Tom Hannifan Thought Pro Wrestling Career Was Over After WWE Release

Tom Phillips was a staple of the WWE commentary desk for nearly ten years. WWE released him in May of 2021. Tom thought his career in pro wrestling was over after he was let go.

The announcer re-emerged under his real name, Tom Hannifan, after Impact Wrestling hired him just before the Hard to Kill pay-per-view. Hannifan fit right in after getting a crash course on the product. Impact is hoping Tom becomes the voice of the company as they continue to try and build a larger following.

Tom recently spoke to Jarrett Bailey for an interview. The commentator talked about his experience after being released by WWE. Hannifan believed his career in wrestling was over.

“I think the ‘out of the blue’ part was obviously after I was released from WWE, I needed to take some time for myself and I was just kind of, you know — it was a very challenging situation, it is extremely emotional and there was part of me that was like, ‘Maybe I’m done in wrestling. Maybe this is it’ and a couple of months went by and I was really, you know, okay with it. Everything was feeling good and then just talking to a lot of friends in the business, friends that worked at IMPACT Wrestling, it was just kind of learning that there are other options, there’s other ways to go, there’s other places where it’s gonna be just a different experience and I might like it so, within the last month, I’d say somewhere in December, started talking with some friends that are over at IMPACT and they connected me with the powers that be and I just really liked everything that I heard.

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Speaking with Josh Matthews who ironically did my audition at WWE so you just never know who you’re gonna run into again. So I had a really good conversation with him. Talking to Scott D’Amore has been awesome, he’s been really good to me and I just try to be as transparent as possible with him just in terms of how I’m feeling about everything and after Hard To Kill, I told him, I was like, ‘I got my passion back’ so I said, ‘Thank you.’ So I’m really enjoying everything thus far and it just kind of materialized quickly, kind of like how things do in wrestling. You never know when it’s gonna come up and it’s just try to be ready.”

Tom Hannifan hopes his stay with Impact is extremely successful. Impact knows they have an announcer at the booth with experience in the big leagues. The promotion will need that if they ever want to make it back to that status.

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H/T Post Wrestling