Summary

Tony Schiavone shared a memorable post-WCW story on his podcast about unexpectedly crossing paths with Ted Turner not long after WWE bought WCW in 2001.

Schiavone said he had already started part-time work at WSB in Atlanta, where he rotated on Braves pregame and postgame radio coverage. Before one game, he stepped into a restroom on the concourse and realized Turner was the only other person there.

After introducing himself and briefly explaining his WCW history, Schiavone said Turner immediately launched into a frustrated reaction about wrestling being removed from Turner networks. Schiavone said the encounter left him convinced Turner was angry with the direction AOL Time Warner had taken at the time.

That anecdote lines up with the respect Schiavone has shown Turner in later years, including when he and Sting paid tribute to Turner to open AEW Dynamite.

Quote from Tony Schiavone

"So, when WCW went down in 2001, I've mentioned on this podcast before that I immediately, that day, got a job part-time at WSB, which has been one of the legendary stations in the Atlanta market. And they had been the home of the Atlanta Braves forever."

"So now I'm working for WSB part-time. I'm working their sports department, and that means I get a chance to do their Atlanta Braves pregame and postgame show on the Braves radio network, along with two other guys. Three of us kind of rotated through."

"So now the game is getting ready to start, so I'm going back up to the press box. I go outside in the concourse underneath, nobody around. There's a men's bathroom, women's bathroom. I have to go to the bathroom."

"I go across to the men's bathroom, and I go up to the urinal, and there's only two of us in the bathroom. And I look to my right, the other guy who's peeing is Ted Turner."

"So I say, 'Mr. Turner', of course after zipping up, I say, 'Mr. Turner, I know you don't know who I am, but I'm Tony Schiavone, and I did WCW, World Championship Wrestling, and started in '85 on TBS, and I've been doing WCW Monday Nitro and WCW Thunder...'"

"And that's about all I got out."

"And he said, I remember vividly, the first words out of his mouth were, 'Those motherf*ckers. If I was still running this place, wrestling would still be on TBS. It would still be on TNT.'"

"He said, 'They are out of their minds taking off wrestling, which has been an integral part of what we're doing.'"

"I remember walking out of that and saying, 'Wow, what an impromptu meeting that was.'"

"So it told me that he was very upset with what AOL Time Warner was doing right then. And it also told me that had Ted still been in charge of the company, we would have still been on the air."

Ted Turner, WCW, and the end of that TV era

Ted Turner's reaction, as Schiavone described it, reinforces how central wrestling had been to TBS and TNT before corporate control shifted away from Turner. If Schiavone's account is accurate, Turner believed WCW still had a place on those networks even after the sale itself had happened.

For wrestling fans, the bigger takeaway is not that WCW's fate suddenly changes with one conversation. It is that one of the most important media figures in wrestling history apparently still saw value in keeping the promotion on television, which adds another layer to how many people still view WCW's final collapse.

Sources

Tony Schiavone while speaking on his podcast