from WAVY TV in Norfolk/Hampton Roads, Virginia/www.wavy.com…..
For nearly 20 years, Virginia native Tony Schiavone was one of professional wrestling’s main announcers…..
A 1980 graduate of James Madison, Schiavone’s broadcasting career began with a job offer he turned down that he still thinks about to this day.
“I was hired as the play-by-play guy for the James Madison football team,” Schiavone said. “Also around that time I got a chance to do minor league baseball in Greensboro, so I had a decision to make. Do I leave and go to Greensboro and pursue my baseball career or do I do James Madison football and basketball and I went with baseball, so I turned them down. It was a very difficult decision and one I agonized over for quite a while.”
After a season calling games for the Single A Greensboro Hornets, Schiavone took a job calling games for the Charlottes O’s minor league team that was owned by members of the Crockett family which ran Jim Crockett Promotions, one of the top wrestling territories in the country.
“One of the first things I did was when I got to Charlotte I told Frances Crockett, ‘I could do wrestling, if you guys ever need somebody I can do it’. I bugged her for over a year and then it kind of happened. She brought me in one day and she said, ‘Okay, they need somebody to do an interview with Ric Flair’ and I went, ‘No, really?’ and she said you are going to go to his house and do an interview with him.”
Schiavone then became a full time wrestling announcer for the NWA, which would later become WCW, and he was seen on syndicated TV and national cable power TBS and then TNT in the 1980’s…
And the rest is Wrestling history, but now Tony Schiavone is back calling/announcing baseball games for the Gwinnett Braves and he does football and basketball work for the Georgia Bulldogs, plus this is the part where it really gets interesting:
“To add to all of that, and not many people know this, I’m training to be a barista at Starbucks. The reason I’m doing that is because they have great benefits, it’s a great place to work, I’ve always loved Starbucks. I’ve got time and I want to fill up my time working, I really do, I want to stay busy.”
To read the full story on Tony and to see his video from WAVY TV in Norfolk/Hampton Roads, Virginia, CLICK HERE.