Tony Schiavone explained his reaction to Dynamite’s Punk/Perry footage

Even before reports came out about people behind-the-scenes at AEW being “frustrated” with the decision to use footage from CM Punk & Jack Perry’s backstage altercation at All In: London as part of The Young Bucks/FTR build on Dynamite last week, there was a lot of speculation that Tony Schiavone wasn’t a fan of the move.

That’s because the legendary announcer looked extremely uncomfortable when he was on-screen before and after The Bucks segment. But as he explained on the latest episode of his What Happened When podcast, he was just acting.

“People can take screenshots and assume anything from a screenshot. My facial reaction to what happened was my facial reaction trying to put more heat on The Bucks for being assholes within the storyline itself. I did not have any reaction to the footage we’d seen because I don’t give a damn...”

Schiavone’s co-host Conrad Thompson clarified that this wasn’t Tony’s first time seeing the footage:

“No, that’s right. So what? So fucking what. So I was not upset at the promotion, I was not upset at Tony Khan, I was not pissed off about what we had shown — I was trying to be fully in the moment of the angle, which is The Bucks bitching about FTR, not wanting to shake their hands and getting fucked around and everything. That’s what I was doing.”

He reiterated how little he cares about the footage in general, and had some choice words for anyone claiming last week was the WCW-esque start of AEW’s demise:

“But of course, everyone wants to create their own story and that’s fine. That’s what social media is about. Social media is about idiots coming together and trying to come up with their own ideas... Maybe I was still upset about Bug [Schiavone’s dog who died recently], I don’t know, but I didn’t give a shit about the footage — and still don’t.

“I’m sincere when I say that I don’t care. I don’t care. It has no impact on my life. Some people are saying, ‘Oh the footage you were showing was like the Finger Poke of Doom moment for AEW.’ Well, you know what? That’s what you want it to be because you want to see us fail. And there’s no way — cause I was in both companies — there’s absolute no way you can compare us to WCW. You can’t. You may want to. You may think you’re right. You’re wrong. You cannot compare us to WCW. I was there for both. You were not.”

There you have it... now let us know what you make of it. You can watch this portion of What Happened When here.