Tony Schiavone says he wants to keep working in wrestling after he retires from announcing.
Schiavone is a veteran announcer, as he has been in the business since 1983. He has worked for Jim Crockett Promotions, WWF, WCW, TNA, MLW, and AEW throughout his legendary career. Schiavone has been with AEW since 2019. In addition to his duties on-screen, he works as Senior Producer, Special Advisor, and Talent Relations.
Speaking on What Happened When, Schiavone was asked whether he would want to keep working backstage or leave the business entirely after he retired from announcing.
“No, I’d still want to work backstage. I’d like to have a baseball bat and whack guys in the ass with it when they wouldn’t get their work done. Which I kinda got now. I’d like to do kind of what I’m doing now, and that is work in talent relations. Because I think I know how to handle people, and I do," Schiavone said.
Schiavone continued by describing how working in talent relations is a tricky job. He detailed how he handles every gripe and complaint wrestlers have, and he tries to settle the issue as best he can. Schiavone also noted that his job is different from what Jim Ross had been doing, as the latter handled contracts and pay, whereas he called himself more of a babysitter.
"It’s a very, very tricky job in wrestling to work in talent relations. I’m not the only one who works in talent relations, there’s like three of us. It’s a very tricky job because you have to, everybody’s different, you have to approach people differently, you have to be receptive to their ideas, and you have to kind of be sympathetic to their feelings. Right now, I handle every gripe and complaint that a wrestler has now, kind of goes through me and I try to settle it as best I can. If it ends up between two wrestlers, we probably need to go over my head with it or get other people involved. But I like dealing with talent, I really, really do. I think part of that is because the talent that I’m dealing with now all kind of watched me as they were going up, so they have a respect for me. I don’t get it, but they do, and it helps me with my job. So I really like talent relations. Now talent relations is nothing like what JR was doing. Because JR was doing payoffs, contracts and shit like that. I’m just kind of like babysitting, but I like that," Schiavone.
Schiavone previously stated that his AEW contract expires in April 2024. Click here to see what he had to say.
Check out Schiaovne's comments about not having plans to retire from announcing here.
Check out the card for the August 2 episode of AEW Dynamite here. Fightful will have coverage of the show as it airs.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
