Tony Schiavone

From Freepedia

Noah Schiavone, better known as Tony Schiavone (born November 7, 1964 in Atlanta, Georgia) is a professional wrestling announcer and sports talk show host. He began as a wrestling announcer with Jim Crockett's Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling (the precursor to World Championship Wrestling) in the early 80s. When Jim Crockett Promotions got national television on the TBS Superstation in 1985, he was a regular host of the wrestling program. He was signed by Vince McMahon's WWF for a stint in 1989, but soon returned to the Ted Turner-owned WCW.

He is remembered as the voice of the company for most of the 90s, up until the company's demise. Schiavone was also a producer and had a spot on WCW's diverse booking team. Many feel the quality of his work as an announcer fell as the quality of the promotion fell, becoming known for his hyperbolic, "greatest match/night in the history of our sport" calls.

Schiavone was often called a company man behind the scenes as he remained with WCW throughout the tenures of Jim Herd, Kip Allen Frey, Bill Watts, Eric Bischoff, Bill Busch, Vince Russo, and others. In late 1995 through mid-1996, he hosted the first hour of WCW Monday Nitro, and eventually hosted both hours during the early run of the New World Order. Schiavone also did most of the WCW PPVs and hosted WCW's Thursday show, Thunder, and Saturday show, WCW Saturday Night.

During the "Monday night wars" between WCW Monday Nitro and WWF RAW, WCW often used a tactic to keep its viewers tuned into Nitro that involved spoiling the results of WWF's taped television shows. On January 4, 1999, it finally backfired when Eric Bischoff instructed Schiavone to spoil the RAW main event, in which Mick Foley (as Mankind) claimed his first WWF Championship. In an infamous moment, Schiavone revealed the results and sarcastically remarked, "That'll put a lot of butts in the seats." Hundreds of thousands of viewers switched from Nitro to RAW to watch Foley win the title, on a night when WCW had been ahead in the quarter-hour ratings.

Schiavone also was said to have come up with the idea of putting the WCW World Championship around the waist of David Arquette. Backstage, Schiavone had a lot of heat with the boys and fellow broadcast partners and was said to be a closed-off person who did not interact much with anyone other than his superiors during the dying days of WCW.

He was out of a job in wrestling when WCW was sold to the WWF in 2001, although WWE did toy with the idea of bringing in Schiavone to co-host WWE Raw while Jim Ross was fired in storyline. He briefly appeared as the play-by-play commentator for Jimmy Hart's XWF promotion in 2001, and appeared in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in early 2003. These days, he hosts a sports talk show on WGGA in Gainesville, Georgia, and serves as official scorer for Atlanta Braves home games.