Joey Styles

Joseph Carmine Bonsignore (born July 14, 1971) better known by his ring name Joey Styles, is an American former professional wrestling commentator.

He is best known for his time with ECW and WWE.

Before working for WWE, Styles was a full-time professional in the field of print advertising sales in New York City.

He started selling digital advertising with WWE and is now selling digital advertising full-time in New York City.

Bonsignore's family moved from The Bronx to Connecticut when he was in middle school, where he still resides.

He is of Italian descent.

Bonsignore chose to attend Hofstra University over other schools because they had a strong communications program with their own television studio and station, and because the Long Island, New York campus was close to Pro Wrestling Illustrated's offices.

He hoped to get an internship at Pro Wrestling Illustrated, which he eventually did.

That internship got him backstage at a World Championship Wrestling show where he first met Paul Heyman, his future employer.

Later, Heyman visited the offices of Pro Wrestling Illustrated and Bonsignore showed him a tape of his announcing with the North American Wrestling Alliance.

That led to Heyman hiring Styles for ECW when he graduated from Hofstra in 1993.

Joey Styles got his start in professional wrestling announcing while still attending Hofstra University by working for Tony Capone's North American Wrestling Alliance.

He would often split time with former WWE announcer Craig DeGeorge or join DeGeorge for a two-man commentary team.

Styles would also host a segment called "NAWA Superstar Stats" where he would talk about the wrestlers and their accomplishments.

The NAWA aired on Sportschannel America (now NBC Sports Network through mergers and acquisitions) for a brief time.

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 also worked full-time in ad sales for News America Marketing, a division of News Corp in New York City.

After ECW, Styles briefly appeared in XPW but quit after one show, returning all checks that he had been paid.

After a brief sabbatical from the wrestling industry, Joey Styles would return to wrestling announcing for Court Bauer's Major League Wrestling as the "voice of MLW."

Joey's return to wrestling would be heralded as he was one of the first names to be announced by the company during its 2002 launch.

Initially calling the action for MLW's home video releases, Styles's presence would grow upon MLW inking a major television pact with Sun Sports and several other international distributors.

Hosting the weekly 11 pm series, "MLW Underground," Styles returned his to his roots in the booth as a solo broadcaster, praised for his calling of memorable matches including a barbed wire match between Terry Funk and Steve Corino, amongst others.

Styles continued in advertising sales full-time.

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

He hosted and announced Hardcore Homecoming two nights earlier from the former ECW Arena in Philadelphia.

The sold-out event featured former ECW stars Shane Douglas, The Sandman, Sabu, Terry Funk, Raven, The Blue Meanie, Mikey Whipwreck, Jerry Lynn, New Jack, 2 Cold Scorpio and more.

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.

This would be the first time in Styles' career that he would work in wrestling full-time.

In an earlier interview done by WWE.com, he mentioned that becoming the voice of Raw was a childhood dream come true.

Styles also stated that calling WrestleMania was one of his lifelong dreams growing up.

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.