Tom Hannifan (formerly Tom Phillips) has opened up about his time with WWE.
On January 8, IMPACT Wrestling announced that Hannifan was joining the company as the new lead announcer, taking over the post formerly occupied by Matt Striker. Prior to this, Hannifan spent nine years in WWE before being released in May 2021.
Appearing on a recent episode of Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette, Hannifan described his relationship with Vince McMahon, saying that it was professional and that they understood each other.
"Very professional," Hannifan began by saying. "I know a lot of people wanted to make sure that they were really close friends with him or something like that, I just treated everything like, 'you tell me what you want me to do and I'll go do it.' I left it at that. I always felt it was very professional and we understood each other. If he fed me something, he fed me something. I just tried to keep it simple. My dad was a Marine, so when I grew up, he always taught me the value of 'go to work, do your job, do whatever they ask you to do.' I took that personally."
As for whether he has any regrets about his time with WWE, Hannifan is content with everything he was able to accomplish, noting that the only thing he didn't do was be the main play-by-play voice for the company.
"I got to call the main event of WrestleMania, whether or not that happened in the Performance Center with no crowd, doesn't matter to me, it was the main event of night two of [WrestleMania 36]. I got to be the Senior Manager of On-Air Announce Talent. Honestly, other than getting to be 'the guy' in WWE, as the play-by-play voice, that's the only thing, honestly, I did everything, every show, every opportunity I got to do and I did that all by the age of 32. In my mind, I'm really content with everything I did in WWE," he said.
Elsewhere during the interview, Hannifan shared how his IMPACT deal came about and the differences between working at IMPACT compared to WWE. Click here to learn more.
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