What Happened When with Tony Schiavone

[flyonthewall2983]

I'm just wondering how he injured his neck, specifically if it was related to wrestling.

[BigBadMick]

Listened to the Heenan episode. I'll say the same thing as I did after listening to a schiavone podcast on the same topic 3 years ago.

 

Tony, pick up the f***ing phone and ring him.

[El-P]

Some people just aren't good at that. I totally understand. It used to piss me off (I'm always the one who picks up the phone and calls, or send e-mails/messages), but not that much anymore.

 

I found this episode quite fascinating again and Tony very fair as usual. Gotta love the "Fingers" nickname Heenan gave to Tenay's wife.

[flyonthewall2983]

I met Bobby Heenan at an autograph signing in 1999. It was at a record store, so I asked him what kind of music he liked and what the wrestlers liked (I think Van Halen was playing inside and he said "stuff like this"). I asked him what Tony liked and he said "little boys in closets".

[Kronos]

I've gotten good with the 15 second jump button.

 

I have caught up on most of these shows, and I enjoy the heck out of them. (Conrad and Tony are a lot more fun together than Conrad and Bruce, for me) But I definitely zoom about 10 minutes into the beginning of the show before starting because I know the beginning is commercials and announcements about upcoming events, etc.

[BigBadMick]

It wasn't discussed directly on the episode here, but I always got the impression that Schiavone would get annoyed on air that Heenan was clearly checked out and didn't care about much apart from slipping in one liners.

[...TG]

It wasn't discussed directly on the episode here, but I always got the impression that Schiavone would get annoyed on air that Heenan was clearly checked out and didn't care about much apart from slipping in one liners.

 

It was both ways, as I remember it - Tony would no-sell Bobby's one-liners a lot of the time.

[BigBadMick]

The Hog Wild episode is off to a really compelling start, with Conrad going hard at Heenan for working drunk and Schiavone questioning his own avoiding confrontation as a producer back then.

[El-P]

The Nitro re-announcing is pretty damn funny. Coolest moment for me, during a Villano IV & V vs Lizmark Jr. & Garza match which had brutal (and funny) lucha libre insensitivity calls from Tony (it would made some fragile people cry) : "Then again, I watched some Lucha Underground and some of the stuff there is pretty cool". The idea of Tony Schiavone casually batting an eye at LU and liking some of the stuff made my pro-wrestling fan day.

[Matt D]

Reading in between the lines, Tony has to follow more of the current product due to his radio show he has now. I'm not sure if that's streaming online anywhere. I wouldn't mind hearing the Flair interview he mentioned if so.

[BruiserBrody]

Just gave this a chance finally 3 weeks ago when I stumbled on the Heenan episode. This is a fun listen, but I find some of the redoing of the commentary episodes to be less compelling.

[BigBadMick]

Really odd bit on the q and a this week - Conrad asked something to the effect of when did Tony feel Crockett promotions was doing well and he replied 'never'.

 

Also, his continuing defense of Russo makes no sense.

[peachchaos]

Really odd bit on the q and a this week - Conrad asked something to the effect of when did Tony feel Crockett promotions was doing well and he replied 'never'.

 

Also, his continuing defense of Russo makes no sense.

Tony has been pretty consistent and if you put these two ideas together it really adds up. Schiavone worked for an incompetent company for 15 years and finally someone comes in with some organizational skills. It wasn't enough to turn things around, but to Tony at least Russo was a organized professional and he really respects that.

 

I think if he worked with Russo in TNA we might get a different story.

[El-P]

Plus, if you consider the facts that

 

1/he thought WCW was doomed from day 1 after he got back from WWF

2/he considers Russo as a friend as he was always good to him

 

it does makes sense.

 

(and he did shit on the Russo style-booking in the PPVs they reviewed in the past)

[El-P]

Bwahahahahah, this podcast is quite informative :

 

https://www.cowboys4angels.com/cowboy/marcus-bagwell/

[BruiserBrody]

Assuming it was real, the Lois run in at the end of the Q and A was funny as hell

[BigBadMick]

Hmmm... seems to have gone to an all live watching format lately. I have mixed feelings about that.

 

I'm not sure whether I hate or despise it.

[El-P]

Hmmm... seems to have gone to an all live watching format lately. I have mixed feelings about that.

 

I'm not sure whether I hate or despise it.

 

It was fun once in a while for a Nitro, but if they do that all the time now, with PPV no less, I'm not a fan.

[BigBadMick]

Conrad really went overboard with the bullshit for a while on Prichard's show but eventually settled down again, hopefully same thing will happen with Tony.

[Laney]

 

Hmmm... seems to have gone to an all live watching format lately. I have mixed feelings about that.

 

I'm not sure whether I hate or despise it.

 

It was fun once in a while for a Nitro, but if they do that all the time now, with PPV no less, I'm not a fan.

 

 

Yeah, I'm not going to take the time to listen to a podcast commentary over a wrestling show. Podcasts are for when I'm driving.

 

I can sort of understand why they are doing the live commentaries now. It seemed like they tried to originally format this podcast like the WCW version of Prichard's podcast, but people complained too much about Schiavone not remembering anything. The Steve Austin podcast being the prime example with it basically being Conrad reading results.

 

I think this podcast works best when its Schiavone just discussing his personal relationships and stories with the people he worked with.

[El-P]

I think this podcast works best when its Schiavone just discussing his personal relationships and stories with the people he worked with.

 

 

Agreed. I really wish they'd keep the live commentary for very special occasions and focus on topics Tony has stuff to say about. As a weekly feature, the commentary formula kinda jumps the shark with me, despite Tony still being funny and giving some good insights at times.

[The Thread Killer]

I think they were kind of forced into the live commentary format because Tony has proven he doesn't have the ability to do recap style "looking back" shows like Conrad does with Bruce.

 

From where I sit, this can be attributed to the following reasons:

 

1 ) As a commentator, Tony didn't have the same level of involvement backstage in WCW that Prichard did in his role in the WWF. Prichard can provide way more details about the backstage machinations and creative processes due to the difference in their roles.

 

2 ) Tony appears to have a pretty terrible memory and seems to be unable to recall a lot of things. (Unlike Bruce, who at times is unwilling to recall a lot of things.) If you look back, I think it was the Steve Austin episode where Conrad pretty much lost his shit because he was basically reading results and Tony couldn't remember a damn thing or add anything to the episode. (I'm not going back to find out which show it was, because it was brutal if not slightly humorous.) I think Tony's memory might be attributable to the fact that...

 

3) Tony didn't give a shit a lot of the time in WCW. Say what you want about him, but working for Vince and the wrestling business in general was Bruce Prichard's life, pretty much 24/7 from what it sounds like. As a result, he generally remembers a lot of details and has a lot of interesting stories. But even he has a lot of times where he has to admit he can't remember stuff.

 

JCP and to a much greater extent WCW was a job for Tony. It wasn't his passion (I think that was baseball) and especially in the last few years of WCW I think Tony really didn't give a crap what the hell was going on around him, so he just didn't pay attention. (And I am not saying I blame him for that,)

 

If Conrad tries to use the "Something to Wrestle" format with this show in the long term, it's going to tank. It's just not viable. I don't think anybody could have predicted how successful Something to Wrestle was going to be, (including Bruce and Conrad) and I don't think anybody could expect Tony and Conrad to duplicate that kind of success, but even on a smaller scale, that format isn't going to work for them.

 

I think these commentary shows are going to be what you get from this point forward from this show. I know Conrad is getting a lot of positive feedback about them on Twitter etc., but of course he isn't going to re-tweet all the negative feedback either.

[Matt D]

Im not sure thats the issue so much as that theres not a ton of difference between one PPV in 98 and another. I liked it when Tony would rewatch the PPVs and comment on what he saw. I think there was more legs in doing theme shows like the Heenan one though.

[Cox]

I wonder if Conrad is the right host for a podcast with Tony Schiavone. They don't seem to have much chemistry from the few episodes I've listened to and Conrad seemed to think he could just use the format that worked with he and Bruce with Tony, but for the reasons mentioned above, that doesn't work because Schiavone is different from Prichard. Schiavone's main strength is his dirty sense of humor, but recall is not his thing. I think the idea is that this would be MLW's WCW version of the Prichard show, but it falls apart because Schiavone was not as involved in the WCW office, and in fact preferred his time with WWF to his time with WCW. I've said this before, but the main strength of the Prichard show is that it almost serves as an unauthorized biography of Vince McMahon, told through the lens of one of his top lieutenants in the WWF office. Besides WCW not having a singular leader like Vince McMahon (though Bischoff was close), Tony was never that top lieutenant. He worked in production, but he was never a big office guy, so the Prichard perspective just isn't there. Conrad getting mad at Schiavone for not being Bruce doesn't seem fair when they're different people who had different roles and different stories.

[Matt D]

Sometimes I think that the things that interest Conrad in wrestling are mostly opposed to that which interest Tony, too. I think in general, the show's been more good than not, though. I don't listen to the commentary ones, however, because, you know, car.