WWE veteran says he was scared of "getting fired" after botching Cesaro's name

Former ROH World Champion Claudio Castagnoli

More often than not, wrestlers and wrestling personalities in WWE and other promotions find it challenging to maintain 'Kayfabe.' IMPACT Wrestling commentator Tom Hannifan also had a similar issue during an interview segment with Claudio Castagnoli, previously known as Cesaro, when he was working for the Stamford-based promotion.

Tom Hannifan, formerly known as Tom Phillips, began his WWE career in 2012. Hannifan began his journey as a backstage interviewer and went on to become one of the lead commentators on SmackDown in 2015.

After working with the promotion for almost a decade, Hannifan was released, and in 2022, he signed with IMPACT Wrestling and made his debut as their announcer at the Hard To Kill pay-per-view.

During a recent interview with Stephanie Chase on her YouTube channel, Tom Hannifan revealed that he had messed up on the commentary team and as a backstage interviewer on several occasions.

He shared an incident from 2015 when he botched Cesaro's name in WWE during an interview segment and was worried that this botch might cost him his job.

"Oh, I've messed up plenty of moves over the years. But I have slipped up on a name. I slipped up on Cesaro once upon a time. I was on the WWE app for anybody that remembers that and I called him 'Claudio' to his face. And he leaned in, and he went 'KAYFABE!' And I started sweating and turning beet red, and the second the camera went off, I'm like, 'I'm getting fired," Tom Haniffan said. [H/T Wrestling Inc.]

He mentioned that he tends to call people who he becomes close with by their real names as he builds a relationship with them beyond the characters they play on RAW or SmackDown.

"I called Cesaro 'Claudio' just because I got into a groove with certain people where I called them by their name because they're real people." [H/T Wrestling Inc.]

Tom Hannifan shares what it takes to become a commentator in WWE

During an interview with Chris Van Vliet, IMPACT Wrestling's play-by-play commentator gave some advice to future commentators on how to be good at the job and why WWE commentators such as Michael Cole are highly successful at it.

"It means, not sounding like a newscaster... No one talks like that. This is how people talk. I always... I've talked about Mike Tirico and Michael Cole, that's their normal speaking voice is that they are just delivering and it's amplified a bit. If you sound like a wheatherman, it just feels so unnaturel." [00:27 - 00:50]