Exclusive Interview: Sean Mooney On Life After WWE, Podcasting, MLW Radio, Conrad Thompson & More

Bringing up that timeline right there, when you left WWF, did you go straight back to the morning show world?

Sean Mooney: Oh man, that's another incredible ride, too. I left the WWE in '93 and Vince [McMahon] was convinced I was going south, down to WCW. I told Vince, "No I just want to do other things." I still don't think he believed me until I showed up on WWOR [in New York] about a year later. But that's the truth. If I was gonna stay in professional wrestling and work in that world, I was going to work for the WWF or nobody.

So I actually didn't really know what the hell I was going to do, I'd had some offers and I got some representation and a year later I was working at WWOR and became one of the co-anchors.It was kind of a strange world to go from, that to the New York market, working news there. Phil Mushnick never forgave me. Whenever I would do a story or something he would put in his column "former WWF wrestling announcer Sean Mooney," he just despised Vince and anything attached to it.

But yeah and I did that and I worked in Boston for a couple of years and then came back here and worked for Fox Sports Arizona for about 10 years. I had a production company here and lived in Tucson... Of course my initial job, I started with Major League Baseball Productions. So I think I've had quite a different route to getting where I ended up here today.

A couple of podcasts ago you were talking about how your initial goal was that you wanted to be the host of an Entertainment Tonight like show. Is that still the goal? Or really are you doing what you want to be doing?

Sean Mooney: I actually had a couple of opportunities. I actually auditioned for Extra and Inside Edition and didn't get it. I was at the point where I'd come back out here after I left Boston and I was going to move my family to Los Angeles. I had a really good agent out there but I made a bunch of trips out there and I was just thinking, "Do I really want to raise my family here?" That's when I just made that decision and I haven't really looked back. But early on there, I mean that's when I left the WWF, that I wanted to get into entertainment. I'm glad I made that decision because it's been awesome having my kids grow up around their family. I didn't have that growing up here because all my family's back east, like my parents' relatives, so it was good to be here.

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Darren Paltrowitz is a New York resident with over 20 years of entertainment industry experience. He began working around the music business as a teenager, interning for the manager of his then-favorite band Superdrag. In the years following, he has worked with a wide array of artists including OK Go, They Might Be Giants, Mike Viola, Tracy Bonham, Loudness, Rachael Yamagata, and Amanda Palmer. Darren's writing has appeared in dozens of outlets including the New York Daily News, Inquisitr, The Daily Meal, The Hype Magazine, All Music Guide, Guitar World, TheStreet.com, Format Magazine, Businessweek, The Improper, Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Times, and the Jewish Journal. Darren is also the host of the "Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz" podcast, as co-produced with PureGrainAudio. He is also the author of two published books, including 2018's "Pocket Change: Your Happy Money" (Book Web Publishing) and 2019's "Good Advice From Professional Wrestling" (6623 Press).