Tom Hannifan (Tom Phillips) spoke with Renee Paquette on the Oral Sessions podcast just days after joining Impact Wrestling where he made his debut at the Hard to Kill PPV event. Here are the highlights:
If he ever thought his career would be in wrestling:
“No. Never. When I graduated college, I was obviously trying to get into sports journalism or sports broadcasting or whatever. A job lead came up for WWE and I was like, ‘I need a job.’ I remember applying to the Billings Mustangs baseball team in Montana. I got to the second round of interviews, and a week later the WWE posting came up. I was like, ‘I might as well try that too.’ I can’t even begin to describe how lucky I got. I was 23 years old, to be there for close to nine years, and to learn what I learned during that time is why I think that I can do anything. It’s why I believe I can do anything, so I’m really excited not just about what Impact offers me in terms of the schedule which is fantastic, but it gives me the flexibility to do things like the podcast that I’m already doing about Penn State football which is a passion of mine. I desperately want to get into voice over work. I think I have a deep voice, so that may work. I would love to work for video games, TV, movies, and anything like that. There’s so many things because of the WWE schedule, you understand why they need you available all the time, so they take priority and it’s justifiable.”
His working relationship with Vince McMahon:
“It was very professional. I know a lot of people wanted to make sure they were really close friends with him or something like that. I just always treated everything like, ‘Ok, you tell me what you want me to do and I’ll go do it. Period’, and I just left it at that. I always felt I was very professional and we understood each other. If he fed me something, he fed me something, but like, I just tried to keep it simple that way. My dad was a marine, so when I grew up, he always taught me the value of ‘Go to work, do your job, and do whatever they ask you to do’, so I took that personally.”
