Former Raw commentator Tom Phillips appeared on the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch to talk about his recent release from WWE.
Phillips said that he pretty much learned about WWE on the job and since he was hired at just the age of 23, it took a lot of people and a lot of hours to get him trained as a broadcaster.
He credited Renee Paquette, the WWE 2K video game, and the WWE Network to get up to speed on WWE and become an expert in the field.
Speaking about his release, Phillips admitted it was a surprise to get the call but understood that he was going to be replaced by Adnan Virk. He said he was familiar with Virk as he followed him on ESPN and thought it was going to be a major shift in Raw broadcasting to go from a wrestling guy to a sports guy.
Eventually, Virk lost his job too. “I’ve seen so many people come and go at different levels on the announce team,” Phillips said. “But it was fast!” He added that Virk has a lot of things going for him so he will be just fine doing broadcasting somewhere else.
As for him, Phillips said that he is looking to get into sports broadcasting and steering away from professional wrestling for now.
Phillips, real name Tom Hannifan, goes in more details in the podcast, discussing the most challenging thing about being a WWE broadcaster, getting produced while on-air, his favorite matches called and more.
