Tom Hannifan talks about breaking his old WWE commentary habits

Announcer Tom Hannifan (formerly Tom Phillips in WWE) did an interview with Busted Open Radio and talked about his job with Impact Wrestling has gone so far…

“It’s been great dude. I think one of the first tapings I did, I kept saying the word ‘superstar’ and you guys are like, ‘You don’t have to say that man. You can say wrestler, you can say whatever you want.’ Even Scott D’Amore being like, ‘You can say belt. You can say that for the title’ so it was just a lot of things that I’ve had to, you know, habits that — that’s the way that WWE likes to do things so it’s like, okay, I did that for nine years and I’m unlearning a lot of things and all of you at IMPACT Wrestling have been extremely patient with me.”

“You talk about getting excited about stuff, the ‘Styles Clash’ in the middle of [Josh] Alexander and Moose [at Rebellion], I jumped out of my freaking chair. I’m sure the spy cam, if they record it, still has that footage. I was on my feet when Josh won the title. It’s just you feel this stuff and it’s any commentator. I think the beauty of Pat McAfee, to your point, is that he made it okay for commentators to jump up and down and literally get on the desk. I mean [Michael] Cole’s not doing anything like that but we all feel that emotion so, if anything it’s just kind of loosened everybody up in commentary in all of professional wrestling.” (quotes courtesy of PostWrestling.com)