It Makes Tony Schiavone Smile When He Sees Independent Talent Make It To ‘The Big Stage’
Photo Credit: Bill Pritchard
Tony Schiavone and Christopher Daniels are kindred spirits when it comes to comic book fandom and while a good Batman comic is sure to make Schiavone smile, so is seeing up-start talents getting their chance to shine on the big stage.
Schiavone was talking “inside baseball” in a comic sense to Conrad Thompson who then asked the AEW commentator if he was familiar with Daniels’ previous work as Curry Man.
“We’re not talking Bill Curry or anything like that?,” Tony asked before doing a quick Google of Curry Man’s image. “Oh okay, that’s Christopher Daniels, I got it.” This got some discussion of Daniels going and Conrad spoke as to how Daniels had all the tools to be a main event player in wrestling, but during that time the wrestling world happened to infatuated with the Dave Bautista look. Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles did flourish in WWE, but so many of that body type and work style were under-utilized for the time.
“There’s the plain fact and the plain fact is there are tremendous wrestlers all over the world and there’s a lot of guys in wrestling all over the world who hadn’t had their shot who are laboring in the independents and when we get a chance to see them, it makes me smile,” Schiavone noted. “When we got a chance to see Eddie Kingston, Ricky Starks, we saw Warhorse. I love that, I just love that. Put ’em on the big stage and both Ricky Starks and Eddie Kingston have become big stars in AEW.”
You can check out the entire episode of “What Happened When” below and be sure to check out our exclusive interview with Schiavone and writer Dirk Manning as they discuss Tony’s upcoming graphic novel biography, Butts In The Seats.