During the latest edition of his “What Happened When” podcast, AEW broadcaster Tony Schiavone discussed his ROH debut at Final Battle 2023, his relationship with The Ultimate Warrior, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On how his ROH debut came about: “I’m backstage. I think the Zero Hour had already started, and Sonjay comes by me. He says, ‘Have you checked your texts?’ I went, ‘No.’ We got these text threads. I don’t know why I didn’t check it because I check it all the time. It said, it was from Sonjay, Sonjay said, ‘Tony wants you to do an interview on this pay-per-view.’ I went, ‘God…’ It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s just like, okay, what is it gonna be about? So I gotta rush around. I don’t have a Ring of Honor jacket. I just have an AEW jacket. I don’t think that’s appropriate.”
On their costume designer getting him an ROH jacket: “I go to see our buddy Clint, one of our costume designers, and he said, ‘Well, I’ve got a jacket. I think it’ll fit you, and I’ll put a Ring of Honor patch on it.’ He did, and I did the interview with Bryan Keith and Orange Cassidy to set up the match. So it was the first time I’d ever been on Ring of Honor. How about that? Last-minute type shit [laughs]. I made my Ring of Honor debut when Bobby Cruise was the ringer announcer on his twentieth Ring of Honor [Final Battle].”
On The Ultimate Warrior: “As an announcer and an adult at that time, I really liked Jim, a lot of people didn’t like Jim Hellwig at all. A lot of people did not, backstage, he was not the friendliest guy but he was always really nice to me. He wasn’t overly talkative; we had a good relationship. But I never did get the Ultimate Warrior character. […] His promos were like ‘What the f—k is he saying? Where is he going?’”
