Tony Schiavone

Broadcasting career

Schiavone is considered by some to be the greatest wrestling broadcaster "in the history of our sport." Schiavone broadcast alongside David Crockett starting in 1984 until 1989 on Superstation TBS. Together they hosted NWA's World Championship Wrestling live in front of a small in studio audience in Atlanta. The show aired on TBS on Saturday Mornings at 9am and Saturday evenings at 6pm and was used as a vehicle to promote live NWA arena events and introduce their stars to a national audience as TBS was the premier nationally broadcast cable station at the time.

World Wrestling Federation

He was signed by Vince McMahon's WWF for a one-year contract from April 1989 through April 1990, doing backstage interviews with various wrestlers at WrestleMania V. In the WWF, he was most notable as being the main play-by-play announcer for their SummerSlam 1989 and Royal Rumble 1990 pay-per-views alongside Jesse "The Body" Ventura. Schiavone returned soon afterwards to WCW, the former Crockett promotion by then owned by media mogul Ted Turner. For the WWF, other than Ventura, Schiavone commentated alongside others including Lord Alfred Hayes, Gorilla Monsoon, Hillbilly Jim, Rod Trongard, and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan.

World Championship Wrestling

Schiavone became the lead voice for WCW's flagship program, Monday Nitro. He also served as the lead announcer of Thunder, typically working alongside Mike Tenay, Bobby Heenan, Larry Zbyszko, and later with Mark Madden and Scott Hudson. Before the advent of Nitro and Thunder, Schiavone, hosted WCW Saturday Night and WCW WorldWide. He made an appearance in the movie Ready to Rumble. When WCW's main assets were bought by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF/now WWE) in 2001, he was not retained by WWE.

During his tenure with WCW, Schiavone developed a reputation for his over-the-top announcing style, proclaiming many Nitro broadcasts to be "the greatest", or "most explosive", telecast "in the history of our sport." However, when this hyperbole was repeated on a weekly basis throughout the Monday Night Wars, the phrase lost meaning. Schiavone stated that it was the whole truth and anyone who states otherwise is a fool and is the worst kind of fan. He claims to have been very comfortable with his constant shilling of the WCW product and said that every night constantly topped the last night and thus became the next greatest night in the history of our sport.

Mick Foley incident

One infamous incident happened on the January 4, 1999, Nitro. Nitro was airing live against the pre-taped WWF Raw is War on USA Network and was to feature a rematch between WCW World Heavyweight Champion Kevin Nash and former champion Bill Goldberg from Starrcade, where Nash had ended Goldberg's undefeated streak and taken his title under controversial circumstances. The Nitro episode was also the first appearance of "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan since he announced his "retirement" from professional wrestling on the Thanksgiving 1998 edition of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Meanwhile, Raw was to feature Mick Foley, who was wrestling as Mankind at the time and who had previously for WCW as Cactus Jack, winning his first WWF Championship in a match against The Rock. However, at the time Raw was taped while Nitro was live, and it was a practice for WCW and executive producer Eric Bischoff to spoil pre-taped Raw episodes, by telling the WCW audience the results of the Raw show, and not give fans reasons to change the channel.

According to Foley, who wrote about the incident in the first chapter of his book Foley Is Good (and the Real World is Faker than Wrestling), this was to be a pivotal night for WCW as people believed that WCW, whose record streak of 84 consecutive Monday night wins in the ratings had been snapped by Raw in April 1998 and had only eight head-to-head wins after that, would turn the ratings tide back to them and potentially take over the lead in the Monday Night Wars. During the show Schiavone spoiled the result of Raw's main event by saying that Foley, the former Cactus Jack, would win, sarcastically remarking "That'll put a lot of butts in seats".

Foley was genuinely upset by what he had heard and telephoned Schiavone to talk about it. When Schiavone called Foley back, he told Foley that Bischoff had ordered Schiavone to reveal his title win over the air. The strategy, however, backfired on Bischoff. Almost immediately after Schiavone spoiled Foley's title win, 600,000 households switched from Nitro to Raw, to watch Foley win the title. This was enough to give the WWF the ratings win for the night, with a 5.7 final rating to Nitro's 5.0. WCW's ratings never saw more than a 5.0 going head-to-head with Raw again and Nitro's rating sank below 5.0 and by the end of the year was struggling to stay above 3.0.

Bobby Heenan rivalry

In an RF Video shoot interview, Schiavone was criticized by Bobby Heenan who claimed that Schiavone would allegedly hide finishes and angles from himself and fellow Nitro commentator Mike Tenay during broadcasts, claiming Schiavone's key to life is "knowledge is power". This was an opinion shared by long-time wrestling broadcaster "Mean" Gene Okerlund who claimed that, while he liked Schiavone and did not have many problems with him, "Tony was the consummate politician" and "Tony watched out for Tony and in doing so, had a tendency to bury people along the way". One tense incident happened on the Nitro following the death of Heenan's longtime best friend Gorilla Monsoon, over Schiavone's objections (because Monsoon had never worked for WCW). Heenan was allowed to speak in honor of Monsoon, albeit only a small statement. Appearing on The Ross Report in 2014, Schiavone stated that he never objected to Heenan mentioning Monsoon's death on the air, but only that he asked Heenan if he had first asked Eric Bischoff about doing so. Schiavone accepted responsibility for the collapse of his relationship with Heenan, and said of Heenan's criticism of him: "I deserve it".

Total Nonstop Action Wrestling

In 2003, Schiavone made an appearance on NWA TNA during one of their weekly pay-per-views. Schiavone, with bleach blonde hair and a Hulk Hogan beard, interrupted an interview with Goldylocks and Percy Pringle and proceeded to cut a worked shoot promo in which he insulted both of them. Mike Tenay, TNA's lead broadcaster and Schiavone's former WCW colleague, then entered the ring and the two got into an argument over their careers and what happened during the last days of WCW, where both men lost their jobs. The promo ended when Vince Russo entered the ring and promised Schiavone a job with him. However, nothing ever came of that as Schiavone only made one more appearance in TNA and he hasn't been seen on a televised wrestling program since.

Baseball

Schiavone now is in the rare position of being the morning sports anchor for both WDUN in Gainesville and WSB-AM in Atlanta simultaneously, even though the two stations have different owners (WDUN has a partnership with Cox Communications, which owns WSB-TV and WSB-AM.) Schiavone also has done morning sports reports for Cox sister stations WHIO AM/FM in Dayton, Ohio. Additionally, Schiavone is a writer for the Georgia Bulldogs Radio Network and produced the Best of the Bulldogs, which won the AP Award for Best Sports Program in 2004.

After a few years of work with the Braves system including pre-game and post-game radio coverage, and also spot duty as an official scorer for games, Schiavone returned to play-by-play duties on radio when the Gwinnett Braves began their first season in Lawrenceville, Georgia as Atlanta's AAA-level affiliate for the 2009–10 season.

Georgia Bulldogs football radio show

Along with being a writer for the Georgia Bulldogs Radio Network, Schiavone also works one of the post game talk shows on the Georgia Bulldogs Radio Network for home and away games alongside former University of Georgia quarterback David Greene.

What Happened When podcast

On January 30, 2017, Tony began hosting the What Happened When podcast with Conrad Thompson on MLW Radio discussing stories from Jim Crockett Promotions and WCW.

Personal life

Tony has been married to Lois Schiavone (née Berger) since 1981, and together they have five children: Matt, Laurie, Chris, Jon Michael and Tim. They also have three grandchildren.

During the WCW/NWO Souled Out PPV in Dayton, Ohio on January 24, 1998, Dusty Rhodes who was commentating the event alongside Schiavone, Heenan and Mike Tenay, turned heel and joined the New World Order. For several minutes after Schiavone was shown on camera pacing and distraught at Rhodes' heel turn with both Heenan and Tenay saying on-air that the two were actually close friends and next door neighbors where they lived in Atlanta at the time.