Tommy Fierro recalls being an extra at WrestleMania during the peak of the Attitude Era and later being given the opportunity to work for WWE.
ISPW promoter Tommy Fierro recently spoke with PWMania.com for an in-depth conversation about his time in pro wrestling. During the interview, Fierro spoke about appearing at WrestleMania 15 as an extra.
“So the day before WrestleMania 15, I was running a live event. WM15 was in Philadelphia the next day. They added a segment at the last minute with The Big Show getting arrested. Back then, there weren’t any cell phones. Jim Cornette, who was in charge of booking the extras at the time, couldn’t get a hold of anyone because they were all on their way to my show. I got a message on my pager to call Cornette. When I called him, he said he couldn’t get a hold of anyone and told me to book a dozen guys to be cops and include myself as one of them. So here I am, 21 years old, and not only going to be in a WrestleMania but I get to book the guys for the segment as well. It was a pretty freaking amazing experience. If you go back and watch it, I was dying to have a speaking role in it. So I just made it up. You can see me saying “Close that, close that” to the cop sitting in the driver’s seat of the cop car- like he didn’t know he had to close his door to drive. It’s really funny if you go back and watch it knowing that I was going to do anything possible to speak during this segment.”
Later, Fierro was fortunate enough to have a brief stint with WWE. In this interview, Fierro opened up about how that came to be.
“At the time I was 33 years old and I was promoting wrestling events since I was 16. I had been grinding for a while at that point to try and get hired by them and I came close a few times but it never panned out. I saw they were hiring for WWE Network and applied and got the job. While logging wrestling footage all day wasn’t what I wanted to do in the company, I thought that this was at least a foot in the door. The first day on the job was awesome. As soon as I got there, I ran into Howard Finkel who was super surprised to see me. He had just done my convention a few months prior. He brought me into the WWE.com office and I hung out with him and Joey Styles for a while. I felt confident going home the first day that this would lead to many doors opening for me in the company. For the next month, I was stuck in a trailer all day logging footage and never saw anyone. I was just about to get married and the money I was making didn’t justify all the travel I was doing. It just didn’t work out financially for me and had to leave. They were very understanding about it. It was an awesome experience though.”
Now, Tommy promotes ISPW in the Jersey area and has hosted the likes of Tito Santana, Maven, Scotty 2 Hotty, and more. For tickets and more info on ISPW, fans can visit ISPWWrestling.com
