David Penzer Recalls WWE Purchasing WCW, Nearly Landing Announcing Job With WWE

David Penzer was recently interviewed on The Wrestling Inc. Daily, and he discussed a variety of topics, including WWE purchasing WCW, nearly signing with WWE after the deal, and much more. Here are some of the highlights:

David Penzer on WWE purchasing WCW: “I was lucky enough to be an employee, so that was the opposite side to me not making big time money because they’re paying everybody, referees, big time money, but I was employed. So my raises were based on my reviews. I never had a contract in this business, not once to this day. Has anybody ever had me under contract? I was an employee of TNA. I’m an independent contractor with Impact right now. That worked out in WCW because you ended up getting your full severance pay plus insurance and all your benefits for as many months, as as many years as you worked for the company. So I ended up with eight months of full pay and all my benefits, which saved me because I had no plan B.”

On nearly landing a job with WWE: “It’s funny because after the show with [Buff] Bagwell and Booker T, John Laurinaitis called me and said, ‘You’ll never guess what happened on Monday in Washington.’ And I said, ‘What happened John?’ And he said, ‘Somebody asked Vince McMahon who he wanted to ring announce the WCW match,’ and Vince’s response was, ‘Well, who’s the WCW ring announcer?’ And somebody said, ‘David Penzer.’ Vince’s response was, ‘Well, is he here?’ And their response was, ‘No, we didn’t think of bringing him up.’ So I think Stacy Keibler ended up doing it, which was kind of frustrating because it would have been nice to have at least gotten shot. The next week, it happened to be in Atlanta, where I live. So he goes, ‘Why don’t you come over, be my guest, and you never know, I’ll tell him you’re here.’ So I went over to the arena, and that’s the first time I got to meet Howard Finkel and some of my old friends and met some new ones. And the production meeting went way late. So I had a bad feeling about it, and that’s when he came out and said, ‘They’re switching the WCW thing to a WCW – ECW co-invasion. So we’re moving in a different direction.’ He said, ‘You can stay and watch the show.’ I was like, ‘Nah, I won’t watch, but thank you.’”