Graham Cawthon of TheHistoryofWWE.com sent this in:
He was affectionately known as the Crispy Cruiser. For the better part of a decade Chris Cruise provided pay-by-play for some of the NWA/WCW’s top syndicated programs, working alongside the likes of Terry Funk, Dusty Rhodes, and Larry Zbyszko.
The History of WWE is proud to offer a new hour-long audio interview with Cruise in which he speaks in detail about growing up a wrestling fan and how he went from a broadcaster at CNN to calling the action in Ted Turner’s National Wrestling Alliance.
Highlights of the interview include:
– Memories of growing up a WWWF fan in Portland, Maine and attending shows headlined by Chief Jay Strongbow
– The night he saw Prof. Toru Tanaka shoot on Andre the Giant
– What he was doing for the WWF at the time of the first WrestleMania
– How reading the Wrestling Observer helped land him a job with WCW – twice!
– Traveling to TV tapings with Gordon Solie, Lance Russell, and Bob Caudle
– How a rift between he and Kevin Sullivan led to Chris being fired his first time around
– The night he and Terry Funk got drunk while calling the action
– The night he was flown to a house show for a NWA world title change that ended up not happening
– The high pay and perks WCW gave him for working only twice a month
– What he thought of Dusty Rhodes and Larry Zbyszko as broadcasters
– Providing play-by-play with Mike Tenay for the “When Worlds Collide” lucha libre pay-per-view
– And plenty of backstage and in-ring incidents involving Gene Okerlund, Lex Luger, Tony Schiavone, Jim Ross, Road Warrior Hawk, Bruno Sammartino, Ric Flair, and more
The audio interview is now available online in its entirety at http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com