Former WWE announcer Tom Phillips (Tom Hannifan) appeared on the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch to discuss his recent WWE release, the challenges of calling the product and more.
Phillips said he got hired by WWE at 23 years old, which he saw was a blessing and a curse. “I had everything to learn about professional wrestling,” he said. He was a casual fan as a kid, watched during the Attitude Era and played the video games.
“I had to learn everything from the ground up. On top of that, no broadcaster at 23 is really that finely polished, so everybody at WWE, it takes a village, did an amazing job helping me get up-to-speed just as a broadcaster. Things as simple as working in a studio, working with a teleprompter. Basics. I need to learn how to walk. They gave me so many opportunities to learn those things.”
Phillips was asked about his WWE Audition and if he had to do anything silly like interview a broom. He said, yes, he did. They handed him a piece of random equipment and said, “Sell me on this.” He spoke for about a minute and wasn’t sure if he would get hired.
Hardest Part of the Job
When asked about the toughest aspect of being a WWE broadcaster, Phillips it took years to learn the intricacies of the product and what management is looking for.
“The toughest thing about WWE is that, if you’re coming in, and there’s plenty of people who come in who don’t know wrestling inside out and backwards, you gotta get up to speed quickly. You find the right people who have your back and will support you and teach. I had so may people like that. But it look years for me to get comfortable with it, because that’s how intricate the product is.”
Learning the Product
Tom Phillips said people like Renee Paquette helped teach him the ins and outs of WWE. He’s a big video game guy and actually learned a ton by playing WWE video games. He would go into the Create a Wrestler mode, which has thousands of wrestling moves available to select for your character. He’d scroll through and learn from there. “Watch that enough, you start to figure it out. Lots of trial and error, doing it over and over again.”
He said the early incarnation of NXT was taped, which helped him learn with a safety net. The best thing was being around other talented people. They’d hold him to a high standard. So many people in WWE are diehard wrestling fans and experts. “If you didn’t take the time to immerse yourself in the product, you’d be dead in the water.”
Phillips said the the WWE Network was also a crucial resource that helped him become an expert of the product. He’d spend every waking hour watching the Network.
Competition, Being Over-Produced
Richard Deitsch asked how competitive things are in WWE amongst the broadcasters. Phillips said it depends on your relationships. He did feel competition from other play-by-play announcers. He’d see others improving and felt motivated to keep up. However, the camaraderie amongst the announce team was fantastic. He considered it healthy competition. Between the crew, the production team and the talent, he made hundreds of friends.
Tom Phillips said WWE announcers are overproduced, but it also depends on who you are. His experience was different from everybody else’s. He thinks some broadcasters join WWE with the misconception that you can call it like a sport. It’s really entertainment. “We’re trying to tell stories,” he said. “Great stories are what you remember” was a mantra he heard a lot in WWE.
His WWE Release & Adnan Virk
He was genuinely surprised by his WWE release. “Adnan Virk was somebody that I had known, not to date him in any way, but he had run on SportsCenter when I was in college, and then just right out of college, so I had watched him for years. So when I hear Adnan Virk is coming in to be the lead announcer of Monday Night Raw, I said, ‘Whoa, that is a shift’ But at the same time, I was like, I have all the respect in the world for this guy’s ability, in terms of what the job requires.”
He added, “I was definitely surprised, but to hear it was somebody like Adnan Virk, I said ok, I get it.”
Adnan Virk only lasted a few weeks, which also surprised him. “I’ve seen so many people come and go at different levels on the announce team. I won’t speak necessarily to what he was going through, that’s his experience, but it was fast. That being said, he has so many other things that he does in conventional sportscasting where he is so talented. He is going to do just fine.”
As for what’s next, Tom Phillips is pursuing new sports broadcasting opportunities outside of professional wrestling. He hopes to call college football and thinks his WWE experience helped develop the ability to do play-by-play while incorporating storytelling.
Listen to Tom Philips on Sports Media with Richard Deitsch at Stitcher.com.
