Tony Chimel Made Jonathan Coachman Do A Push-Up For Vince McMahon

In an appearance on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, former WWE ring announcer Tony Chimel told the story of once racing former WWE personality Jonathan Coachmen in a one-mile foot race prior to taping SmackDown in Pittsburgh. Chimel had made a bet with Coachmen that Coachman couldn’t beat Chimel in a minute, a bet Chimel ultimately won.

“We’re setting up at State College there, and now we’re ready to do the race and they bring out like, camera guys” Chimel recalled. “(Michael) Cole was doing commentary with The Rock and Kevin Kelly. They were doing commentary on this thing. I don’t know where the tape is of this, but it’s probably worth some money, whoever’s got it now. But I decided to start the race at the same time with Coach.

“I was down to like a seven-minute mile at this point. And I’m like ‘geez, if he can run a six-minute mile, he’s going to have to run a six-minute mile. If he can run a six-minute mile, God bless him, you know?’ By the way, the girl’s track team was out on the track and when we went down there, people were explaining to them what was going on. ‘Hey, can we just have this track for like, 10 minutes? We want to do this race, it’s a fake belt.’ The girl’s track team was like, ‘yeah, go ahead. Use the facilities.’

“So they did that, we started the race, we go around the first lap and Coach is about, maybe 20 feet ahead of me maybe 30 feet ahead of me, and Bruce is timing us on the first lap. We go around and it’s like 1:25. So now we’re going around the second lap and Coach is still just a little bit ahead of me, you know? And I’m like, ‘well, he’s going to have to start opening up.’ We go around the third time, and he’s still like 20 or 30 feet ahead of me. And I’m like, ‘geez, this is the fourth lap. He’s going to have to start opening up.’

“I’m like, ‘I feel good,’ you know?’ So we’re coming around, coming around, and now we’re like around the stretch of the race…