During a recent appearance on the “Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette” podcast, Impact Wrestling play-by-play commentator Tom Hannifan (Tom Phillips in WWE) commented on making his Impact debut at Saturday night’s Hard to Kill pay-per-view event, how the deal came together, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On how the Impact deal came together: “It’s only really developed within the last month. I have a lot of friends [in IMPACT] who kind of connected me with the powers that be, we had some good conversations, and the schedule was very attractive. I just got done doing a 52-week a year schedule for about nine years, so I was like, ‘this is great and really cool.’ Everything that I was told about, what the locker room was like with Scott D’Amore and Josh Mathews, everything has been accurate and awesome. When you know a bunch of people, showing up and seeing Matt Rehwoldt and him being like, ‘what the hell are you doing here?’ It was really cool.”
On if he had a long non-compete clause with WWE following his release in May 2021: “I can’t get into that. I don’t want to get into specifics, but I do want to thank WWE for a number of reasons. I wouldn’t be in this position to contribute to another promotion if it weren’t for WWE, especially nine years of training and learning. I was sitting there talking to the Good Brothers and I was like, ‘I got hired at 23.’ That world was all that I have ever known. It was a lot of the same things, but breaking habits and changing things, and just being me. It’s still very different circumstance, but I wouldn’t be here without WWE.”
On what it’s like to working in Impact compared to WWE: “You go from the pressure of being like, for a number of different reasons, the way WWE produces shows, but all of a sudden, now it’s all on you. It’s largely your show. I was given a lot of faith to go out there and do what I did with D’Lo. It was nerve-racking because it was, ‘Oh, this is what I did,’ and WWE has certain ways they like things done and things said and not said. All of a sudden, I can say certain things that I wasn’t able to say. ‘This is really cool.’ We couldn’t refer to Bullet Club, obviously, for trademark reasons, so we danced around it and said ‘The Club,’ so I was like, ‘oh, I can say Bullet Club on the air. I can say pro wrestling.’ Just little trademark and branding things that WWE likes to do, and that’s fine, but there are so many little changes.”
(h/t – Fightful)
