Tony Schiavone has been with AEW since it was founded over three years ago. The veteran commentator has appeared almost every week both working behind the booth and performing interviews in the ring and backstage. As well as his onscreen duties, Schiavone was recently promoted to Senior Producer & Special Advisor to Talent.
Now, Tony Schiavone has revealed his son Matt has joined him in the company and will be working as a Producer.
Tony Schiavone’s son is a passionate wrestling fan
Tony Schiavone spoke at length about his son joining him in AEW on the most recent edition of his What Happened When podcast. He explained that Matt has always been a big fan of wrestling and wanted to work in the family business. However, the elder Schiavone believes he may have unwittingly prevented his son from working in WWE.
“He was producer of America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino on Fox News. But Matt has always been a very passionate wrestling fan. He always wanted to work in wrestling. He had an interview a number of years ago with WWE in Connecticut, it didn’t work out. And I’m sure a part of that was he was my son.”
Schiavone went on to explain that he thinks WWE “hates” him and suspects they only ever wanted to hire him to fire him.
“[Answering why being his son would have affected Matt’s WWE chances] Because they hate me and they always have. [When reminded WWE wanted to hire him] They were gonna hire me to fire me. That’s exactly what they were going to do back before I signed with AEW, they had contacted me and they were going to hire me to fire me.
“That’s the only reason they wanted to hire me. They knew AEW was starting, they knew AEW wanted me, and – it’s not a knock on Bruce [Prichard], Bruce is my friend and I love him, I’m talking about Vince [McMahon] and they were gonna ‘oh we got him off AEW TV, now let’s get rid of him.’
“They got rid of Bischoff in what three months? So I know what was going on and of course, COVID would have something to do with it as well.”
Tony Schiavone explained that he was against Matt getting a job in AEW as he was already making a good living at Fox. Undeterred, his son made himself known to figures in the company and eventually persuaded Tony Khan himself to take him on.
“[Matt Schiavone] said I want a job in AEW and I said you know what – I was really against it. I said ‘listen you are working for a company that is going to be around for a long, long time and you have been there 13/14 years and you’re established there and you make a good living’ but he loved wrestling so much. Matt would come to many of our shows and he would get to know everybody – it was a pretty good plan of his.”
“He’d talk to people, what should he do, how should he approach it, and finally he flew to Detroit when we were there and waited for Tony [Khan] after the show and talked to Tony at length and Tony hired him. Thought he needed Matt Schiavone as a producer backstage and help time the show. Matt’s prolific at all that stuff and now Matt works for us.”
H/T to TJRWrestling for the above transcription.