Black Widow
05-15-2009, 04:17 PM
BY JIM VARSALLONE
jvarsallone@MiamiHerald.com
Joey Styles has come a long way from the basement in the home of Paul Heyman's mom. He called matches -- Oh My God -- for the original ECW and later WWE, but working with WWE.com, Styles has really found his niche and passion.
Styles, 37, is the director of Digital Media Content for WWE.com, one of the most viewed web sites on the Internet. He was born in the Bronx and lives in Newton, Conn.
Styles worked for the original ECW during its entire run -- 1994-2001. Four year later, he signed with WWE and returned to announcing at the ECW One Night Stand pay-per-view, working with the legendary Mick Foley. He called matches on Raw and WWE's ECW before joining the Internet ranks at WWE.com.
• In April, WWE's flagship website, WWE.com, had more U.S. visits than premiere pop culture and sports hubs Disney.com, TMZ.com, Hulu.com, PerezHilton.com, CBS.com, ABC.com, NBC.com, NBA.com and NFL.com, according to Hitwise, a leading online competitive intelligence provider.
WWE.com also reported a staggering 18-million unique visitors, 28.3-million video streams and a record breaking 663.1-million page views for April. The monthly page views represent a 62 percent increase from April 2008. Page views per visit also increased 57 percent to an average of 17.2 pages viewed versus 10.9 pages per visit in April 2008 (source: Omniture - Worldwide).
Additional information on WWE can be found at wwe.com and corporate.wwe.com. For information on our global activities, go to wwe.com/worldwide.
This interview with Styles was conducted during an event hosted by THQ, the developers of WWE's stellar video games, during WWE WrestleMania 25 Weekend in Houston.
• Do you miss announcing at all?
Styles: ``Not one bit. I called matches for 10 years, and I feel like I'm contributing to the company more now. I don't want to give away too much, but I think you've seen changes in WWE.com over the past year, and mostly in terms of video and television programming that can be distributed on the web.
``The next two years are going to be mind blowing and revolutionary the same way pay-per-view itself was revolutionary to television. What's going to happen between the relationship television content and the Internet -- IPTV as its called -- is going to be revolutionary once again, and I'm so happy WWE.com is trying to stay in front of it.''
• With the weekly travel and announcing demands, Taz felt burned out from the job and wanted to spend more time with his family.
So when he ended his tenure as color commentator on WWE SmackDown, I thought John Bradshaw Layfield would return to the WWE mic -- something he did very well prior -- following his in-ring retirement at WWE WrestleMania 25 in Houston.
Instead, JBL, a successful entrepreneur away from the ring, opted for his own business ventures including commentary and sponsorship of the new mixed martial arts Vyper Fight League -- with his friend Danny Davis of OVW -- in Louisville.
How about The American Dream?
Dusty Rhodes, a former color man for WCW who is doing the same for Florida Championship Wrestling, the feeder group to WWE in Tampa, then turned down a color commentary job offer by WWE.
Cactus Jack, Mankind, Dude Love, Mrs. Foley's baby boy?
Mick Foley spent time as a color commentary for WWE. Foley said in interviews, having Mr. McMahon in 'your' ear literally and figuratively during broadcasts took the enjoyment from the job. Foley left that WWE post and joined TNA.
• That led to Styles, an ECW original who also worked the mic for WWE TV in the past. Could he return to a seat at the announce table on WWE TV?
Styles said he has no plans of doing that again for WWE. He loves his new job, helping lead and shape the successful WWE.com.
In Houston for WrestleMania 25, Styles had plenty to do.
''It is so different,'' Styles said. ``As an announcer, you show up, and you call the matches. There's some prep, but it's not the same as being involved in WWE.com because there's so much going on with our community events and Hall of Fame and Axxess.
``It takes us two months in advance with WWE.com of working with all different departments -- whether it's television or talent relations or print media or sales, making sure our entire team is canvasing Houston [for WrestleMania] which is a big city and making sure we have everything covered.
``I, myself, as an employee, really didn't understand the magnitude and the amount of work that goes into WrestleMania, until being on this side of the camera. Quite frankly, it is amazing. We have 10,500 people here at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Toyota Center. It just blows my mind.''
• Do the two jobs (announcing, Internet control) compare?
Styles said: ``Not even close. As an announcer, I could fly in Saturday morning, attend the Hall of Fame, wake-up Sunday, work out, look at the two or three matches I was calling. I pretty much knew the storylines very well from calling the weekly show.
``Managing the WWE.com staff on the road is just non-stop. There is always something because everything changes. With an event this big, let's get one of our three video crews. Besides all the television crews WWE has here, WWE.com has three video crews here as well as writers and all the still photographers. We've all been criss-crossing.
``The Toyota Center may be an hour from the airport, and our hotel just happens to be an hour from all the events. Who's in one place, and who's in another? Then we have five still photographers. We're criss-crossing the city.
``I haven't slept much, but I got to be honest. It's much, much more exciting and much more fulfilling to be working for WWE.com than it ever was working as a broadcaster.''
• WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross, who is the best going today on mic, moved from play-by-play to color commentary on SmackDown, giving Todd Grisham a new voice. Josh Matthews, sans bloody nose, is the new play-by-play man for WWE's ECW, working with former school teacher and wrestler Matt Striker. Michael Cole and Jerry The King Lawler lead Raw's voice.
• Shaq, Biz, Joey
Styles: 'I was forced to get a Twitter account. Can you imagine me? I hate the word `tweeting,' and now I have to tweet. Is there a less manly word?
'So I have to go up to Vince, `Mr. McMahon, so I'm tweeting about...' What? Get out. Get out.
``I saw the co-founder of Twitter on The Colbert Report [11:30 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, Comedy Central]. I hope he sees this. His name is like Biz [Stone]. This guy is going to remain a virgin until Twitter goes public and makes some money, and even then he's going to have to pay for it.
``Never mind. I'm going to get hate tweets.''
• So, Ross is the color commentator on SmackDown with Grisham as the play-by-play. Matthews is the play-by-play for WWE's ECW with Striker on color, and Lawler is the long-time color commentator for Raw with play-by-play Cole.
Styles: ``We don't have traditional play-by-play announcers which I am. I'm probably better suited to call amateur wrestling or MMA or football.
``We have storytellers.
'So you really, in some cases, have to not call each and every hold and move and tell the story, and I struggled with that a lot. I'd only been here a few months when they told me, `Well, you're not going to be calling WrestleMania. We're going to bring back Jim Ross for that.' I was very disappointed because that was my dream.
'So I suggested that I call the hardcore match between Mick Foley and Edge because who better. It's an ECW match, basically. I didn't want to say, `You stole the match,' and they agreed to have me call it, and I still got to be in Chicago at WrestleMania 22 and called the match between Edge and Mick Foley, who is a dear friend of mine.
'It was a perfect fit. I found a way to tell a story while still screaming, `Oh my God,' as there was a barbed wire baseball bat and flaming tables, which we don't do anymore because we are PG. You can still see that type of footage on WWE.com Legacy, but we don't do that on cable television anymore.''
• What was it like being involved in your first WrestleMania?
Styles: ``I would think that for announcers, especially if you grew up a WWE fan, it's the same deal. A lot of our WWE superstars will tell you they grew up watching Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant, and they wanted to be on this stage, and they are now.
'Well, I grew up listening to Vince McMahon and Jim Ross, and I said, `I want to be that person someday.' Really, the only person who supported me was my best friend. My teachers, even my parents told me it was a pipe dream, but my feeling was somebody is going to have to do that job. So why not me?
``So you have to work for it. You work two jobs, and you don't sleep. When I finally got to lose my WrestleMania virginity as I said on the air and as I'm saying it now -- I think that's PG putting it that way -- it was a blast.
``It's just as exciting now, my first time covering WrestleMania for WWE.com, and we're going to be doing post match interviews with winners and losers, and we do that for every pay-per-view, but for WrestleMania, I would be shocked if we don't have 1-million views. As many people are going to see the online interviews after the matches as see the pay-per-view itself worldwide, which to me is just mind blowing -- the relationship between television and the Internet.''
• What did you think of the April Fool's joke on WWE.com?
Styles: ``The April Fool's joke that we went with was not my idea. I got over-ruled. I wanted to go with a different one. We had three options. They all got approved by management. I wanted to go with an interview with Khali who speaks perfect English -- like with Matt Striker, five-syllable words, but they went with Vickie pregnant instead. I don't know if we fooled anybody, but it was fun.''
WWE fooled some on the Internet as wrestling Internet sites carried the information -- without checking -- as if it was true.
'I was like, `Let's not do the pregnancy. The pregnancy has been done to death, and they never turn out well, and nobody's going to believe it.' Nobody believed it.''
• How are you guys deciding the differential between hard news and creative on WWE.com?
Styles: ``In terms of WWE.com, we're an entertainment web site. We're more about Jeff Hardy getting pushed down the steps in a Boston hotel than we are about somebody having an altercation in the parking lot.
``However, once something like that does hit the mainstream news, we have to put it up there and try to fit it in a place that's appropriate. As far as I'm concerned, we are an entertainment web site. We are scripted entertainment which we make very clear to the public, and I think we should be a scripted web site. We should follow storylines.
``We don't need to follow hard news.''
• Who did you see as someone having a chance to do something good in WWE?
Styles: ``Matt Striker. He's a friend of mine. He knew at his size (5-10, 224) he wasn't going to be a main eventer. He got to wrestle at WrestleMania 23 in Detroit in front of 80,000 people, and they were using him as a manager which we really don't do here much.
``I knew he wanted to try out as an announcer. I said, `I really can't help you with that. I can throw your name out there.'
``What happened was when Mick Foley departed, Taz moved up to SmackDown, and there was an opening in [WWE's] ECW. It was that day that they were looking for somebody, and it was known Matt wanted an audition. He went out there and ran with the ball.
'I love Matt's color commentary because it's insightful. It's humorous. Some of the jokes a lot of people don't get. He's learned to be PG. One of the funniest things he did was making a joke, saying, `Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, like Guns N' Roses new album Chinese Democracy, uuhhk,' and then they wound up being a theme song for us two months later.
``So Matt cracks me up, and he loves being an announcer. He's probably enjoying this more than wrestling. He's just a lot of fun, and he's exactly like he is on TV. He's a know-it-all, quick witted. He's my kind of guy.''
• What did WWE.com do when Taz left WWE?
Styles: ``It went public. All we did on WWE.com was slide him over to alumni. His contract expired, and he didn't re-sign with the company.''
• Could you do WWE.com and TV announcing?
Styles: ``I really want to stay with WWE.com, and I couldn't do both. WWE.com is a full-time job, 24 hours a day.''
• What was it like coming from the grass-roots movement of ECW to the corporate world of WWE?
Styles: ``It wasn't difficult for me because for all the years I was an announcer with ECW, I also developed ECWWrestling.com and another wrestling news site, which I'm shocked that they hired me because I said some horrible things about my current employer back then. I also sold advertising and did marketing all those years.
``Coming to a corporate environment that also involved wrestling was perfect for me. Now this position with WWE.com, I think I've been groomed for this my whole life without knowing it because concurrently I was always involved in wrestling as talent and also involved in marketing and sales and building web sites.
``So when the company needed a WWE talent person who knows talent and knows all these other things to do the position, I was honored that I was offered the position by management. It's been a year, and it seems like a day.''
• WWE SmackDown and WWE's ECW are 6:45 p.m. Tuesday, July 14 at the American Airlines Arena in Miami.
Tickets, starting at $20, are on sale at the arena box office, Ticketmaster outlets and ticketmaster.com. Call 1-800-745-3000.
MiamiHerald.com
jvarsallone@MiamiHerald.com
Joey Styles has come a long way from the basement in the home of Paul Heyman's mom. He called matches -- Oh My God -- for the original ECW and later WWE, but working with WWE.com, Styles has really found his niche and passion.
Styles, 37, is the director of Digital Media Content for WWE.com, one of the most viewed web sites on the Internet. He was born in the Bronx and lives in Newton, Conn.
Styles worked for the original ECW during its entire run -- 1994-2001. Four year later, he signed with WWE and returned to announcing at the ECW One Night Stand pay-per-view, working with the legendary Mick Foley. He called matches on Raw and WWE's ECW before joining the Internet ranks at WWE.com.
• In April, WWE's flagship website, WWE.com, had more U.S. visits than premiere pop culture and sports hubs Disney.com, TMZ.com, Hulu.com, PerezHilton.com, CBS.com, ABC.com, NBC.com, NBA.com and NFL.com, according to Hitwise, a leading online competitive intelligence provider.
WWE.com also reported a staggering 18-million unique visitors, 28.3-million video streams and a record breaking 663.1-million page views for April. The monthly page views represent a 62 percent increase from April 2008. Page views per visit also increased 57 percent to an average of 17.2 pages viewed versus 10.9 pages per visit in April 2008 (source: Omniture - Worldwide).
Additional information on WWE can be found at wwe.com and corporate.wwe.com. For information on our global activities, go to wwe.com/worldwide.
This interview with Styles was conducted during an event hosted by THQ, the developers of WWE's stellar video games, during WWE WrestleMania 25 Weekend in Houston.
• Do you miss announcing at all?
Styles: ``Not one bit. I called matches for 10 years, and I feel like I'm contributing to the company more now. I don't want to give away too much, but I think you've seen changes in WWE.com over the past year, and mostly in terms of video and television programming that can be distributed on the web.
``The next two years are going to be mind blowing and revolutionary the same way pay-per-view itself was revolutionary to television. What's going to happen between the relationship television content and the Internet -- IPTV as its called -- is going to be revolutionary once again, and I'm so happy WWE.com is trying to stay in front of it.''
• With the weekly travel and announcing demands, Taz felt burned out from the job and wanted to spend more time with his family.
So when he ended his tenure as color commentator on WWE SmackDown, I thought John Bradshaw Layfield would return to the WWE mic -- something he did very well prior -- following his in-ring retirement at WWE WrestleMania 25 in Houston.
Instead, JBL, a successful entrepreneur away from the ring, opted for his own business ventures including commentary and sponsorship of the new mixed martial arts Vyper Fight League -- with his friend Danny Davis of OVW -- in Louisville.
How about The American Dream?
Dusty Rhodes, a former color man for WCW who is doing the same for Florida Championship Wrestling, the feeder group to WWE in Tampa, then turned down a color commentary job offer by WWE.
Cactus Jack, Mankind, Dude Love, Mrs. Foley's baby boy?
Mick Foley spent time as a color commentary for WWE. Foley said in interviews, having Mr. McMahon in 'your' ear literally and figuratively during broadcasts took the enjoyment from the job. Foley left that WWE post and joined TNA.
• That led to Styles, an ECW original who also worked the mic for WWE TV in the past. Could he return to a seat at the announce table on WWE TV?
Styles said he has no plans of doing that again for WWE. He loves his new job, helping lead and shape the successful WWE.com.
In Houston for WrestleMania 25, Styles had plenty to do.
''It is so different,'' Styles said. ``As an announcer, you show up, and you call the matches. There's some prep, but it's not the same as being involved in WWE.com because there's so much going on with our community events and Hall of Fame and Axxess.
``It takes us two months in advance with WWE.com of working with all different departments -- whether it's television or talent relations or print media or sales, making sure our entire team is canvasing Houston [for WrestleMania] which is a big city and making sure we have everything covered.
``I, myself, as an employee, really didn't understand the magnitude and the amount of work that goes into WrestleMania, until being on this side of the camera. Quite frankly, it is amazing. We have 10,500 people here at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Toyota Center. It just blows my mind.''
• Do the two jobs (announcing, Internet control) compare?
Styles said: ``Not even close. As an announcer, I could fly in Saturday morning, attend the Hall of Fame, wake-up Sunday, work out, look at the two or three matches I was calling. I pretty much knew the storylines very well from calling the weekly show.
``Managing the WWE.com staff on the road is just non-stop. There is always something because everything changes. With an event this big, let's get one of our three video crews. Besides all the television crews WWE has here, WWE.com has three video crews here as well as writers and all the still photographers. We've all been criss-crossing.
``The Toyota Center may be an hour from the airport, and our hotel just happens to be an hour from all the events. Who's in one place, and who's in another? Then we have five still photographers. We're criss-crossing the city.
``I haven't slept much, but I got to be honest. It's much, much more exciting and much more fulfilling to be working for WWE.com than it ever was working as a broadcaster.''
• WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross, who is the best going today on mic, moved from play-by-play to color commentary on SmackDown, giving Todd Grisham a new voice. Josh Matthews, sans bloody nose, is the new play-by-play man for WWE's ECW, working with former school teacher and wrestler Matt Striker. Michael Cole and Jerry The King Lawler lead Raw's voice.
• Shaq, Biz, Joey
Styles: 'I was forced to get a Twitter account. Can you imagine me? I hate the word `tweeting,' and now I have to tweet. Is there a less manly word?
'So I have to go up to Vince, `Mr. McMahon, so I'm tweeting about...' What? Get out. Get out.
``I saw the co-founder of Twitter on The Colbert Report [11:30 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, Comedy Central]. I hope he sees this. His name is like Biz [Stone]. This guy is going to remain a virgin until Twitter goes public and makes some money, and even then he's going to have to pay for it.
``Never mind. I'm going to get hate tweets.''
• So, Ross is the color commentator on SmackDown with Grisham as the play-by-play. Matthews is the play-by-play for WWE's ECW with Striker on color, and Lawler is the long-time color commentator for Raw with play-by-play Cole.
Styles: ``We don't have traditional play-by-play announcers which I am. I'm probably better suited to call amateur wrestling or MMA or football.
``We have storytellers.
'So you really, in some cases, have to not call each and every hold and move and tell the story, and I struggled with that a lot. I'd only been here a few months when they told me, `Well, you're not going to be calling WrestleMania. We're going to bring back Jim Ross for that.' I was very disappointed because that was my dream.
'So I suggested that I call the hardcore match between Mick Foley and Edge because who better. It's an ECW match, basically. I didn't want to say, `You stole the match,' and they agreed to have me call it, and I still got to be in Chicago at WrestleMania 22 and called the match between Edge and Mick Foley, who is a dear friend of mine.
'It was a perfect fit. I found a way to tell a story while still screaming, `Oh my God,' as there was a barbed wire baseball bat and flaming tables, which we don't do anymore because we are PG. You can still see that type of footage on WWE.com Legacy, but we don't do that on cable television anymore.''
• What was it like being involved in your first WrestleMania?
Styles: ``I would think that for announcers, especially if you grew up a WWE fan, it's the same deal. A lot of our WWE superstars will tell you they grew up watching Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant, and they wanted to be on this stage, and they are now.
'Well, I grew up listening to Vince McMahon and Jim Ross, and I said, `I want to be that person someday.' Really, the only person who supported me was my best friend. My teachers, even my parents told me it was a pipe dream, but my feeling was somebody is going to have to do that job. So why not me?
``So you have to work for it. You work two jobs, and you don't sleep. When I finally got to lose my WrestleMania virginity as I said on the air and as I'm saying it now -- I think that's PG putting it that way -- it was a blast.
``It's just as exciting now, my first time covering WrestleMania for WWE.com, and we're going to be doing post match interviews with winners and losers, and we do that for every pay-per-view, but for WrestleMania, I would be shocked if we don't have 1-million views. As many people are going to see the online interviews after the matches as see the pay-per-view itself worldwide, which to me is just mind blowing -- the relationship between television and the Internet.''
• What did you think of the April Fool's joke on WWE.com?
Styles: ``The April Fool's joke that we went with was not my idea. I got over-ruled. I wanted to go with a different one. We had three options. They all got approved by management. I wanted to go with an interview with Khali who speaks perfect English -- like with Matt Striker, five-syllable words, but they went with Vickie pregnant instead. I don't know if we fooled anybody, but it was fun.''
WWE fooled some on the Internet as wrestling Internet sites carried the information -- without checking -- as if it was true.
'I was like, `Let's not do the pregnancy. The pregnancy has been done to death, and they never turn out well, and nobody's going to believe it.' Nobody believed it.''
• How are you guys deciding the differential between hard news and creative on WWE.com?
Styles: ``In terms of WWE.com, we're an entertainment web site. We're more about Jeff Hardy getting pushed down the steps in a Boston hotel than we are about somebody having an altercation in the parking lot.
``However, once something like that does hit the mainstream news, we have to put it up there and try to fit it in a place that's appropriate. As far as I'm concerned, we are an entertainment web site. We are scripted entertainment which we make very clear to the public, and I think we should be a scripted web site. We should follow storylines.
``We don't need to follow hard news.''
• Who did you see as someone having a chance to do something good in WWE?
Styles: ``Matt Striker. He's a friend of mine. He knew at his size (5-10, 224) he wasn't going to be a main eventer. He got to wrestle at WrestleMania 23 in Detroit in front of 80,000 people, and they were using him as a manager which we really don't do here much.
``I knew he wanted to try out as an announcer. I said, `I really can't help you with that. I can throw your name out there.'
``What happened was when Mick Foley departed, Taz moved up to SmackDown, and there was an opening in [WWE's] ECW. It was that day that they were looking for somebody, and it was known Matt wanted an audition. He went out there and ran with the ball.
'I love Matt's color commentary because it's insightful. It's humorous. Some of the jokes a lot of people don't get. He's learned to be PG. One of the funniest things he did was making a joke, saying, `Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, like Guns N' Roses new album Chinese Democracy, uuhhk,' and then they wound up being a theme song for us two months later.
``So Matt cracks me up, and he loves being an announcer. He's probably enjoying this more than wrestling. He's just a lot of fun, and he's exactly like he is on TV. He's a know-it-all, quick witted. He's my kind of guy.''
• What did WWE.com do when Taz left WWE?
Styles: ``It went public. All we did on WWE.com was slide him over to alumni. His contract expired, and he didn't re-sign with the company.''
• Could you do WWE.com and TV announcing?
Styles: ``I really want to stay with WWE.com, and I couldn't do both. WWE.com is a full-time job, 24 hours a day.''
• What was it like coming from the grass-roots movement of ECW to the corporate world of WWE?
Styles: ``It wasn't difficult for me because for all the years I was an announcer with ECW, I also developed ECWWrestling.com and another wrestling news site, which I'm shocked that they hired me because I said some horrible things about my current employer back then. I also sold advertising and did marketing all those years.
``Coming to a corporate environment that also involved wrestling was perfect for me. Now this position with WWE.com, I think I've been groomed for this my whole life without knowing it because concurrently I was always involved in wrestling as talent and also involved in marketing and sales and building web sites.
``So when the company needed a WWE talent person who knows talent and knows all these other things to do the position, I was honored that I was offered the position by management. It's been a year, and it seems like a day.''
• WWE SmackDown and WWE's ECW are 6:45 p.m. Tuesday, July 14 at the American Airlines Arena in Miami.
Tickets, starting at $20, are on sale at the arena box office, Ticketmaster outlets and ticketmaster.com. Call 1-800-745-3000.
MiamiHerald.com