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By: Joey Styles
4/16/2003 8:47:07 PM
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The following
response by Joey Styles to a recent story in Inside Wrestling magazine will
be published in that same magazine shortly.
Dear Stu,
In a recent
edition of Inside Wrestling Magazine, you visited the effect of WWE
purchasing WCW two years later. The story looked at how eight people
in the industry had been affected by the purchase. Four of those
people were classified as winners, and four as losers. I was
classified as a loser by virtue of the fact that with ECW bankrupt, had Eric
Bischoff and Brian Bedol purchased WCW, I would have been their play-by-play
man. While I can see how that would make me a loser, in the very small
world of professional wrestling, the article did contain one major
inaccuracy.
The article
stated that I turned down a part-time announcing position with WWE and
turned it down because the risks greatly outweighed the rewards. In
fact, what actually happened was that I turned down a full-time announcing
position with WWE because they offered me a fraction of what I was earning
with ECW and what I knew I would make returning to advertising sales, which
I did full time from 1993 to 1999 while working for ECW part time.
They even candidly admitted to me that one of the reasons for the offer was
the fact that they knew they no longer had any competition. The risks
of having my family's financial well-being rest on a one-company controlled
industry, professional wrestling or not, greatly outweighed the compensation
they were willing to pay a full-time announcer.
Because I live
five minutes from WWE production studios, I suggested that I work for WWE
part-time, coming in once a week to call their post produced television
programs (Heat, Velocity, Afterburn, Bottom Line). Their answer was
"We don't like our announcers to have any other commitments. We
like to own our talents. We like to own our Michael Coles and Jonathan
Coachmans." And with that, I knew I would never work for WWE.
Every morning
when I wake up in my own home (not in a hotel away from my family) and look
in the mirror, I know I did the right thing for myself and my family by
saying no to a take it or leave it offer from WWE. In the grand scheme of
life, I would say that defines a winner if not in the world of professional
wrestling.
Sincerely,
your friend,
Joey Styles
P.S. I am
guessing the ten year old photo of me was an April Fools Day rib. Good one
Stu.
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