Murphy’s Law: The Early Days of Tammy Sytch in the WWF

Brian Damage

We are all well aware of Tammy Sytch’s fall from grace the last few years. From at one point being the most downloaded female on AOL, to her “Sunny Days” in the WWF, to becoming a WWE Hall of Famer, to her battles with drug and alcohol addiction, her multiple arrests and ultimately prison for killing a man while driving drunk. Her rise and fall from fame and fortune is a sad tale. To think it all started innocently enough for Tammy as a med student not wanting anything to do with professional wrestling. This is a look at her early days with the WWF and how it shaped her future…

In 1994, Tammy Sytch was living in Knoxville, Tennessee attending medical school at the University of Tennessee. While Sytch had aspirations to one day become a doctor, her live in boyfriend Chris Candido had dreams to make it big as a professional wrestler. At the time, Candido was working for Jim Cornette’s Smoky Mountain Wrestling with Tammy serving as a heel manager making some extra money. While Tammy had no aspirations to have a career in pro wrestling, she did it to spend time with Chris and help his career move forward. Despite her lack of interest, she seemed like a natural in front of the cameras. Cornette’s SMW promotion had a working relationship with the World Wrestling Federation and the higher ups in the WWF took notice of Sytch.

WWF executive Bruce Prichard called her and offered her a tryout with the company. Chris was not offered the same opportunity. That audition would fall on her 21st birthday on December 7th, 1994. She was flown first class to New York and taken by limo to her hotel in Stamford, Connecticut. Tammy was sent to a make up artist and was asked to read lines off of a teleprompter. For Sytch, this was a foreign concept to her. While working for Smoky Mountain, everything was adlibbed…she never needed, nor used a script or teleprompter to do her speaking.

According to Tammy, she stuttered, stammered and mispronounced a few names for her brief audition. She said it was an utter disaster. When it was all over, she returned to her hotel, called Chris and cried uncontrollably. Thinking she embarrassed herself and was never going to be called back to the company, Sytch returned home in Knoxville to focus her attention on becoming a doctor. Little did she know, that the WWF would call her back a few days later and offer her a job.

To her shock and surprise, the WWF felt that her stunning good looks and TV appeal could work with the right tutelage. Sytch was offered the job of a WWF broadcaster that would pay her $500 a day. She would be required to work three days a week, have a wardrobe allowance and have all of her expenses paid for traveling back and forth from Tennessee to Connecticut. In total, Tammy would be paid approximately $1,675 weekly. It was an offer Tammy couldn’t pass up.

Before her first official day as a WWF on air personality, she sat down with CEO Vince McMahon who wanted to change her name. He wanted to make her Irish and decided on the name of ‘Tamara Murphy.’ Vince then personally sat down with Tammy and helped her reading from a teleprompter and worked on her delivery and television presence. She readily admitted she still had a thick New Jersey accent from where she was raised. Vince supposedly hated the way Sytch said ‘Madison Square Garden’ and worked with her on getting rid of the accent. She was told by production staff, that Vince rarely if ever offers his time to a talent like he did for Tammy.

Once, Vince was satisfied with the way Tammy spoke and looked, she was ready to start filming segments for the WWF’s Event Center. Her day would begin around 7 in the morning in the make up chair and then do run downs for the company’s house shows across the country until about 10:30 at night. The days were long and stressful, but the money and opportunity for Tammy was amazing. So much so, that Tammy decided to quit medical school to focus on her new full time job.

Reportedly, Vince wanted to get her settled in as the Event Center reporter and then eventually transition her into being a co host of their Saturday morning USA network ‘WWF Mania’ show with Todd Pettengill. Sytch as Tamara Murphy did a screen test with Pettengill and Sytch said it went very well. Unfortunately, Vince felt that she wasn’t ready for that gig and hired the more seasoned Stephanie Wiand for the job. Pettengill would later say that he genuinely liked Wiand, but felt that he had much better on air chemistry with Tammy. It was all for naught, because Vince was the one calling the shots.

While the opportunity to co host a WWF show was not in the cards, McMahon had another plan in place. Vince had an idea to start making the Tamara Murphy character become jaded and arrogant. She would be promoted to become a backstage interviewer and start siding with all the heels while putting down the babyfaces. This would eventually lead Tamara Murphy becoming a heel manager. That was the initial plan, but as with many things in the WWF…plans change.

Under the suggestion various people including Jim Cornette and Tammy herself, her real life boyfriend Chris Candido was brought into the company. Vince agreed to pair the couple up on screen, but made them babyface cheerleaders named ‘Team Spirit.’ The couple absolutely hated the gimmick idea and it eventually morphed into the couple becoming heel fitness gurus named Sunny and Skip…’The Bodydonnas.’ The Tamara Murphy experiment was completely dropped. It is interesting to think what might have been if Tammy remained a broadcaster. What would her life be like? Would it be better or would she inevitably crash out like she did?