AEW commentator Tony Schiavone recently discussed several topics on his podcast, “What Happened When,” including his falling out of favor with former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon.
Schiavone said, “There was a time during my one year, one-plus years there — I guess one year and two months there — that I ran out of favor with Vince. We talked about this, he didn’t like my work all of a sudden.”
On McMahon calling him too southern:
“I did SummerSlam. So it was after — it was between SummerSlam and the Survivor Series, that he went, ‘Eh, he’s too southern for me.’”
On not doing anything wrong:
“Well you know what, when you’re running a company and someone starts to do something the way that you do not like it to be done, I think it’s very hard to go back to that person and say, ‘Well, I think he’s getting better.’ I just — that’s my feeling. It’s not that I did anything wrong.”
On who told him:
“It came back to — as Bruce Prichard had told me, I sounded too Southern. And I didn’t really think so, but maybe compared to Gorilla Monsoon and Vince, I did. Vince’s idea was to bring me in and do Superstars, and he quickly shelved that.”
On Vince not addressing it:
“I’ll tell you this story, and I know I’m right about this story: Vince would not tell me himself. With Vince, when you’d ask him, ‘Everything was fine.’ But then he would tell Bruce, ‘Tell Schiavone I don’t like that.’ I even remember as we’re going to Survivor Series, ‘I haven’t heard if who’s doing commentary, I did SummerSlam and I haven’t heard anything.’ And Nelson Sweglar said, ‘Well, it’s Gorilla. He’s doing it, not you.’ He said, ‘I’ve known that.’ Really?’”
On talking with McMahon:
“I went in to see Vince [at a TV taping]. He was looking in the mirror, just washing his hands or something. I said, ‘Am I doing Survivor Series?’ And he said, ‘We haven’t made that decision yet.’ He had made that decision; he just didn’t want to tell me. Now, does that tell me he was a chickend**k? Many ways you can say that. But I know that throughout history, I’ve been told that’s the way they worked in the WWE. Even Vince’s father — he was always, ‘Everything’s good,’ but he had his guy tell you when something was wrong. And that’s how Vince worked it… And I’d heard as time went on, that changed a lot. You know, if he didn’t like something, he’d let you know about it. But back then in ’89, he didn’t tell you But that’s the way it was.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
