I really think that, obviously Hogan and the NWO put eyes on our product. But what made our show special I thought, was great wrestling thanks to the cruiserweights. And these are two men are part of it. I laugh — I mean, if anybody saw us in Starrcast when I interviewed Dean Malenko, they realized how much of a great sense of humor he’s got. Which is nothing like the Iceman Dean Malenko that was always serious. And I mean, he’s — listen, Dean Malenko is not a serious guy. He is a funny guy, and he’s very important backstage to us now. So I’m always entertained when I see his matches.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
