Joey Styles

Styles is best known for his work in Extreme Championship Wrestling during its entire run, from 1993 to its 2001 bankruptcy. He debuted at the Super Summer Sizzler Spectacular show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 19, 1993. Styles was the sole host of *ECW Hardcore TV* and spent the early portion of the run as the promotion's only announcer. Providing both play-by-play and color commentary during television and pay-per-view broadcasts, Styles added his wrestling knowledge, enthusiasm, and comedic timing to the program. He briefly left ECW in 1994 only to return a few weeks later.

At Barely Legal, he became the first and only wrestling announcer in history to call a live pay-per-view event solo. Later on in the promotion, he was joined on commentary by Rick Rude on *Hardcore TV*, Joel Gertner for *ECW on TNN*, and later Cyrus for pay-per-views.

Styles signed a one night deal with World Wrestling Entertainment in 2005 to call the first-ever ECW One Night Stand event, where he and Mick Foley did commentary for the show.

On November 1, 2005, he made an appearance at World Wrestling Entertainment's Taboo Tuesday. Styles was brought in to fill-in for Jonathan Coachman, as Coachman had a match against Batista. Joey joined WWE's *Raw* as a play-by-play announcer on November 7. On December 4, 2005, it was confirmed by WWE.com that Joey signed a five-year contract to be the official play-by-play commentator for *Raw*. However, despite being the lead announcer for *Raw*, it was announced that he would not provide commentary for WrestleMania 22, which instead featured Jim Ross calling the matches for *Raw*.

On the May 1, 2006 edition of *Raw*, Styles announced that he was quitting by delivering a worked shoot promo, in which he bashed Vince McMahon, WWE, sports entertainment, and the fact that people "buy into this crap". To further the storyline, his profile was removed from both the *Raw* superstars section. Styles remained under contract with WWE after he quit *Raw*; however, making his next appearance at WWE versus ECW Head to Head. Here, he provided commentary with Tazz and announced that Paul Heyman had reinstated him as commentator of the new *ECW* brand of WWE. He provided commentary for ECW One Night Stand 2006 on June 11 and went on to announce ECW's weekly show on Sci-Fi. In April 2008, Styles began working on WWE.com, with Mike Adamle replacing him as ECW's play by play commentator. Styles was soon after promoted to Vice President of Digital Media Content.

As Vice President of Digital Media Content, Styles worked on WWE.com and the WWE App, writing and editing. Additionally, Styles hosted a show called the *Oh My God! Moment of the Week* that ran from September 2008 to December 2008. On the December 8, 2008 episode of *Raw*, Styles presented the *"O M G!" Moment of the Year* award at the 2008 Slammy Awards with Alicia Fox, saying his famous *"Oh My God!"* catchphrase.

In 2010, Styles' announcing contract expired, but he remained with WWE as a non-contracted employee and continued to host "History of ECW" on WWE Classics On Demand television service until it was discontinued in January 2014 because of the launch of WWE Network. On November 11, 2014, Styles and Paul Heyman hosted WWE Network special *ECW Exposed*.

On August 8, 2016, Styles was released from WWE.