Original subtitles

Kiss my ass.

Oh my God.

It's Tommy.

It's Tommy.

Unbelievable. Unbeatable.

Nothing beats, you know, my time in ECW. It was the greatest time of my life.

Word association.

ECW, fun.

End of story.

We were changing everything about wrestling. That's the way we felt, and

what we believed.

It was like nothing I've ever seen before, and I became a fan instantly.

ECW was coming out with violence, and the crowd just ate it up. Those fans

absolutely rabid. The Philadelphia fans are some of the most vocal.

And at times, most violent.

There were things that we couldn't do that Paul Heyman was able to do and

attracted an audience because of it. That was smart.

He showed us that you could appeal to one segment of the audience and make a

of it. I believe Paul Lee is one of the greatest minds in the history of

wrestling. I didn't think it was going to fall.

This was Paul's baby.

It just gave me a realization.

Appreciate what you have today, because it may not be there tomorrow.

When Paul Hamid came into ECW, Todd Gordon was the owner of ECW. At the

was called Eastern Championship Wrestling.

And Eddie Gilbert was the booker there, matchmaker.

Todd and Eddie had a bad falling out. And Todd turned to me because I was...

Eddie's closest confidant and said, what do I do here?

And he had a big show coming up at the Bingo Hall, which was dubbed the ECW

Arena. I thought that the business, the industry, the presentation needed to

change in the same way that music had changed because music was all about

and Motley Crue and Winger and all these hair bands.

And then along came Nirvana and bam, the whole industry changed.

So in the same way, I thought wrestling needed to change in that.

Wrestling had become the equivalent of hair bands, and we needed wrestling's

version of Nirvana to come along and just shake everything up. And Todd gave

his blessing. Come on in, take over the show, and do what you have to do. And on

September 18th, 1993, we opened up the show at the ECW Arena with an act called

The Public Enemy.

Flyboy, Rock O' Rock, and Johnny Grunge, The Public Enemy.

I knew Rocko Rock for a long time.

Johnny Grunge I met on an overseas tour.

They were opponents all the time, and I figured they had such great chemistry as

opponents, boy, they'd make a great tag team.

They'd go on air, they were two white guys that were just rapping and dancing

badly and just having fun, but it was entertaining.

But then once that bell rang, they were two rugged guys from Philly that could

fight. You could put together a package that nobody else had tapped into yet.

Rocco Rocco went up top. He couldn't. Oh, my God.

Rocco Rocco went through both tables.

They were a super popular tag team.

The Tasmania.

No one is more extreme than the Tasmania.

I knew Paul from just working in Independence through the Northeast, you

in the late 80s, early 90s.

Paul called me, and Paul said, well, listen, I got a date for you against

guy Sabu. Do you know who he is? I go, well, I've heard of Sabu.

He said, well, I want you to wrestle him. You think you could have a good

At the time, I just wanted to get booked anywhere I could.

Yeah, sure, we'd have a great match, you know.

I went to Philly and wrestled Sabu, and we had a pretty intense, very physical

match. These two men are a couple of animals. This match will be taking place

a zoo.

As far as getting any of the dates.

I ended up working for Paul for about close to seven years after that. We have

met a new sport in NWA, Eastern Championship Wrestling. We have met

the most animalistic wrestler in the history of this sport. We have met

Shabu had developed a reputation in FMW in Japan.

I looked at Sabu and I was mesmerized by him because here was someone that had

scars all over his body and a total disregard for his own well -being. And

looks like he will fight you to the death.

And to me, in developing the aura of ECW,

Sabu was the main key to it all. Because here was a guy that we could put up his

picture on television and people would say, Yo, that's difficult.

Oh my God, Sabu!

Here we go!

He was crazy and he was so innovative.

The way he could, he would use a chair as a weapon and jump from a chair to the

top rope to a moon vault.

Things that Sabu physically could do are amazing.

Sabu going up top with the chair.

Atomic Arabian Face Buster!

First time for that finisher here in the ECW arena.

And what this ECW is doing is educating you people once again that there is

wrestling spelled W -R -E -S -T -L -I -N -G out

there. There would not have been an ECW without Terry Funk.

He was the only veteran from that era.

who had the reputation of being legitimately tough, but also had the

sense to realize, I've got to get the next generation ready for there to be a

business, for there to be an industry for me to leave behind something, too.

And Terry had that mindset. A lot of the veterans back then were unwilling.

to get the young guys ready. A lot of the veterans were still clinging and

clutching to their spot, to their reputation of being the top guy. I want

the champion.

I want to be the top guy. And Terry Funk just said, oh, I can make him.

Oh, I can make him too.

Oh, let me make him. I'll do something special with him. And did, with

that he worked with.

For those of you who were not at the ECW Arena this past Saturday night, you may

have missed.

what many are now calling the greatest wrestling match to take place in this

country in quite some time.

It

was

a three -way dance. The first one ever, three guys fighting for a title.

Shane Douglas, Sabu, and Terry Funk.

They went to a one -hour time limit.

At the end of the match, all the fans were standing on their feet, and they

applauding all the wrestlers' hard work.

It was like go time for this company. You knew something special was here, and

we started running more and more towns after that.

I got a couple words for you. Tonight, I took the so -called self -proclaimed

Terry Funk, and I beat his right in the center of the ring.

I took Sabu, the crazy man of wrestling, and I beat his ass. Center of the ring.

I sent them both back to the dressing room, Mr. Gordon. As a result of that, I

want you to declare me right now in front of this TV camera, in front of the

entire world as the ECW heavyweight champion to prove that I am the

Sherry saw it. The whole world saw it. Philadelphia, you witnessed it live.

Professional wrestling as it was meant to be. Ass kicking.

Take no names.

Beat the hell out of whoever's in front of you.

Terry Funk, I smashed your knee to oblivion. When I took you with that

outside the ring, even the crazy man Sabu and his people looked and they

oh my God, it's the end of an era.

Finally put to rest the Funk family.

I don't give a... You keep your mouth shut.

You keep your mouth shut. You can fire me if you want to. You can take me out

this territory if you want to. But you can't stop the franchise.

Some place, some time, I will be heavyweight champion.

Shane Douglas was pissed off at WCW and Ric Flair and would say anything on the

mic and vent his frustration with the industry.

If you watch early ECW, Paul Heyman was pissed off and hell -bent to take down

WCW.

had left WCW. He was actually supposed to come here and do the whole Paul E.

Dangerously in WWE, but he was just waiting.

And then he started with the whole ECW thing.

Paul had painted Eric Bischoff and WCW as the

most vile people and organization that you could ever...

Ever work for it. You were joining the Tally band if you went and joined up

WCW and Eric Bischoff. Eric Bischoff was Satan.

I didn't like them and they didn't like me.

I didn't like the way I was treated. They didn't like the way I treated them

back. I pretty much told them to go fuck themselves when they were treating

people like shit.

And I don't think they enjoyed that.

This was during the Bill Watts administration.

And Bill wasn't really a people person.

I think why he started ECW was because he hated WCW so much. He didn't have any

beef with WWE.

He hated WCW and everything that they stood for.

He had a bitter contract dispute with them.

They screwed him over, and he wanted to do nothing but take them down.

Look at this unbelievably hot rookie here, Tommy Dreamer.

I showed up with my bags.

And Taz was booked, and I got to work, and I was employed for the entire time,

for seven or eight years.

That

was

my heart, and that was my passion.

All I ever wanted to do was wrestle.

I never wanted to pitch in Game 7 of the World Series. I never wanted to throw

the touchdown in the Super Bowl. I just wanted to wrestle and, you know, be a

professional wrestler.

Look at these fans.

They're actually applauding Tommy Dreamer. Can you believe it? In this,

vicious, hardcore wrestling city in the world, Philadelphia?

Unbelievable.

This fan man, deep in his training regimen, they're doing some 12 -ounce

As much as anyone else, Sandman was the embodiment of extreme championship

wrestling. He was a huge part of our shows. The whole music entrance and

the cigarettes and drinking beer and smashing the beer can until he bleeds

the head before he ever starts the match. His matches became secondary.

He was just a tough guy looking for a fight.

And people followed him.

And there's Tommy Dreamer!

Sandman misses!

Dreamer unloads and a Sandman!

Tommy Dreamer to the rescue!

All right!

Women just can't Tommy Dreamer!

Around that time, Michael Fay was convicted of a crime in Singapore, and

a big deal here in the United States. He was going to get caned, and how could

America let someone get caned?

We had the Sandman who walked around, and he was drinking beer and smoking

cigarettes, coming to the ring.

In the early stages of ECW, I was labeled a pretty boy.

And Paul came up with the idea of a Singapore Cane match.

And the loser of the match had to get fiended.

And I lost.

Oh, I don't want to watch this.

I can't look.

The first time he hit me, boom, I went down. The place cheered.

The second time he hit me, the place cheered again.

The third time, he hit me so hard.

they could start seeing my back start to bleed.

Dreamer has been busted open. He's bleeding across his back.

I remember the first couple of shots.

They hurt like hell.

And then after that, adrenaline kicks in. No matter how much I hurt and really

wanted to stay down, there was nothing that would have made me.

Thank you, sir. May I have another?

And Dreamer opts for the king.

I remember fans telling me to stay down. I remember two girls crying, just

telling me to stay down. People I didn't know.

Oh, my God!

I just kept getting up and getting up, and it was brutal.

And ECW preyed on human emotion with a lot of angles.

Polk made that Rocky type of story.

I remember facing off with the Sandman after that.

And his lip was quivering because it was so emotional, and he was like, oh, my

God, you know, we're living this great moment right now.

That was a turning point in my career, but it was also a turning point in ECW

where it was a form of redemption through violence for me and for the

It's the best drug in the world, that rush from the fans.

It's amazing.

And that's what always kept me going pretty much with fans.

We did a lot of things with the Sandman and Tommy Dreamer that broke a lot of

taboos. We did the thing where Tommy Dreamer had a cane match with the

and Dreamer knocked the cigarette into Sandman's eye and then cane Sandman in

the other eye. And Sandman was blind and we tore down the dressing room wall.

And you saw both the good guys and the bad guys.

commingling over this hurt wrestler.

And Tommy Dreamer saying, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you.

Which was really taboo back then.

And then the Sandman, to his credit, stayed at home for a month so that

saw him around town.

So that he didn't say, yeah, they're doing their thing when a Sandman's

He stayed home.

He never left his house. He never answered his door.

His wife answered the door. It was unheard of back then for somebody to

the storyline to this degree.

And then the Sandman was going to retire and came out to the arena blind and

peeled away the blindfold and came the crap out of Tommy Dreamer.

And it was one of the most shocking moments of the early days of ECW. And

one of the loudest, because boy, did that hook the audience.

When ECW was first starting, there was a lot more gimmicks in professional

wrestling. It was more garnered towards children.

ECW was mainly that.

18 to 34, male demographic of testosterone -filled ass -kicking,

hot women, and there was also a lot of blood, which was a no -no in WWE and

And also, there was a lot of women getting their butt kicked from men.

You know, and WWE didn't care.

WCW didn't care. The wrestling fans and the Internet and all that, well, some

people were offended, but everyone was talking.

You can respect the contributions of Lou Fez and Buddy Rogers and Pat O 'Connor

and Ric Flair and all those people that preceded before you, but there comes a

time where that era is dead.

Nobody wanted to see that type of wrestling anymore. They wanted something

extreme.

And off to the races we went.

I came to ECW from WCW as part of like a little bit of a talent exchange.

There was a dream match that real hardcore wrestling fans wanted to see

as Cactus Jack against Sabu, who was their top guy and doing some really

revolutionary things.

And WCW was attempting to establish a relationship with them, and they thought

sending me over for this dream match would be a good way to kind of further

relationship.

Cactus Jack McFoley came to ECW the first time for a lawsuit between ECW and

WCW and was part of a settlement or an agreement that was made.

Mick and I always wanted to do business together, and we worked with each other

in WCW.

And then when ECW came along and there was an opportunity for us to work

together, we both jumped all over it.

It's your friend Cactus Jack bringing you tidings from World Championship

Wrestling. What this belt here says is that Cactus Jack is one half of the best

tag team champion in the world.

And it means a lot to me. These people say it's the first belt, it's the first

title that Cactus Jack has had in a long time, and indeed it is very dear to me.

Not anymore!

Not anymore. You might think it's nice for Cactus Jack to come in, give one of

the performances of his life, lose, and walk away seeing I still got a title.

But it's not true. Bang, bang.

Because tonight, I lost the three titles that I'd held for the past five years.

Most suicidal wrestler, ugliest wrestler, and Jack Kevorkian's favorite

wrestler.

I got a lot of heat for spitting on the WCW tag belts. I still maintain that

people in charge would not have been so upset, Ric Flair in particular, if

they'd actually seen the interview instead of just hearing about it. It

what I was doing.

I was saying the tag team belt was important to me, but not as important as

pride, which I felt like I had lost that night at the ECW arena. I was told,

hey, help these guys out. And I wanted to help them out not only with what I

could do in the ring, but with what I could do on the mic.

And I thought Sabu deserved to be established as a top guy, and I thought

what I could to make that happen.

And there goes Sabu!

Mikey Whitbrook was part of our ring crew.

And these kids worked on the ring crew for free as long as they could fly

the ring a little bit and just be noticed.

And we noticed Mikey Whitbrook, and he was 19 years old, and he would take a

bump, and he had such sympathy.

And so we asked him if he'd like to wrestle. And he said, oh, my God, it's

dream to wrestle. And he was trained, and so we put him in the ring. And the

key was we never gave him an offensive maneuver.

Mikey Whitbrick just taking the beating of his life. I've never seen this kid

land a punch, a shot, a kick, anything on anybody ever.

The next thing you know, he'd come out and the audience would just explode.

And people fell in love with him.

And here you see the upset of the year.

One, two, and three. And just like that, we had new ECW Tag Team

Champions.

Do you believe in miracles?

Mikey, the public enemy, is real, real mad. You know what that means?

It means I'm going to die.

He likes it.

Mikey really, really likes it.

He took the best beatings of anybody you'd ever seen. And people fell in love

with him. We needed to do something that

separated us from the old school of the business.

And our main singles wrestler was the franchise Shane Douglas.

And Shane was in the tournament in the ECW arena to crown the new NWA

heavyweight champion.

And we knew that the NWA was everything we wanted to get away from.

Old school, old mentality.

And we wanted to shake everything and everybody up.

As the new ECW heavyweight champion of the

world.

Shane Douglas declaring himself ECW world champion.

We have set out to change the face of professional wrestling.

So tonight, let the new era begin.

The era of the sport of professional wrestling.

When Shane grabbed that belt and threw it down, it was crazy.

And I couldn't believe what was going on. Nobody knew. I guess Paul and Shane

were the only people who knew. When Shane Douglas took the NWA World's

Heavyweight Championship with its lineage dating back to 1905 with George

Hackenschmidt and Jim Lundis and threw it down and proclaimed the Eastern

Championship Wrestling title the Extreme Championship Wrestling World's

Heavyweight Championship, it ushered in...

the era that we were looking to channel.

Just watching it as a wrestling fan, what I thought it was, was Paul Heyman,

Todd Gordon, Shane Douglas, everybody who was a part of Eastern Championship

Wrestling at the time, trying to basically break away from the tradition

National Wrestling Alliance.

And that is one that probably...

Most historic moments I've ever witnessed in my career. It was

to see that happen and to see all the fallout between Dennis Carl Lewis and

NWA board.

What happened tonight was a disgrace.

I'm disappointed in it. Shane Douglas is the NWA champion.

He threw the belt down. He had no right to do that.

And Paul Heyman and ECW, which basically just made ECW even stronger afterwards.

Well, as of noon today, I have folded NWA Eastern Championship Wrestling.

In its place will be ECW, Extreme Championship Wrestling.

And we recognize the franchise Shane Douglas as our World Heavyweight

I don't know if ECW could have been born anywhere but Philadelphia.

Because Philadelphia had this rabid audience that both...

WWE and WCW fought for the NWA at the time back in the 1980s. WWE would

run the Spectrum with Hulk Hogan, and NWA would run the Civic Center with Ric

Flair, and they'd go head -to -head on the same day.

So from the ashes of a wrestling business that had fallen onto its ass

1993 rose this phoenix of a promotion that people were getting behind.

And people could point to and say, My hometown promotion.

And then people from New York started coming down and people from Pittsburgh

started coming over and people from New Jersey started filtering in and people

from Baltimore started coming up.

And that's when it just started to really grow.

Towards the end of 94 into 95, that's when Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Dean

Malenko all came in, and we were then known as, oh, my God, you have some

wrestlers there. Two Colts Scorpio, Ron Simmons, and it was just a place to

watch.

Coming to ECW, I felt I was definitely bringing something different because,

know, there's a lot of the guys that were slamming people through tables and

hitting them with chairs and candlesticks and all this.

And I was going out there and just wrestling. They had me and I was with

the time and Eddie. And we were like straight wrestlers. So that was very

different, which was appealing to the fans.

The fans loved it. You know, it was great because these are hardcore fans

wanted to see blood and guts and pans.

Paul gave us the time to go out there and wrestle.

You know, and Paul Heyman gave me the opportunity.

They took a chance and it worked.

They brought a style that was different than tape fist and barbed wire baseball

bats and brawls all over the arena. They brought a pure wrestling ethic to ECW

that, again, helped us expand our audience because we didn't just have the

violence and the tables and the chaos. We also had the best wrestling that you

could find anywhere else.

And that was a necessary, necessary component into building the ECW

ECW was counterculture. It was cutting edge.

It was fan oriented. We wanted it to look more like a reality based product

where, you know, all of a sudden the spot happened, you run around the corner

and you catch it, you know, more excitement.

There was no way to compete with the production values that Ted Turner or

McMahon could afford.

They had million -dollar, multi -million -dollar budgets. We didn't.

We had a very simple philosophy when it came to our wrestlers.

Accentuate the positives.

Hide the negatives.

Well, if the negative is that we don't have the budget to compete with WWE and

WCW on lighting and pyro, why go there?

Hide it.

Accentuate the positives. Best interviews.

Most action, wildest brawls, best wrestling, highest flying

these different things that we could do better than everybody else.

We're going to accentuate that.

Why be second best at anything?

Why not say, screw the lights, screw the pyro? Here it is, down and dirty. It's

all about the presentation.

It's all about the audience's participation in the show.

They had the chance to boo, and we leave it in.

We leave in everything as opposed to trying to disguise it.

And I think that's what really gave the product its alternative edge, where,

hey, listen, we make mistakes.

We fuck up, and that's what it is. And when we have to go and try to disguise

that, why?

It happened, and everyone knows it happened.

If anything ever went wrong, we went public and we said, that's not

Where a wrestler injures himself, they just write him off the storyline. We

public on TV and said, hey, look, Benoit broke, you know, Sabu's neck. And we'd

slow it and we'd show the telestrator how the impact and all this other stuff.

And everything that went wrong, we showed the fans respect.

The audience reaction is what we strived for. It was the concept.

It was the strategy.

Let's give the audience something they can believe in and get into and be part

of to such a degree that when they leave, they know they are part of the

They were extremely interactive with the product, and they loved that part of

it. I mean, they were involved with the show, and that's what it was about.

Kind of almost like a cult atmosphere at UCW, not only in the locker room and in

the back.

but in the crowd as well. You felt that you were part of something special, and

it was something special.

The fans at an ECW show were as much a part of the show as the wrestlers, if

more. They knew they can come, and they felt like part of the show. We made them

feel as important as we were. Probably some of the greatest wrestling fans of

all time.

They were a very unique set of fans.

They knew everything about you from the first day you ever stepped into a ring.

At the time, there wasn't a lot of internet.

It was all tape traders.

And they all knew exactly who I was from Japan, and they knew everything about

me, and they were very, very knowledgeable fans.

I tell you, they were more creative than some of the stuff we did. The fans were

really entertaining in their own way. The audience could make a wrestler a

superstar. They loved the wrestlers, and they cheered for who they loved, and

they booed for who they hated, and they were passionate about it. The wrestlers

appreciated that as well.

That audience could take a nobody and make them like that, a star.

And, of course, if they turned their backs on you, they knew that person

going to last.

We wrestled in arenas that sometimes, I swear to you, were 105, 110 degrees, no

air conditioning.

And those fans would pack that arena wet and then stick it on top of each other,

and they didn't care.

And they came because they knew they were going to get a compelling,

entertaining three-, four -hour show. And that's what we gave them every

time.

The fans of ECW actually have their own fans.

Fans that sat in the front row at the Philly ECW Arena dressed the same way

every time. You'd always see the hat guy, we called him that, the straw hat.

Every show that we did at the arena, you'd see the same people just about in

same seats.

They were truly, truly loyal to the ECW Arena.

They had to be the wildest bunch of fans I think I've ever performed in front

of. The energy that like 2 ,000 people had would fill the arena like 20 ,000

people.

They knew a lot about wrestling and what went into having good matches.

And while they could be very appreciative of a good match, they could

downright brutal.

on a match that wasn't so good. They were bloodthirsty. They actually bought

things to the ring, to the shows, to give to the wrestlers.

In the early days of ECW, we used to have bring -your -own -weapons matches.

Fans would bring me weapons.

No matter what you brought in, we would use it.

Frying pans, oars, all sorts of, you know, weapons for the wrestlers to hit

themselves with.

Girls used to do a thing where the fans would just hold up their chairs, and I

would just take the guy's head and keep wearing it, and the fans would hold it.

I'd be knocking down fans, and they would just love it. They were all part

the show.

You look in the crowd, and almost everybody's wearing a black t -shirt.

look more like the crowd that would be at a rock and roll concert, you know,

screaming their heads off, that are there screaming you. And they're just

waiting for wrestlers' lips. They can say, you effed up, you effed up. It's

of their deal, and they're just so into it. They like to see people get hurt.

They also like to see good wrestling.

The fans in ECW definitely got their money's worth.

The fans.

respected the hell out of every single wrestler.

They appreciated everybody's hard work. They were so into everything he did. I

remember one night watching at ECW Arena, Bam Bam Bigelow took Spike Dudley

pressed him over his head, threw him into the crowd. At a normal wrestling

event, the crowd would have spread out and just let him hit the concrete. They

caught him and then body -surfed him around the building.

The audience was the story. The audience interaction was ECW. It was our

concept.

It's what made us different. We had the rabid, loyal, cult -like fans.

Saturday morning at 9 a .m., there would be 300 fans in the parking lot waiting

for the 8 o 'clock show to open the door.

They were incredibly smart.

They were all on the internet trying to find out whatever they could about the

guys, the ins and outs, the working. They were responsible for the whole

taking off.

Still, I hear those in my head, ECW, ECW.

The fans never let me forget it. Every time I walked out of that curtain,

always chant ECW.

I think that's the greatest thing with the fans have always been to me, is

appreciate for all they did.

For the company, they never let me forget it, and I never will. This is the

Arena!

From the Bowery, this is Raven!

I love the Raven character, and the Raven character motivated me.

It inspired me to be more creative.

He could do anything that I imagined, and I had a performer that would

grasp it and embrace it and have a passion for it, the likes of which I'd

seen before and may never see again.

Tommy Dreamer, who has fought so hard to achieve respect as a hardcore wrestler,

cannot go on. With his career, he is obsessed with beating Raven.

The feud between me and Raven was probably one of the best feuds in ECW

for the simple fact of I never beat him.

For three years, I never beat him. And every time I'd come so close, I would

somehow just not pull it out.

Some punk that I've known since I'm 12 years old won't get out of my life. I

can't get my hand raised, no matter how much I beat his ass.

We went to summer camp together as kids, and I was a high school jock who got

along with everyone. He was an outcast, and he came back to get his revenge on

me. He brought in a fat girl from camp who used to like me, and she came back

a Playboy playmate, as in Beulah McGillicuddy, and she wanted her revenge

Tommy had never been accepted by the audience.

And Tommy went like this, and he did Raven's pose, and he tilted his head

and the audience started chanting, he's hardcore, because they had been riding

Tommy and riding Tommy, and finally they took him in and accepted him.

Paul had allowed myself and Raven a lot of creative freedom, which

is a blessing.

because a lot of times you're just told this is what you have to do. Here's

someone telling you, what do you want to do?

You're like, what?

It was Raven and Dreamer, but then we'd start incorporating other people like

the Stephen Richards, like the Blue Me, Bula McGillicuddy, the Pitbulls, Brian

Lee, and so many things spurned off of that, and so many people's lives were

affected by it.

went on, Sabu and I, we ended up being partners and we won the tag team title.

Sabu and I did not get along.

I couldn't stand him and he couldn't stand me. And that's the gospel truth.

Pat and Sabu, this is a view. You can feel the hatred and it's only going to

intensify. I was really angry with Sabu when he left.

What happened was Sabu and I were going into a big match as partners and Sabu

I told me the week before that he was being booked in Japan.

Make a long story short, we get to the ECW Arena and Sabu didn't show up. So

right before the show started, the fans were filing in.

Paul Heyman had me walk to the ring with him. And 9 -1 -1, who was like Paul's

bodyguard type of guy, went in the ring and publicly fired Sabu.

And that was the real deal.

One member of our trustee room gave us such a commitment and decided that

because he was offered more money on a weekly basis, that he will not waste

you for what you paid his fee.

And he decided not to give me the courtesy of a phone call when he swore

God on Sunday night before we all went into production to give you last Tuesday

night.

Paul never lied to the fans.

He lied to the wrestlers, but he never lied to the fans.

Anything that the internet or any magazine or story that got out,

Paul, a lot of times, would address.

And he would do it by going to the ring and telling them.

From 1995, it was Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at the War Memorial.

It was a tag team match.

It was myself and Eddie Guerrero versus Dean Malenko and Two Cold Scorpio. And

Scorpio and Malenko were taking it to me pretty good, and I was trying to tag in

Eddie, and I couldn't get to Eddie.

The next thing you know, they gave me a spike pile driver. Malenko came off the

second rope, grabbed my boots.

drove my boots down while Scorpio had me up for the pile driver, and boom.

I just didn't get a chance to protect myself, and I landed right on my

and just jacked my whole neck back, and that was it.

And I was out for a year.

When Taz broke his neck in Florida, he finished his match, and he just kept on

saying, damn, my neck is hurt.

I walked him into the hospital, and we would always travel together, and they

asked him, how'd you get in here?

He's like, I walked.

And they're like, there's no way you walked in here.

And he's like, yeah, I did. I walked in here.

And they're like, well, sir, you have a broken neck.

I was out for actually about nine months. And Paul paid me every single

our agreement and my guarantee.

I didn't have no contract with the man.

I had a handshake with the guy.

And he stuck to that.

And I will never, ever forget that.

Paul was loyal to the crew. The crew remained loyal to Paul.

I don't know that the camera or anything I can say can convey and

capture the feeling in this arena tonight. The overwhelming emotion which

is overtaking everyone in this building.

I think ECW started to get noticed by WWE and WCW during the

fight on Monday night and they needed more talent.

ECW was the first victim of the Monday Night War.

Oh, in August 1995,

WCW stole Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko all in one

swoop. I need to point out that one man's raid is another company's

We never raided anybody. We never raided the WWE despite...

Everybody's opinion to the contrary.

We never raided ECW. We never raided anybody.

I mean, when you think about it, did Vince McMahon raid all the local

territories when he accumulated talent that made a decision that they would

rather work for Vince McMahon as he was expanding his national territory as

opposed to working for local promoters? Was that a raid?

Certainly not in Vince McMahon's mind or certainly not in the minds of the

people that work at WWE currently.

Or the fans of WWE.

Or, for that matter, mine.

Did some talent leave ECW and come to WCW? Of course they did. Because, A,

probably weren't getting paid, and they had to in order to pay their bills and

feed their families. And, B, they recognized that WCW was a much stronger,

more secure, much larger international platform for them to apply their trade.

Did they make that choice to come to WCW? Of course they did. Did some of

make those choices to go to WWE?

Of course they did.

But that's not a raid, despite what Paul Heyman and others would have you think.

Eric Bischoff is full of shit.

And much like a lot of other people, never gave ECW the credit that ECW

deserved. Eric Bischoff stole Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero and Dean

from ECW in one fell swoop. Same way he signed Chris Jericho from ECW. Same way

he stole the cruiserweights from ECW.

And it was a smart move by Eric Bischoff to do it because he was in a

competition with WWE and he had to have the talent and he found them in ECW

before WWE had a chance. to sign him as well. It was smart by Bischoff to do it.

I just don't like the fact that he never says, yo, I sold that from ECW.

Because he did. It was blatant.

We sued him over it a bunch of times.

I didn't think it was the right thing to do that we would just raid his talent

roster and give nothing back.

We put Paul on the payroll because to compensate him in some way of taking a

of the talent.

you know, that he had.

Contrary to that, of course, was Eric Bischoff, who, you know, would take his

talent as well and not give him anything.

So, gleefully not give him anything.

We knew it was on at that moment, which is when I called Conan and got Rey

Mysterio and Psychosis and Juventud Guerrera and decided, okay, we're going

bring Lucha Libre, Cruiserweights, in an extreme style to the United States and

give them the platform to get over.

about two guys taking it to the extreme.

BCW was the father of Rey Mysterio as far as bringing me into the United

for the first time.

Me,

the psychosis, La Parca, Juventud Guerrera, you took the fight out to the

street.

They wrestled outside.

Rey doesn't hooda con Rana.

Fan's car, too.

If my father wasn't a lawyer, I could never have pulled off ECW. I got sued

times than Martha Stewart.

This is a combination of having all the wrestlers and being able to

bring out what Lucha Libre is to the American audience.

For all those hardcore fans, I thank them very much. I thank Paul Henry very

much for what he did to me.

I'm going to be the superstar that I always knew that I could be.

Because there's no one, no one in ECW.

That can stop me.

I worked with Steve in WCW.

I was his manager.

And then I was out of WCW. And then Steve went on the team with Brian

And they never really got the chance that they deserved.

And then Steve got fired by Eric Bischoff over the telephone.

Steve was home and he was pissed off that he got fired.

And I was lucky.

I was the first guy to call.

And I said, hey, what are you doing?

Oh, goddamn kid just in at home. Got fired.

Really? Fucking assholes, they fired me.

What are you going to do about it?

I'll sit at home and drink beer.

Well, you want to talk about it?

Yeah, let's talk about it. You want to talk about it on the air?

On the air?

Yeah, you want to talk about it on the air.

Well, goddamn kid, how do you want me to do that?

I got a TV show.

You got a grievance.

Come on up and air it.

You're Steve Austin.

You know, that's when you're wrong.

Paul

Heyman

gave him a microphone and said, here, talk.

And he gave some of the greatest, funniest interviews of all time because

pissed off.

He had this idea for Monday Night Quill with this bad wig and bongo.

Instead of Mongo.

Right here on Monday night, a bottle of Geritol on a pole match. First time ever

in the world, you're going to see all the old codgers here in our

and they're going to be scrapping around and using their walkers, trying to keep

the dentures in, and they're going for it.

He had a strategy.

He was going to let that anger come out. He was going to show his passion.

He was going to show that aggression.

He was going to be something different. He was going to let you know how much he

cared.

Eric, I love you, man.

Take me back because I ain't got what it takes to get it done at ECW, man.

I want Achieve to be champion.

His idea was recollecting November to remember against Mikey Wickrick and

And then come on television and say, I was this close to the title.

And God, it makes me want it.

He was so smart.

Steve understood business.

Mikey Whipwreck, when you beat me, even though I was damn near crippled, even

though I hadn't rehabbed this damn arm, and even though that was my first match

back, you still beat one of the best wrestlers in the world, and that's the

bottom line.

Steve understood how to articulate his love and his desire for the business,

therefore for the championship.

You know when you're holding that camera and you're shooting a promo.

You know when you have something special.

You know when it's coming across.

You know when you feel it. You know that this is great.

And sometimes you're just looking through the viewfinder thing.

Wow.

I always got that feeling with Steve.

I got that feeling with Cactus.

I mean, the stuff that he was brilliant.

The stuff he just came out with was...

Where did that come from?

And it's like, wow.

Those fans who sit there and say, he's hardcore, he's hardcore, he's hardcore,

wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire, you selfish son of a bitch.

Creatively speaking, I think the anti -hardcore promos that Mick Foley did

in 1995 were the most creative and best performed

interviews in the history of this business.

Bar none.

He just gave me the mic and let me go.

And he let me get out a lot of the frustration I had about the fan and the

that I thought they asked too much. He let me put that on tape.

Professional wrestling.

We'll never be respected, no matter how many teeth I lose, no matter how many

ears I lose, no matter how many brain cells have to die.

And so it comes down to the point where it's just not worth it.

It's not worth it. And Tommy Dreamer, you've got to start looking

at wrestling as a way to make a living.

Nothing more.

And nothing less.

And as long as it's strictly business, well, you may as well be cuddled in the

welcoming arms of world championship wrestling because ECW fans will be the

of you.

You see, they realized, and they were smarter than any of us,

that they rule ECW wrestling, not us. You can make people laugh.

He can make people cry.

He can make people feel for him.

Mick Foley's a larger -than -life person, and why would anyone ever care

that toothless -looking freak that he is and how many people love the guy?

I've said some pretty outrageous things, and to have 99 %

of you...

I was so mad because I couldn't be in there

as the company was growing.

And then I started to feel better with my neck, and I started to train harder

and harder. And I changed my style, and I said to myself, I need to change. I

need to come back with a completely fresh look, a completely different Taz.

And that's when I completely, the Taz Maniac died, and Taz was born.

Joey Styles was the play -by -play guy, and I'm doing the match with him, but

you never see me on camera. Then you come out of the match, and the end of

match, the man who called this match with me is named Peter Sinurcha.

But you know him very well.

But you know him as Taz.

Taz, becoming our ultimate fight style persona, carried with it

the big fight atmosphere.

And I loved the big fight atmosphere. I thought that that's one of the many

things that was missing in wrestling during the mid -1990s.

the most emotional angle that we ever did in ECW was the one involving the

Sandman's son and Raven.

Here's Raven, who's doing the cult deal.

And he's involved with the Sandman's ex -wife, Lori Foley.

And along with Lori comes Tyler Foley, the Sandman's eight -year -old son.

And here's the Sandman getting beat down, beat up, and never caring.

And yet when the Sandman sees his own son kiss Raven on the cheek and say,

I love you more than my own daddy, the Sandman on television breaks down

and cries, openly weeps.

Now, who can't feel that?

Hey, kid, you know the divorce was your daddy's fault, don't you?

I know.

Hey, Sandman.

He's dressed just like his dad.

Oh, we have been waiting to see this.

Oh, that's great.

It's Raven!

It's Raven!

It was the most emotional angle that we could do, that we ever did.

Quote to Raven, never more.

This is a concept for Stevie Richards and the Blue Meanie and Nova to parody

NWO.

And we had done things with the Meanie before, and he was going to be the blue

guy, and this was going to be the blue world order, the BWO. That came during a

time, that was actually the climax to all the parodies that me and the Blue

Meanie were doing on everybody. We started doing...

The Fabulous Ones, which were a famous tag team in Memphis for years.

And Raven actually came up with the idea to start parodying people just to

entertain himself and entertain the boys. And I did Baron Von Stevie, which

a takeoff of Baron Von Raschke.

He innovated Public Enemy yesterday last month at WCW.

Flyboy, Stevie Rock, and Meany Grunge.

Public Enemy?

We were just doing a parody of the NWO from WCW because they were the hottest

thing back then.

And let's just go out there and have a good time. And the people just started

chanting BWO, BWO. And everywhere we went, the BWO just stopped.

The pregnancy angle that we did stood out where Eula, who was Raven's

girlfriend, revealed that she was pregnant.

Because you're Raven's girlfriend?

No, I'm pregnant.

That night was amazing because when Raven heard that he was pregnant, he

and he blasted Stephen Richards, who was like, oh, he's nice to Beulah.

And she was like, that's not him.

And then she paused for a moment and she said, Tommy, the place lit up. And it

was like a soap opera.

And then I hit the ring, and I beat the crap out of Raven because he was going

to hurt my impregnated girlfriend.

As I was beating him up, a fan also handed me a blueberry pie, and I said,

with it, and I took a big bite of it, DDT'd him, laid him out, left with the

girl.

It was Shane Douglas that said that Bueller was cheating on me, and everyone

thought it was with Raven or with another.

wrestler that i'd be then feuding with and it turned out she was cheating on me

with kimono in ecw we did the first ever lesbian angle in wrestling uh

we got thrown off of every television station that we had he was not pregnant

Vince's curiosity with ECW started at the King of the Ring in Philadelphia

Mabel was crowned King of the Ring.

And the entire arena is chanting ECW with great passion

and anger at Vince McMahon.

I'd heard about ECW, and there's this other wrestling organization, ECW, local

in New York, and I kind of dismissed it at first, and it started making a little

bit more noise.

Vince is coming back to Philadelphia to do mind games, and obviously we had such

momentum at the time, it would behoove his business to acknowledge ECW.

It's this other brand out there, and why not incorporate it? It wasn't. you

know, on the same par in terms of value or whatever, but why not incorporate it?

Why not try to do something with it and see where it goes?

I wouldn't have done the same with WCW, you know, but it was a way to broaden

business. It's not going to help us to be embraced and endorsed by Vince

McMahon. It's going to help us to rebel against Vince McMahon.

So we came up with a way that everybody wants.

There is a local wrestling group here in Philadelphia and obviously trying to

make a name for themselves here.

We never were in the WWE locker room. We would basically, during the show,

corral in the park a lot, ECW guys.

We had ECW guys sprinkled throughout the arena because we didn't know if the WWE

guys were going to try and jump us. We didn't know what the deal was. Because

was like, I don't think many people knew, besides Mr. McMahon, what was

happen.

And I remember that night jumping that guardrail and security trying to stop

And a guy who was a WWE photographer here tried to stop me. He told me, no,

not worth it, man. It's not worth it. And I was instructed by my boss and by a

couple other people.

Anybody gets in your way, get them out of the way.

And I just said to the photographer, you know, you don't want to do this. You

don't want to do this. You know, and shoved him out of the way and he broke

shoulder.

There was an incident at the ECW Arena one time where Raven got the idea to

crucify Sandman.

What in God's name are they doing?

The whole time I'm doing it, actually, me and Meany were there.

And, you know, Raven's like, yo, tie him up, tie him up, put the cross up.

And I'm there going, oh, this is...

Fucked up, Meany. This is fucked up. He's like, I know, because Meany's

Catholic, too. So I was like, this is bullshit, man.

This is the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in my life.

And that was the one time in the ECW arena where the fans weren't saying, you

know, go to hell and screaming. They were just quiet.

You know, Raven had to go back out and apologize to the fans.

Apparently, Todd Gordon and Paul Heyman, by acting without their knowledge, are

offended at my use.

of religious iconography and apparently i've offended quite a few people in the

audience well you people

chose to respect scott levy's privacy when i needed a personal time and so i

choose to respect your privacy and your religious religious beliefs and so for

the people who i deeply offended i apologize it was a big deal actually

angle was in

In the arena that night, he was going to come to ECW. Taz brought him in. He was

going to come in and do some stuff with ECW.

I'm sitting there watching, and I saw an episode that just completely shocked

me.

It was a crucifixion of Sandman and Raven and Sandman's son.

And it offended me so badly that I got up in the middle of the show. I went

straight to Paul Heyman, and I said, I'm leaving right now.

I want you to send me my check. And if I'm on TV with that crucifixion, if my

name or my face is seen on TV on the same program, you'll be here for my

attorney. And he said he had no idea this was going to happen. So I believed

him. I figured, you know, here it's a little more freelance wrestling, do

whatever they want to do. And Paul Heyman let them, you know. But then

wasn't sure whether to believe him or not because Paul Heyman can do that kind

of thing. He's very controversial.

I just remember leaving that arena so mad and so offended that they would

actually do something like that. He told me he didn't know.

You know, as a promoter, you can only believe so much because, you know,

running the show. If you don't know what's going on, then you're an idiot.

We were not known on a national level.

And we wanted to be. And the only way to do it was to do pay -per -views. We had

to make more money. We had to bring in more revenue to stay alive.

Because we're going up against billion -dollar corporations who are coming to

hammer us.

So we needed more ammunition.

We needed more money for ammunition.

We needed to pay our talent. We needed to bring in more talent. We needed to go

to different areas. We needed to expand.

Because without expansion, we would have lost everybody.

So the audience knew this.

And the audience wanted to get us on pay -per -view. The audience got us on New

York television by emailing and writing and faxing all the New York television

stations. And the audience did the same thing on pay -per -view. They rallied

together. They took up arms and they fought for ECW because they believed in

because ECW was their promotion.

They were our army.

We wanted national TV. We wanted pay -per -views. We wanted sellouts

we go.

We wanted to be in competition with WWE and WCW. At the time, Viewer's Choice,

which is now in demand, wouldn't put us on the air because they thought we were

real. Oh, we were like Ultimate Fight. We had to be real.

ECW? Oh, those guys are real.

They're not like WWE and WCW. No, they're different. They're real, and

a big nationwide concern about Ultimate Fight, so we couldn't get on the air.

putting it on pay -per -view during our hottest period.

And we finally got on the air. Hugh Pinero, the president of Request TV,

listened to the audience. The audience petitioned everybody to get us on the

air, and we got on the air.

We had a show in Revere, Massachusetts, and one

of the participants in a match

didn't make it to the show.

And we had a replacement on hand who lied about his age and falsified his

documentation. A wrestler by the name of Axel Rodden was supposed to wrestle

with me in a tag team match against the gangsters, New Jack and Mustafa.

Axel couldn't make it that night.

This kid came in.

And he looked like Ralph Cramden. New Jack basically beat him up pretty bad.

It was the most scariest thing I think I've ever seen in the middle of the

Lawsuits and things like that followed.

New Jack was acquitted of everything.

But it was a scary moment.

We got hammered from all sides.

And the pay -per -view networks, who were scared of us to begin with, had all

the ammunition they need to say, that on Christmas Eve,

1996, our pay -per -view for 1997 was canceled.

The audience was so mad that our pay -per -view was pulled.

I don't think Paulie pulled back at all after the mass transit incident that

happened. In terms of pushing the envelope, Paulie always pushed the

I begged and pleaded and threatened.

and cajoled and yelled and cried and did everything I possibly could from one

extreme to another to get us back on the air.

And they put us back on the schedule.

Sunday night, April 13th, 1997, at 9 p .m.

Had to be on 9 p .m. Everybody else was on 8 p .m. at the time.

I would have taken a Wednesday night at 3 a .m. live time slot if I had to do it

from a parking garage in the South Bronx.

I didn't care.

I knew if you let us on, we'll give you something special.

We'll give you something different.

Hi. Welcome to Extreme Championship Wrestling.

I'm Joey Styles.

And it's Barely Legal Weekend, ETW's very first pay -per -view. And to all of

our fans who always supported us and knew we could do it, thank you.

And to all of our detractors who said we could never do it, you're about to get

outed. Because we know you already bought the pay -per -view. We know

going to have a good time. You're wearing the Barely Legal t -shirt.

the Barely Legal poster.

And you're going to enjoy ETW just like everyone else. So there.

Getting pay -per -view was humongous. This may turn out to be the blackest day

in the history of the World Wrestling Federation because my challenge has been

accepted. And the idiots from ECW are here live tonight.

We did some stuff with WWE to help promote that we were going to have a pay

-view. Yes, ECW fans are jam -packed. They're going to have fans.

Wait a minute.

It was

good for both.

It was good for the talent because they got a chance to showcase their talent.

It was good for the WWE because they got a chance to show, you know, us. And it

was good for ECW because, hey, what's this? It's ECW. It brought ECW into the

mainstream.

ECW didn't have a lot of distribution as compared to our product or WCW's

product. Nonetheless, when we brought one of their stars into the fold, you

would hear... A smattering and sometimes more than a smattering of ECW chants.

So there was something there.

I think when I first found out that WWE was co -promoting, it was no real big

surprise.

Why is Vince McMahon and why are we in the WWE giving this precious, this

valuable airtime to another organization, to our competition?

You know, it's funny. I don't know if that question was ever answered. Still

this day, I wonder why he did that. You ought to get down on your hands and

knees and thank your lucky stars that you're getting to plug a stinking pay

-view on Monday Night Raw. Do you understand that?

And why Vince McMahon allows it, I'll never know.

He's going to help the ECW brand.

And I thought that was really good for the business.

It was so exciting for us because as the revolution, ECW the revolution,

we were finally going to be able to show everybody out there in the world that

we were legit.

I guess you could attribute it maybe to being arrogant, cocky, self -confident

or whatever. But they had an attitude like they were better than the guys in

WWE. We really went in there as a team.

and as a bunch of guys believing in ourselves and the company.

To me, I was thinking, man, you guys don't realize how lucky you are to get

be involved and to get this worldwide exposure all of a sudden.

The whole place

was chanting ECW, and we did ECW -style matches on Monday Night Raw.

I wrestled Mikey Whipwreck.

And Mikey and I are wrestling, and Sabu, at the time, the Raw set was the big R

-A -W, just huge letters that were by the entranceway.

What happened

was Sabu gets on top of the R, what people don't know, and he fell off

the R onto Team Tag.

Oh, now it's live TV, you know, which I've never done live wrestling before.

And it was just a funny story. He fell off the yard. We always joke, hey, he

fell off the yard. You know, it's an inside joke.

Well, I know this will make him mad once all over again because it made him mad

when I first saw him. But the first thing I remember about these guys was

small they were.

Everybody was like, like.

They looked like little miniature wrestlers running around, you know, and

remember saying on the commentary that night, Vince and I were doing the

commentary, and I looked, I think it was either Taz or, I think it was Taz, and

I looked at Vince and I said, he looked a lot bigger on the Lucky Charms box.

He looked a lot bigger on the Lucky Charms box, you know, big man. I think

came and said something to me about that.

Oh, wait a minute, Taz, Taz is the king.

It was a great night.

I believe Devon wrestled Tommy Dreamer in a singles match. We wound up 3D -ing

Tommy Dreamer, and then the Sandman came down and kicked all our asses and caned

us in the head a couple times.

It was great. Loved it. It was a lot of fun, the invasion stuff. It didn't last

long, but it was cool. Hats off to Vince for allowing us to do it and believing

in the company enough that we can actually come on to his show and maybe

him out a little bit.

ECW invading Raw, to me, started the whole attitude era where anything could

anything can happen on Raw. Just watch. Hey, they even brought in guys from

another promotion.

And back then in 1997, the WWE didn't have guys in the ring doing what the

do here now.

WCW didn't have those type guys either. The athletes weren't wrestling a fast

-paced, aggressive style.

And I feel Paul Heyman created that with ECW.

And that was the hardcore style. That was the extreme style.

And we brought that to pay -per -view in 1997, barely legal.

It was

rolling

the dice. I mean, we knew that we had to score big.

Because if we didn't, it was going to be the end of ECW.

We put all the money. I mean, they put everything on the line at this major pay

-per -view. I remember how intense the locker room was.

Just, you could just feel it. You know, people scared to death. They didn't know

what to do. They knew that, you know, you couldn't mess up. You had to go

through. You had to be on top of your game no matter what.

It was the Holy Grail to us. There was nothing that could

top this in our hearts because this is what we had fought so

many battles for.

I like to say it was like a black tie affair.

More people are going to be able to see this. We've reached the Holy Grail.

A lot of expectations for the first pay -per -view from ECW.

And it was one of those things where I personally felt like a lot of people

believing when we see it. Because ECW was just at that stage where there was a

lot of talk about it, you know, and they had a lot to live up to.

When we went on pay -per -view, Viewer's Choice basically wanted to take control

of the product a little bit.

They wanted to put their own producer, their own director.

And Pauly, to his credit, and deserves a lot of credit for this, stood with the

people that brought him to the dance.

Ron Buffon, the director.

They didn't want Ron Buffon to be the director. And at the last minute, I

threatened to cancel the show if they didn't let me have my own director.

I was going to fight for the people that stuck with me, and I was going to be

loyal to them the same way they were loyal to me.

I personally have probably a little different story about the pay -per -view

because I wasn't even booked on it, and I was very upset.

I did feel like if this was ECW's first chance to show the world what it was and

if everything on this show was going to represent what ECW stood for, I thought

I really should be on it. I got thrown on as a last -minute decision, and I was

still, at that time, offended.

So it was sort of a weird position for me because I just got there, and I'm

working with this guy on a...

pretty important show in my career, and he didn't seem to be in the best of

spirits very often.

I had a little extra energy, and at the pay -per -view, with my last storm

afterwards, I actually verbalized the way that I was feeling on the

because we had that artistic freedom to do just that then, so I did.

Sabu and I wrestling each other at Barely Legal was a very big moment, not

for Sabu, not just for myself, but for the ECW fans and for the promotion.

Sabu!

I'm going to choke you out!

See you on the 13th!

For one year, just about one year straight, Taz called out Sabu to come

Taz mocked Sabu.

Taz did everything physically possible, mentally and emotionally possible to

taunt Sabu, and Sabu wouldn't come out to face me. I called him out, cursed him

out, did everything I can.

Beat guys up in the ring and would call them Sabu, the whole nine yards.

And then finally when he came out to look me face to face, well, the lights

out first, and the lights came on, and Sabu and Taz, after November to

were in the same ring at the same time for the first time in a long time.

and then we knew these two guys would face that battle legal.

And it was a great moment, and it was, God, we made each other in that match.

You know, we made each other in that match, and I'll never forget it.

a phenomenal moment for the company.

And I was fortunate enough to be part of that promotion and all of that being in

one of the main events and wrestled my art nemesis, Sabu.

And it was a great moment.

Ladies and gentlemen, our next event, the three -way dance.

The winner of this match will take on Raven later this evening for the East.

For me, being at the time like 24 years old and living 10 minutes from the arena

to be in the main event with a legend like Terry Funk and a hardcore legend

Sandman at the time, you know, an ECW icon.

And I looked around and said, you know, I even said to Terry Funk earlier that

day we met about the match and everything.

He goes, well, you know, how are you feeling, Stevie?

And I go, I don't know what the hell I'm doing here, Terry. You got all of these

guys, all these amazing athletes.

They'd have names for themselves, and Paul Heyman picked me to be in the main

event for this match. Tommy Dreamer wasn't even wrestling that night. Tommy

Dreamer was doing commentary, and I'm thinking, you know, what did I ever do

deserve this? This is unbelievable.

And what a story.

The impossible dream.

This broken -down, beat -up old man.

I'm an old man.

I don't have it in me anymore.

And he comes up against this unstoppable, badass young punk, Raven.

And Raven's going to stop him at every turn.

And Raven looks at Terry Funk and says, you remind me of my own father. You want

to abuse me. You drink. You this. Oh, my God. It was just so emotional. And for

Funk to win it, it was just...

The culmination of all of our dreams. It was the impossible dream taking place

in front of your very eyes.

It's over!

It's over!

He did it! He did it!

For everything that he did for us, he deserved it.

Truly deserved it.

The transformer or whatever power supply blew up ten seconds after the pay -per

-view was over, which, if it had happened during the pay -per -view...

It could have been just a big catastrophe.

Our first pay -per -view, and people don't even get to see the whole thing.

don't even get to see Terry Funk win the ECW world title.

If the show would have ran three seconds longer, we would have lost the feed.

The building couldn't handle all the power that we were pumping out.

But when we made it there, it was like we won the World Series.

Fans were just going nuts, like the home team just finally did it.

Everybody back there was so emotional. I cried and just kept crying.

We all cried because we'd worked so hard to get there.

Joey Stiles cried, openly weeping when the show was over

because they didn't want him to do the show by himself and I insisted on it.

Harry Funk cried because even...

In his 50s, he realized he made this thing happen.

It was a very emotional time. A lot of people say a lot of things about Paul

Heyman, but he put 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So for him to get that pay -per -view off and look like ACW was about to

springboard to another level, I'm sure it was exhausting emotionally,

physically, mentally. And, you know, I'm sure he cried. He probably cried for a

good week.

I remember the time period of just being crazy, like, how could these people,

like your friends, be doing this? You know, Raven was the first person who

called me, and he was like, do you want to come?

And we actually got in a fight about this because he thought I told Paul.

And I never told anyone until right now of how it actually happened.

Raven leaving to me was a creative disappointment as much as a business

disappointment because I felt it was just, so much more that that character

to offer.

And the only place where he could make that offering was at ECW.

When Raven was leaving ECW to go to WCW, that was the night I finally beat him.

and one, two, three, the lights, I raised my hand, the lights went out,

go back on, and Jerry Lawler's in the ring.

And then Jerry Lawler beats the crap out of me. The guy from the WWE is now

beating up the guy who represents ECW.

So one feud ended, one feud started.

Jerry Lawler in the ECW arena?

They had seen the ECW guys invade Raw, but...

I'm just, no, I could tell by the reactions. They never thought that a WWE

wrestler would come to the ECW arena. And so when I showed up, it was really a

sheer pandemonium.

To me, it was like the night Eric Bischoff showed up on Raw.

How dare Eric Bischoff show up there?

Just like how dare Jerry Lawler?

And he put a beating on me. Jerry Lawler caned me in my testicles and knocked me

out from a cane shot.

And I had to go to the hospital for it.

by Jim Cornette hitting me with a tennis racket.

Because he knocked me out with it. And Jim Cornette hitting me on the back woke

me up.

And I had to go to the hospital because they thought I was going to have a

rupture. And I had to get a couple of pieces of blood pulled out of my

after that night.

And that was another part of being hardcore.

He apologized for it later.

Because after he did that, he bolted after the show because he had that much

heat. He left.

It was legitimately dangerous.

They were that upset.

I don't often get scared or in fear for my safety, but that night I was.

Jerry Lawler had a huge impact of ECW because he stood for everything that ECW

was against.

I did look at their organization and honestly think that it was extremely

wrestling. And so I guess that's what Tommy Dreamer means by that.

Hey!

That would piss off the fans so much.

I stood for everything that ECW stood for, and Jerry Lawler stood for

that WWE stood for. It was just a clash.

It was the Yankees versus the Red Sox.

Once we had Battle Eagle, then it was just like, it was a success, and then,

boom, it popped, you know? And then we started banging out pay -per -views,

making money.

When Paul took over the company, I think Paul wanted to have it under his own

vision.

He still kept Todd around as the figurehead, as the president.

And during the whole Monday Night Wars, it was a crazy time. And supposedly we

had a mole in our locker room.

Todd Gordon, supposedly, all due respect to Todd Gordon, some were feeling

that he quite possibly could have been helping WCW get

a hold of some ECW talent.

We all had to be paranoid because we had WCW and WWE breathing down our necks to

try to take our talent.

Everybody was trying to knock us down.

And Paul is very paranoid. Paul is crazy.

He broke into Todd Gordon's cell phone and played me the message of all the

calling.

Me and Taz were at Paul's house, and he played the whole thing. And me and Taz

were like, we couldn't believe how it was going on.

It was Terry Taylor.

It was Bill Alfonso. They were just, you know, talking about, great deal, man.

We bring this all in. They were going to do an ECW invasion in WCW.

I don't know the real story behind it. I have an idea.

Other people have a perspective.

But you never really know the truth behind it. You never really know

motivation for getting on the phone and saying, yo, you know what's really

happening here? You don't really know.

So, you know, you...

You don't really know the truth about situations like this, so why spend your

time trying to figure it out?

The feeling in the locker room was kind of bewilderment. I mean, like, a little

bit of dismay.

My name is Paul Heyman, and I am the executive producer and talent

of Extreme Championship Wrestling. It's a job that was given to me on September

18, 1993, by the founder of this promotion, Todd Gordon.

It is therefore my responsibility.

to inform the public that with a heavy heart earlier this week, ECW accepted

resignation of Todd Gordon as Commissioner of Extreme Championship

Citing increasing pressures as father of four children and running a family

business, Todd could no longer assume the responsibility of being ECW's

Commissioner. We here at Extreme Championship Wrestling wish Todd nothing

the best in all of his future endeavors and want to let him know that we intend

to make him proud as we carry on his vision.

Of ECW.

He fired Todd.

And Fonzie was actually going to get fired from it. And he had a.

We all loved Fonzie. We didn't want to see him go. And he had a great match

Eula McGillicuddy.

And it saved his job.

Bill McGillicuddy was involved in five of the most intense minutes in the

history of ECW when she had that match with Bill Alfonso. I mean, they beat the

crap out of each other. They had a phenomenal match.

who's not a wrestler. Here's Bill Alfonso, who's a 135 -pound former

And these guys had an amazing fight that,

to this day, if you ask me, hey, name one of the hardest -hitting battles in

history of ECW, it ranks right up there with anything else I've ever seen.

Paul Heyman stepped up and...

Took everybody in the palm of his hand with those speeches and marched

right through the, you know, the valley of the shadow of darkness and right

through hell and back. And we all went merrily along and didn't miss a beat.

It was shocking, but it was also one of the best things that happened to me

because I remember sitting in a little like deli or something with Paul and Taj

and Dreamer. And I was new at that time.

So I really don't want to open my mouth too much, but I knew that I had a

background in business and that I could help the company, and this was my

opportunity to prove it.

And when they were trying to discuss amongst themselves, well, what are we

to do now? Who's going to take care of this and that?

That's when I stood up and I said, Paul, I'll do it.

I can do it. Give me the ball, and I'll run with it. And that was the day I was

given the job of the everyday running of ECW outside of the ring.

ECW not being a huge, huge company at any time, a lot of us participated and

other duties besides being wrestlers.

Paul was trying to secure national television deals, and as the company

were growing without having to hire more people.

Everybody seemed to put the company well and above.

their own personal interest. They felt that if the company gained ground and

actually was able to stand up and compete with WCW or WWE on their own,

they would then again succeed and be able to stand up too.

Taz was in charge of merchandising. Tommy was in charge of, he did a lot of

booking and, you know, behind the scenes stuff.

Bubba booked the shows.

I would do business dealings with the arenas. I would call up and say, this is

so -and -so, and I'd like to book a show with ECW and everything like that.

So I got to get an education in the wrestling business outside of the ring,

that's what I truly loved about the company was that I was given the

to do that.

I had two roles in the fact of I designed all of our logos and

our merchandise.

I don't have an art background or anything, but I just had an act for it,

Paul said, why don't you do this? You know, design our stuff.

And I just came up with all the sayings on the back of all the T -shirts and the

logos and the colors and all the rest of the T -shirts, because merchandise was

a huge thing for us.

You know, the guys made a lot of money with their T -shirts. Our T -shirts and

stuff were cool.

I would bring all the T -shirts to all the shows. I would physically drive

We had a warehouse.

Me, Devon Dudley and Nunzio would load up the van for the fans to purchase the

-shirts with the T -shirts. And then after the shows, we would drive home and

that Monday unload all the T -shirts. We'd have bandages on our foreheads and

would carry all the T -shirts back in to the warehouse.

Gabe Sapolsky and I used to answer phone calls, take credit card orders, take

ticket orders, mail out tickets, field fan. We were like the WWE fan line.

Remember that back there?

We used to do that for ECW, answer questions, see who was going to be at

show that weekend, give out show dates, mailing lists, all that stuff.

And it was kind of funny because people would recognize my voice because I sort

of have a distinct voice.

They'd say, man, you sound just like Stevie Richards. What's your name?

I had to make up a ECW office line, which my ECW office name was Lloyd Van

Buren.

We also would send out all the T -shirts from mail order or from TV.

Most fans never knew that the people mailing those shirts to them were either

from Devon Dudley, Nunzio, or Tommy Dreamer. We're actually physically

them in the packages, writing out the thing, and sending it.

I also ran the ECW wrestling school, which is called the House of Hardcore.

We ran a very, very tough, old school type of dojo.

No joke. You know, out of hundreds of applicants, and this is the truth,

I think, three or four people graduated from the ECW House of Hardcore.

Paul wanted this school and wanted me to run it and did not care if it made

money or not.

He wanted to just get a couple of guys that respected the industry and that

great fundamentals and were tough.

He wanted it, and that's what he got.

I would collect the money from the concessions.

Sometimes I'd walk out with $20 ,000, $30 ,000 in my pocket, and I'd hand

support. After pay -per -views, we'd pull that from selling T -shirts,

merchandise, anything.

And the girls who would work for me were the rest of his wives and the rest of

his girlfriends, people who I trusted.

And they all worked, and we... Every single wrestler pretty much had a

job. We all grew together. It was a bunch of young, talented,

hungry wrestlers that wanted to succeed.

If we didn't grow together, we were going to fall apart.

We loved the business. We believed in what Paulie was telling us. We believed

the direction that ECW was going, and it was just...

You know, I just wanted to be around the wrestling business 24 -7.

ECW was more than just a wrestling company. It was a family. You know, we

all in the company for the same purpose.

And that was just to make it the third largest company in the business and to

try to even be on the same level as Vince and Bischoff at the time in terms

just like neck and neck, nose to nose.

ECW is pride.

ECW, you know, is excitement.

ECW was just everything wrapped into one. It was almost like each and every

night, ECW was like WrestleMania to us.

It was the granddaddy of them all to us.

Paulie, to me, was the David Koresh of pro wrestling.

He could talk his way into making you believe that

great things were going to happen, and great things did happen, but Paulie

always made the grass seem greener. It was like a call, and it was all led by,

you know, Paul Heyman.

He could take everybody in that locker room

build them up to the point to where they would go out there and walk across hot

coals if Paulie asked him to. They'd be willing to roll around in thumbtacks

buck naked if Paulie asked him to.

He brainwashed a lot of guys.

But as a boss and as a businessman, he did what he had to do to get his

wrestlers to perform on a certain level and carry out his stories.

We didn't have writers and we didn't have, you know.

Creative teams and all that, man.

Paul just gave us direction.

Go out, talk about so -and -so, and, you know, do it.

You know, and Paul let you be you.

Paulie entrusted us to come up with our storylines and our characters and gave

us freedom to do whatever we wanted in the ring, no matter how extreme, no

matter how violent. And a lot of promoters...

you know, at that time, weren't ready to just cut loose and let anything go.

You really had control and the freedom to speak

your mind on your character. It wasn't rare to sit down and get into an hour

-long conversation with Paulie about a certain aspect of your character or your

storyline and your match.

We'd have a big locker room, and he, Paul, would have his desk as a table.

smack dab in the middle of whatever locker room we were in.

He was extremely accessible to the people on his roster.

His main thing back in ECW, he wanted to take guys that had no name and make

guys. He wanted to create characters.

I used to call our locker room and our guys the land of the misfit toys.

Because we were the wrestlers that the other promotions didn't want.

Either... The rumor was this guy had a bad attitude, or that guy had personal

problems, or someone didn't want to do business the right way. All these

this guy's too small, he's too short, he's too skinny, he's too tall, he's too

fat, he's too this, he's too slow, he's too dangerous to ring. All these

different things, and Heyman took all these misfits and made ECW with them.

Paulie was a creative genius from the standpoint that he could take a person,

And he could make the absolute most out of their positives and camouflage their

negatives to where you could not see them.

Al Stowe has been teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown for months here

at ECW.

The best thing for me about ECW was I found head.

Because, you know, due to the grace of God and a plastic head, I'm here today.

If I hadn't found that head and if I hadn't had the opportunity that Paul

and ECW had given me,

I really don't know where my career would have ended up. I honestly don't.

for that, I owe Paulie no end of an amount of thanks, and to ECW and those

We were in the right place at the right time in front of the right audience that

wanted something different.

Came backstage one night at the ECW Arena, where a lot of people don't

that that's a bingo hall, but also on the other side, they build the floats

the Mummer's Day parades.

I was just rummaging around in the junk, and we were taking a picture for a

Japanese magazine, and I picked up a Styrofoam head, and I thought, well, you

know, I remembered back to a car ride that Mick and Sid Vicious and Bob Holly

and I had where Mick was kind of fooling around with a Styrofoam head that he

had for the Mankind mask, and he was acting like it was his girlfriend.

And I thought...

I've been talking to myself and nobody's been getting it. I'll take this to the

ring and I'll talk to it like it's a human being.

And that was where the head gimmick started there in ECW.

Just great. Did you see that? Huh? Was I the only one watching? How were you

paying attention for a change?

Did you see that? That was just great. That was my chance, my match. Instead of

being on a PPV doing a J -O -B for once I could have won.

But now you had to go and tell everybody I was hurt. I dislocated my shoulder.

Big deal! This is supposed to be hardcore!

Extreme!

Chris Candido lobbied for me to get that backstage promo that I did with the

head, speaking to the head and arguing with it about the fact that it had let

slip that I had been injured and couldn't wrestle on the pay -per -view,

just took off from there.

He ran with that thing, man. He just, he went nuts with it. And he was talking

to the head, and he's listening to the head, and...

We went with it, and then came along part two of that.

Probably one of the greatest moments was the first night I was in the room with

the head, and I held it up over my head after the match, and everybody had those

styrofoam heads and began to throw them into the ring. And on camera, it looked

like, you know, no pun intended, but like I was standing in the middle of a

snowstorm. That was so cool.

I wanted to do a rave party effect with one of our characters.

So I found these styrofoam head distributors.

And we spent a fortune buying styrofoam heads.

And I had two friends of mine who would drive U -Haul trucks to all of our

cities and bring 2 ,000, 3 ,000, 1 ,000 styrofoam heads with them.

And before ours met, we would hand out the heads.

And then we hit the strobe light.

And people would pop.

I think this era of wrestling was on such a...

a great plateau.

I mean, everyone was watching everything.

Who's going to jump from ECW to go to WCW or WWE?

Is the WWE going to lose this guy? And we'd come back and we'd snatch this guy.

And I think it was all good. The 900 numbers were doing great. The rumor

were stirring around and everything was hot.

We were surviving on our syndication.

We were surviving on word of mouth and we were surviving on the internet.

We used to have internet conventions called Cyber Slam, where fans would get

do Q &A with the wrestlers at ECW, and it was broadcast over the internet. We

used to do live internet feeds from the ECW arena and from all our shows, stuff

that really was never done before.

It just was spreading out, and it just was creeping, and it just was happening,

and we could feel it. You know, I could feel it.

1998, we really started doing four nights a week. I think ECW could have...

taking over WCW.

We were on such a roller coaster, and that roller coaster just kept getting

higher and higher and higher. There were no dips.

We were really gaining a lot of momentum.

I'm not sure why anybody would consider that at one time ECW was the number two

organization out there compared to WWE or WCW.

At a time when WCW was on top of the mountains, so to speak, ECW clearly

wasn't number two at that point.

WWE was.

And all the while WWE was number one, at no time did

ECW's... in any measurable way, either in terms of television ratings, pay -per

-view buys, licensing merchandising, live event attendance, international

distribution, any way you choose to measure a level of success of a

company, at no time did ECW come even close to being number two.

To this day, Eric Bischoff believes that he created some of the stuff that was

created in a little bingo hall in Philadelphia.

I don't blame him for believing it.

From a purely business sense, I question his judgment in terms of trying to

create a truly national television property with the kind

of hardcore content that was really the fabric of his show.

Even though WCW and WWE kind of looked down on ECW like a nothing promotion.

I disagree. They all had their eyes on the company because they knew it was

something special. We did take some of the ECW aspects of what they were doing

and sort of reshaped it in our own form.

But I never considered them a threat.

It was a totally different brand. It was not what we were about.

Attitude grew from ECW's revolution.

No doubt.

Nobody can deny that.

I do believe there's some truth to that. When I started in WWE as Mankind, there

were two things I used to hear when I came out. One was you sold out. That was

coming from ECW fans.

And ECW chants, whenever anything wild was taking place, it was always seen as

being a tribute or a ripoff of ECW. And as our style in WWE got more

physical, those chants stopped.

And that physical style became synonymous with WWE, not ECW. But I

not been for ECW, you wouldn't have had a WWE attitude.

People would say, you know, is that where you got your attitude?

We've always had an attitude. We just haven't always said it, you know, and

demonstrated it. The WWE attitude, it was one of, it was more verbal

than the ECW attitude.

The ECW attitude was one of, who had more hutzpah than the next guy?

I don't blame anybody for stealing their concepts.

It's smart business.

They had a larger platform.

We pushed the envelope, and that forced the other two companies to push the

envelope. Without ECW going to the extreme, you never would have seen Steve

Austin come in drinking beers and flipping the fingers to the audience.

You never would have seen Mick Foley coming in as Mankind and doing the 20

Hell in a Cell match. That was a result of ECW.

I'm not saying we could not have been successful without them, but I certainly

think they played a part.

in letting us become the phenomenon that we did. I firmly believe that.

In 1998, I feuded with Bam Bam Bigelow, and that's another guy I learned so much

from.

Bam Bam had so much success here in the WWE, and when he came to ECW, it was

like, wow, the beast from the East, from Asbury Park, you know, a Northeast guy

coming into Extreme Championship Wrestling, the Big Bam Bam. This is off

chart, you know.

And we wrestled each other at Asbury Park Convention Center on a pay -per

And it was amazing because that was his hometown.

Taz was untouchable at ECW.

And no one could imagine that Taz could lose a match.

Bam Bam and I were wrestling for the TV title. I was the TV champion.

And I ended up getting him into Taz's mission.

And I was on his back.

And he was walking around the ring with me on his back and choking him out.

And then all of a sudden, he just throws himself backwards, and we go right

through the ring.

ECW Classic moment.

The whole arena, you know, just stood up. Like, looking in the ring, like,

trying to look in the ring. And it's just, like, the silence, and then this,

like, holy -you -don't -watch chant starts, you know.

We laid in that hole for, shoot, I'd say, I don't know, about 25, 30 seconds,

maybe even longer, which is a long time, you know.

And then Bam Bam crawled out first, you know.

And the place went nuts. That's the hometown guy, and they know I'm dead,

was his cushion, you know.

So the guy who went in second came out first.

And I was giving up about 120 pounds to Bam Bam at the time.

And then I didn't come out on my own. Bam Bam pulled me out and covered me.

two, three. And Pin Mean became the TV champion.

The place erupted and I lost the match.

And he lost.

Graciously. And came out just a few weeks later.

Walked up to Bigelow in the ring and said, you beat me?

It was an honor to wrestle you. But just so you know, now I'm even more inspired

to beat you back.

As time went on, I kind of invented my own belt called the FTW Championship.

FTW stood for F the World.

And that was Taz's attitude.

He didn't care about anybody.

He was miserable, pissed at the world.

Just, you know, just angry.

Angry rage.

Our world champion, Shane Douglas, was on the shelf with an injury.

The company was doing me wrong. I felt I wasn't getting an opportunity for Shane

Douglas' ECW World Heavyweight title and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I come out with my own championship in my home

city of Brooklyn, Queens, New York, and debut this belt.

And it took a life on of its own.

You see, I'm not the ungrounded champion because I

am the world heavyweight champion.

And this is the proof. You can call it the Brooklyn World Belt. You can call it

the World Belt.

You can call it anything you want.

But enough with the chitter -chatter. Shane Douglas!

I don't think if you go back in the history of ECW, the FTW title meant that

much. I think in the history of ECW, the FTW title was the launch of

Taz's push towards the World Heavyweight Championship.

And there's only been two FTW champions in history, myself and Sabu.

Sabu wasn't happy when he had the FTW belt because we had the first belt,

was an old TV belt that we painted orange and just put FTW stickers on it,

right? And then we had a real belt made that said FTW on it with my name on it.

So we figured, I don't know what else is going to have it. It's mine. It's not a

real championship. I invented it.

Well, then, uh, once he let us know that Taboo ended up beating me for it, and

he was pissed that my name was on it and graded it.

So he would take a big piece of white tape, put it over my name, and just put

up, Sharpie wrote Taboo.

So, yeah, he was a little nuts.

We had fun with it, though. The FTW title was really cool.

The Dudleys were very, very, very important in the history of ECW because

paid their money to see the Dudleys get beat up.

Hinging every night, me and Bubba.

Man, I mean, just coming out there and just being the most hated tag team at

that point in time and fighting, I mean, 1 ,500 people.

I mean, just we would go through crowds. We'd start riots. And, I mean, we would

take it on people left and right. I mean, it was just amazing.

And I couldn't believe how much hatred me and Bubba actually created in ECW.

Flaming Tables matches was the icing on the cake for the Dudleys.

Everybody really used tables.

So it's nothing that we started doing or perfected. It's just something we were

known for. One day in Detroit, we needed to put an icing on the cake in our feud

with Balls Mahoney and Axl Rotten.

And I said, well, why don't we just light it on fire?

I remember being scared to death because of the fire and knowing how

unpredictable fire was.

You know, you don't know if you can control it or not. It can, you know,

get out of control and things can happen.

We've already thrown thumbtacks on it. We've already wrapped it in barbed wire.

How much crazier, how much sicker can we get?

I remember taking the lighter and just putting it right in that one little spot

and the whole table just went up in flames.

And I remember the people's reaction was just like, oh.

And I remember us taking a wrestler by the name at the time in ECW called Bulls

Mahoney. He was like maybe 6 '1", 6 '2", 360 pounds, and we picked him up in a

powerbomb -type position and just slammed him right through it.

He wasn't caring about getting burned. He said, if I get burned, great, better

for the business.

And that's how Flaming Tables were invented.

The wood, the fire, I mean, just went everywhere. And, I mean, the fans went

crazy. We were happy that no one seriously got burned or hurt really bad,

was just that you could feel the heat. It was that intense.

We were the epitome of the word heel. We were the worst of the worst.

We were the most in -your -face, disgusting, hated people that ever

in an ECW wrestling ring.

came through ECW would say the same thing.

I think the Dudleys are the greatest team in the history of ECW, bar none.

They egged on a crowd. They antagonized the audience more than any other act in

the history of this business.

And they were fearless in doing it.

If I said it once, I said it a billion times.

You people are the most no -good, impregnable...

Pieces of garbage I've never seen.

We went so far on a nightly basis. We incited riots.

We stirred the people up into such a frenzy that a lot of crazy

things would happen.

Not being in this miserable piece of...

And we probably went too far every single night. Did it ever get that far?

one night on pay -per -view, I believe it was Heat Wave 99 in Dayton, Ohio at

the Harrah Arena.

It got to the point where fans were waiting outside, you know, when we would

to our cars just to say, okay, you know, no security is around you now. What do

you have?

Security, the security police are around the ring.

No one's going to make a move. They're the six -time world tag team champion.

was every single night from the time we walked into the arena to the time we

left.

Going too far.

Yeah, we went far every night, but that was part of the beauty of ECW and what

got the W boys to dance.

The wrestling business at that stage became almost like the

dot -com industry.

And that it was an inflated bubble that had a burst.

And the pay scale just went off the chart.

And it became very difficult to afford talent.

And these guys are turning down hundreds of thousands of dollars to go elsewhere

just to stay with us. And there comes a time where that's not fiscally

responsible to your own family.

We had to step it up. We had to get licenses.

We had to get advertisers. We had to get sponsors. And the only way to do that

is to be real enough to be on national TV.

It was a struggle. I mean, that was when a lot of the guys were starving. You

know, that was when you were eating tuna and rice seven days a week.

So it was tough because the veterans that were there that couldn't put up

it quit.

And these were the guys that the rest of the locker room looked up to.

And, you know, here I was going, what the hell, Bam Bam Bigelow just walked

because he said this place, you know, isn't worth it. And I'm going, in my

I'm thinking, is he right?

Am I, you know, trying to stay on a sinking ship? I mean, it's obvious my

are bouncing. Why should I be loyal to this guy now?

When Paul Heyman fell on bad financial times, it affected a lot of people. When

I started in the company in 99, a lot of guys were getting, their checks were

bouncing ever since the beginning.

It seemed like it was always a problem.

I can tell you personally I didn't have any checks bounced on me, but I know of

a lot of guys that had checks bounced on them and a lot of guys that were very

loyal to ECW and were very instrumental to ECW's success that Paulie owed a lot

to, not just owed as far as his loyalty to, but also owed a lot of money to

financially because they performed either for little or no money.

for lengthy periods of time trying to help that company through because of how

much they felt for ECW and for Paul Hammond.

My first couple years there, I wasn't making anything, maybe $75 a night.

I was beat up. I was on the road all the time. I couldn't afford to pay for

anything. But, I mean, that's part of paying dues. It made me a better person,

better wrestler for suffering through that.

I got a couple bounce checks.

I was working on a verbal contract at the time, and he had put in a clause

If there was a breach in the contract due to pay, he had 30 days to correct

And I told him that was okay, but I wanted the three strikes you're out

where if he did it three times, I could walk.

And on the third one, I went to him and said, we're on a verbal contract.

I'm verbally breaking it. You've striked out three times.

I'm no longer under contract. I'm not quitting, but if I have another check

bounce, I'm leaving.

And at which point in time, my paychecks were FedExed to my door, and I got them

every week.

And right up to my last show, I didn't have another bounce check.

either were afraid to put their foot down or didn't feel that they could get

job elsewhere, kind of had to tough out the bounce check.

I think it affected everybody differently.

Luckily, I was younger and not married, and I didn't really need the money where

guys maybe like Bam Bam Bigelow, who was there at the time, Shane Douglas, those

guys affected a lot more. They're married, they got higher mortgages and

So I think it affected everybody differently.

It affected me too, you know. I mean, I needed money, but it didn't affect me

that way.

Experience was a payoff for me.

I didn't get paid for six months.

Paul couldn't pay me.

When there was a little extra money, he would give it to me.

I think Paulie ended up being kind of his own worst enemy.

In my opinion...

You know, and I think it wasn't just mine. I think it was just about

everybody's.

Paulie was never a businessman.

Paulie was a wrestling genius.

Paulie could come up with a storyline just like that at the blink of an eye.

when it came down to business, Paulie was horrible.

Our greatest asset was also our greatest detriment, and that was Paul. As the

company expanded, I think it overwhelmed him.

wanted to know everything and be part of everything.

It was very frustrating working with a guy who lived so close to the

edge that you constantly had to pull him back in so he wouldn't commit suicide

on a business level.

The only problem Paul had, I guess in his own mind, was that there was only 24

hours in a day to get all the work done.

I feel that Paul Lee tried to do everything by himself, and when it grows

the mom -and -pop to the subway, you can't let it run like a mom -and -pop's

deli anymore.

You got to step up and give other people some jobs and other things to do and

take some of the pressure off of you.

That man was doing everything. He was writing. He was editing in the studio.

was sleeping two hours a night. And sooner or later, it catches up to you.

And, you know, at the time then, the right people didn't know what to do

he never really gave anybody else too many different jobs.

I know we would always get on Paul Lee for that. You need help. You need to

start trusting somebody. You need to do something because it's too big for one

man to hold.

Paul Lee was just, Paul Lee was Paul Lee. He was like a rebel without a

you know, in my opinion.

National TV was the next step for us. It was the next necessary step in terms of

survival.

That was the main goal, to get on mainstream TV in any way, shape, or

It took a long time, you know.

But, you know, he got there.

I think Paul should be commended for that.

And all of the talent underneath Paul that helped get to that.

This is ECW on TNA!

My thought, congratulations, I thought this was going to be good. I thought

maybe Paul Heyman finally, you know, was...

was going to be a player and maybe a major player, I was in favor of that. I

called him up and congratulated him, as I recall, and then said, Paul, but you

realize you have to change because you are now not attempting to draw a

portion of the audience, as you have been in the past. You called a small

segment, a high -risk segment of the audience that enjoys what it is you do.

That's fine.

But now you're on a national platform. You have to broaden out, and you have to

appeal to the masses now.

We didn't change it. We didn't change the products for anyone.

It was the next holy grail after pay -per -view. It was the next logical

It was a necessary step.

We would not have survived without it.

We would not have survived 1999 without getting on national TV because we would

not have gotten a video game. We would not have gotten a T -shirt distribution.

We would not have gotten DVD distribution. We would not have gotten

And we only got these things, these licenses and these outside deals because

were going to get on national TV.

We didn't have the best of equipment.

We didn't have the best ring. We didn't have the best facilities. We didn't have

the... the huge lighting system that you see today.

And with everything against us, with our heart, with the

group effort of everyone's heart and dedication and drive, we became a

company.

I'm a star on CNN!

Honey, how do you feel that? I was very excited when ECW got us.

television do with TNN because up until that time we had such limited exposure.

We had the pay -per -views and we had some syndicated television that not

everybody got or if they did get it, it was three in the morning sometimes, you

know, or it would be on sometimes, sometimes it wouldn't be on and so a lot

people had to work really hard to try to find us on TV and even the fans would

go so far as to trade videotapes, you know, because they wanted to watch us.

I thought that, boom, we're on TNN, you know, now it's going to be awesome. We

said we're going to do pay -per -view, we did it. We said we're going to have

action figures, we did it.

We even had an ECW magazine, and now we're going to be on every Friday night,

you know, and our fan base is going to grow huge.

That's what we need. We'll have all the support, and everything's going to take

off.

All the hype, all the talk, everybody's saying it.

ECW and TNN.

ECW is going to take TNN to the extreme.

We found out that we're going on TNN and we lost our heavyweight champion and

our tag team champions in a matter of two weeks.

WWE came in and took a bunch of guys. They took Taz and the Dudleys.

So we're having all of our top guys were bailing.

It was demoralizing.

I'd say ECW was affected a lot by the main staples of the company leaving, and

that was just a problem where the individuals were growing at a different

than the company was growing.

You feel like you're not only losing someone that's great for the product,

also someone that, you know, you're friends with. And so it's sort of

bittersweet. You wish them the best going on, but then all of a sudden

saying at the same time, you know, I wish they wouldn't go.

Leaving the ECW to come to the WWE was, you know, was very hard.

I think it definitely was damaging to ECW because Taz was their man, you know.

And it built Taz up to be this, you know, this sawed -off monster, you know,

suplex king and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, I enjoyed Taz's work.

Paul Heyman and I never had a contract.

We had a handshake agreement.

You know, and it goes back to when I broke my neck and the man paid me.

I knew I could trust him. He did right by me.

WWE's doing phenomenal business.

WCW's doing phenomenal business.

ECW's about to hit on TNN. We're doing great business. I'm negotiating with

I'm the champion here, about to go on cable TV, primetime.

And, you know, my agreement's ending in a few months.

Am I a bad guy?

If I explore other options or if people come to me and want to utilize my skills

or my talents or lack thereof or whatever and make an offer to me, is

Am I a bad guy because I listen to those offers?

No.

I have a family, and I got to do what's right for them, and I got to do what's

right for me.

The main thing for me to leave ECW wasn't just a concern for money.

It was the concern of my heart, my body, my mind, and my

passion to wrestle for ECW.

I was main eventing pay -per -views as the heavyweight champion, and it got to

point where it was like, okay, I don't, now what?

What am I going to do?

This is not, I'm having fun, but it's like the edge is gone, the butterflies

gone.

There was no challenge anymore.

It became too easy for me. I became complacent.

I just didn't, it just wasn't the same for me. I didn't have that challenge.

And I just, it was strange. It just was like, it just happened.

My last

official match.

on pay -per -view for ECW was Anarchy Rules in 1999.

And everyone, I guess, the fans somehow knew that I was going to WWE.

Basically, the way the match works, it's a triple threat, and it's elimination.

If you lose, you walk back, and then the other two guys go at it, you know what

I mean?

I was the first one to lose, and the whole place was like, whoa, the champion

just got beaten in like four minutes.

Now Tanaka and The Awesome's going to go at it.

All the boys in the back are coming out. They can't believe it. We can't believe

it. The fans can't believe it. The story of it is, for me, was when I was

walking down the ramp there.

The whole locker room, the whole ECW locker room came out with Paul Heyman in

the front. I didn't know that was going to happen.

In front of thousands of people in Chicago, we had a great house on pay

-view.

And I said goodbye to me, live on pay -per -view.

And I, you know, I broke down, you know what I mean? It was amazing, you know.

And Paul hugged me, you know, right there on the ramp.

And I had his blessing there.

That was a good way to say goodbye.

Dudleys, I think, have done extremely well here.

And that was, again, a big deal. The Dudleys were synonymous with ECW.

Devon, get the tables.

So that had to go to the heart, I would imagine, of ECW's talent roster.

That was the heart and soul, probably, of the entire roster.

Me and Devon knew that it was time.

To do something, because we saw that the financial problems were really having

an effect on the company.

Myself and Devon were never owed a dime by Paul Heyman.

We cannot ever turn around and say he owes us money. He doesn't.

Paulie always paid me.

Paulie always paid Devon.

We never thought that we eventually one day were going to jump to WWE, but we

had to start thinking about it. And when we got the phone call, we sat down with

Paulie and said, listen, they called.

Now, we'd like to hear from you.

Paulie told us, I can't compete with them and I can't compete with their

We said, we're not asking you to.

Do something to keep us here.

Make us understand that you appreciate the fact that we put our bodies on the

line for you.

Paulie thought that he could not compete with them. And that's the day I think I

truly learned that ECW was the minor league and the breeding ground for WWE.

Paul had instilled in everyone and in myself, you want to leave? Goodbye.

The Dudleys asked for $1 raise before they came to WWE.

The Dudleys did not want to come here.

They asked for $1 more, and Paul said, absolutely not.

And he said, I can't compete with WCW. I can't compete with WWE financially.

People stay here because they want to stay here.

I felt that the reason why ECW was at the level that they were at, was because

helped contribute to it, along with other ECW stars at that time.

And it was hard for me to actually sign the contract to come here because it was

almost like I felt so guilty.

It was almost like a marriage.

The Dudley boys, these birds, fly this group and sing their swan song. It's

their final evening in Extreme Championship Wrestling.

It's the greatest match.

than I think that me and Bubba had ever had in ECW on TV. Had to be the last

night we were there, right before we came to the WWE.

3D, go, go, go!

At that point in time, the fans were irate about that, and I think there was

some speculation in some of the fans' minds that we weren't going anywhere,

because that was supposed to be our last night, but yet we won the titles.

It's an unthinkable...

unprecedented, unfathomable situation.

Tag team, their last night in a promotion, win the World Tag Team title

The Dudley boys now eight -time World Tag Team champions. I guess I should be

big shill and say, hey, glad it happened on ECW on TNN, but I'm not glad. Let's

be honest.

You're witnessing a very uncomfortable and scary moment for everyone here at

Extreme Championship Wrestling. I mean, the Dudleys are going to leave with a

World Tag Team title belt?

We went in the back and came back out and said that we were going to take

titles and lay them on the desk of Vince McMahon.

become legends!

And we called out Tommy Dreamer.

We started getting on him about his girlfriend and how we broke his

neck. Dreamer comes in the ring and we start beating him up and then out of

nowhere, Raven comes in.

Raven returned from WCW. He walked out on WCW. She wasn't happy.

There was a lot of turmoil going on over there in WCW.

And Raven left and he came back. And the Dudleys at this point were leaving to

come to WWE.

And Raven and I won the tag team titles together. And we were tag team partners

that hated each other.

The people went crazy.

And I think that's the most memorable moment I think I can ever remember.

We were the highest rated show on TNN at the time, and we always felt that they

were, I guess, using us as a lead -in for Rollerball or whatever, Rollerjam,

Rollerball, whatever that stupid rollerblading show was.

Welcome back to ECW Wrestling on TNN. You still have about a half an hour left

of hardcore wrestling action, and then the Friday Night Thrill Zone continues.

At the top of the next hour, it's the season premiere of Rollerjam and a

rematch. from last year's Founders Cup championship as the California Quakes

defend against the New York Enforcers.

We were the guinea pigs just to see if wrestling would fly on that network.

They sent back everything. Our first show had a video, and they sent it

back saying, we don't want any music videos on this show.

They didn't want our opening theme song because they felt it was too demonic.

They didn't want references to hatred.

I hate you.

Can't say that.

Intense dislike is what we prefer.

It was horrible.

Paul loved to push the envelope.

He loved to test network patience.

The first show we went on TNN, we were supposed to give them brand new

wrestling, and he...

He didn't like our TNN shoot that we did, and he aired Rob Van Dambris, Jerry

Lynn from a pay -per -view on the first night. He did not give them what they

wanted.

Just how he was.

I created a character called Cyrus, who was the representative of the network

and who enforced all the censorship and was the lead heel for ECW

because the network wanted things done a certain way. The network wanted a

certain champion. The network wanted a certain look. And it was very true to

life. The network is not very happy.

We walked in thinking this was the answer to all of our problems, and it

the albatross that dragged us down underwater.

We had a pretty bad deal with them where we had relatively no commercial time,

no money for the show, and yet they expected very high production value,

was a problem in itself because Paul didn't want to change the look of the

or the integrity of the product. They wanted to come in with...

you know five cameras and try to compete on vince's level and paul knew that we

could never compete on vince's level we didn't have the money to put up the

lighting for the fireworks the you know the big production so we wanted to be

counterculture

Nothing ever was really put into the company. There was never a commercial

ECW ever, except for while you were watching the show.

There was no promotion added to it, and it got to be a point to where it

actually seemed to add a lot of expenses for ECW to actually be on the TV show.

Not one mention on the radio, not one press release, not one phone call to a

newspaper, nothing.

You could have the best product in the world, but if no one could see it, no

knows where you are.

Ain't going to watch it.

We're spending ourselves into a hole just to provide the production values

necessary to stay on the network.

We have all of these licenses and sponsors and advertisers that are

us because we're on national television, so we can't dump out of the deal. And

they are publicly negotiating with WWE to bring that show onto their

network just to throw us off.

And since this show apparently is going to make air this week, I'd like to take

this moment to thank you for watching ECW.

You have to be an ECW fan to watch this show because God knows the network has

never put out one freaking commercial or one press release to let you know that

we're here. But that's their scheme of things.

You see, in just a few weeks, the network is going to give $100 million to

McMahon like he needs it to replace us.

In case they haven't thrown us off before then.

And the fact of the matter is, we're not a publicly funded company like Vince

McMahon or WCW. We survive or even thrive on your support. And for

that, we thank you.

Now, in an industry where everybody wants to be real and everybody wants to

shoot, this, my friends, is a shoot.

We hate this thinking network.

We hate their guts for abandoning us. We hate their guts for not supporting us.

We hate their guts for not advertising us. And we hate their guts for not

the balls to throw us off the air.

And just in case you're watching this, hey, network, I dare you to throw me off

the air.

Because I'm going to break every rule that you put in front of me until you

throw me the hell off the air.

Now this, my friends, is a shoot.

You better take that $100 million that you're going to give Vince McMahon, and

you better spend it on attorneys, because I promise you, network, the war

has just begun.

We're dead.

We're dead, and we can't get out of the line of fire. And we're just taking

bullet after bullet after bullet after bullet after all these years of hard

work, and we're just watching somebody.

cannibalize us, and we're powerless to do anything about it. I think the last

straw is when Taz left.

And from then on, all you had was really Rob Van Dam.

ECW is back on CNN, and Van Dam is here, boy!

He was Rob Van Dam. He was RVD. He was Mr.

Monday Night.

He was a laid -back butt braggadocious.

He was a cool but brazen personality.

People latched on to him. And there was no need to add all these garnishings and

all these added accoutrements to Rob Van Dam. He was what they wanted. He was

the meal in and of itself.

The fans love Mr.

PPV RVD.

By the way, he's called Mr. Pay -Per -View because every one of his matches

worth paying your hard -earned money to see.

They wanted to see him wrestle. They wanted to see him do his thing. They

to see him point his thumbs. They wanted to see him do his laid -back cool

interviews. They wanted to see him talk about 420.

Rob Van Dam was a lot different. Rob Van Dam was a different type of attraction

than I had ever seen in wrestling because usually in wrestling you need to

guy in a heated situation where, you know, I hate you and I'm going to get my

revenge on you. And that wasn't the case with Rob Van Dam. People didn't want to

hear that about him.

At the time, I was the reigning television champion, and because of the

of the matches that I was having consistently that they could count on,

television title actually was meaning as much, if not more, depending on whose

perspective.

than a heavyweight title.

And so that was something really strong in the company to have those two rival

belts. And we were actually, you know, maybe one moment we'll actually see the

TV champion and heavyweight champ, you know, go ahead and find out which one

really does me more. Well, I broke my ankle, and so I'm out of the picture for

three months. I could no longer defend that title. After holding the title for

23 months and at the time being the longest reigning champion, I had to

the title.

of the standard I've set is the ECW World Television Champion.

Mike Awesome was our champion. He went to WCW while he was under contract with

us. They sent the cops to Nitro to get the belt because Eric Bischoff wanted

to throw the belt in the trash.

I guess WWE was trying to do some business and help out ECW and Paul

little bit, just with some stuff, because they had a situation, they being

with their champion at the time. It was Mike Austin.

Basically what happened at the end of the day, I ended up showing up at a

show that ECW did in Indianapolis, Indiana, and surprise, you know,

faced Mike Austin.

is here to stand up for ECW, to stand up to Mike Austin.

It's the first time ever in history that a WWE wrestler, contractor wrestler, is

going to face a WCW contractor wrestler at an ECW event for the ECW

championship.

So we were all part of history.

And then showed up and wrestled on Raw and with

it and wrestled Triple H on SmackDown with it. And at the time, Triple H was a

WWE champ.

And, you know, it was pretty wild.

History's difficult, you know. It really is when you look back on things and you

say, well, that doesn't speak too well of me trying to help that brand, does

And it doesn't speak too well. And I can't tell you what my frame of mind was

that time. All I can tell you is I'm sure I thought it was the right thing to

at the time.

And then the next week, I beat Taz for the belt in the ECW arena.

Thank you very much.

I won that.

The place was, they watched Tommy Dreamer mature finally.

And after seven years in that company, I mean, people were crying.

The night I won the belt, I was actually pissed off. I wanted to go my entire

ECW career without ever winning a title.

When Mike Awesome left,

Paul put the belt on me because he knew I wasn't going anywhere.

The only reason why I won titles was because guys left.

You serve a lot of masters when you're a national television platform.

One of the masters, the ultimate master, is the audience. You've got to make the

audience happy. But at the same time, you've got to make advertisers happy.

You've got to make sure that the network that you're associated with has a

comfort level with your content.

And then, of course, you have all the fringe groups out there that are trying

to... convince the world that they should be able to tell you what you

television. So you've got to balance all of that.

Paul's content didn't take that into consideration.

It was too narrow. It appealed to a very small, hardcore audience, and

advertisers didn't want to have anything to do with it. Therefore, a network

didn't really want to support it much.

Pay -per -view companies didn't feel really comfortable with the type of

because... You know, there was some backlash attached to it. So you couldn't

serve that hardcore master and build a mainstream audience at the same time.

Just couldn't do it. It was destined to be a small, closely held,

regional, in many ways, promotion.

The plan was to find a new network.

But we couldn't negotiate with a new network because that would be in

of our deal with TNN.

So we're boxed into staying on TNN.

And we had to wait until they publicly declared their intention to cancel our

show before we could even talk to anybody else.

We were on for a year, a little more.

And they didn't live up to their part of the deal.

And then they also acquired WWE programming.

And then we got kicked to the curb.

So we lost our time slot. We couldn't get on any other network.

And also at that time, it was a horrible time.

We were, sometimes we weren't making payroll.

Guys' checks were bouncing.

And, you know, that gets out there, too. And a company that looks like it's

starting to sink, I don't think a lot of TV companies were going to pick us up.

And they didn't.

Was it successful business -wise?

You know, well, certainly it was for the short term. You know, for the long

term, no.

But I think, again, and it's easy for me to say this, too, you know, because I

wasn't Paul Heyman in the trenches with my talent at the same time thinking, you

know, hey, look, this got us this far with us against the world. And why

I change now? And I can understand why Paul didn't change. It's just that once

you have a national platform, you know, then you have to appeal to a national

audience. You no longer can appeal to just one small segment of it. I think

was the downfall, you know, of ECW. But that's my own personal view as a

businessman.

I didn't think it was going to fold.

This was Paul's baby.

And we had a choice of look for work elsewhere or try and stick with this guy

that's been bouncing checks to us for two years.

So it was kind of a tough call, but, you know, I stuck around, and a lot of the

guys did, and I don't know, we just hung in there.

There was a lot of guys that weren't going to have anywhere else to go.

You know, they weren't going to be able to just...

take off and start their you know work in japan or work for one of the other

companies so a lot of the guys had no choice but to stay there you know they

you want me to show up next saturday in nashville tennessee you know okay i'm

there we still went to the shows and everyone still worked there tails off

he would tell you if you don't want to work tonight i can't pay you if you want

to work go ahead maybe i could pay you from what we made tonight and a lot of

people owed a lot of money

And Paul would say, you're going to get it, you're going to get it, because we

were so close.

It was heartbreaking how close we were.

I knew that ECW was over when I was owed so much money that I knew there was

actually no way that I was going to get paid that. I mean, there was no hope

whatsoever of recovering that. While I was still getting paid in other areas,

you know, which was keeping me going, there was other money that I just wasn't

going to get, and it was building. And when it built to a level to where I had

to draw the line, I knew I was out, and I also could see that they were going to

go belly up as well.

And then it was getting rough because now all of the signs were coming in that

the company was going down.

I don't know where the money went. It seemed like business was good. It wasn't

like we were working in front of nobody.

The people were there.

But towards the end, you just knew it was going. And unfortunately, in

we had our last show.

I remember everybody went out in the ring, and I wouldn't go out there

didn't think it was over.

I was there until the end of the show and everything, but I wouldn't go out

there because I believed in my heart it wasn't over.

It was going out, and I knew it was going out, and I tried to make some

calls. You know, it was all of a sudden, next thing I knew, I was out of a job.

And then right after ECW closed, WCW closed. So now, within a month, you got

companies that closed, you got 90 wrestlers on the market, and you got WWE

there. I remember looking on the Internet, on the ECW website, to look if

were any dates announced.

I didn't want it to end.

You know, I was somebody.

I felt like somebody.

I was proud of what I've accomplished there. I was living a dream.

And I was definitely in denial for a couple years after it closed because it

hard to close that chapter of my life.

The day it ended, when I received that phone call from Paul and said, that's

Dawn, it's over.

I thought my life stopped because it was taken away without notice.

And I didn't receive a job here at the WWE for almost two years later.

So it was a reality that I may never, ever walk out to that ring again.

We're probably the only company to ever go out of business that still had a lot

of fans at the shows.

We were selling out our pay -per -views, doing great, and yet we went out of

business.

The downfall of ECW was probably two things.

The violence did have a lot to do with it.

It was an ultra -violent company that I think had its niche.

People wanted to see it, but I don't think ECW would have ever catered to the

masses because it was too violent.

When you throw caution to the wind, it's not good for your career. You can do it

on occasion on a selected basis, but you can't do it every night. You're going

to get caught.

You know, and you're going to get hurt.

Probably the other thing that killed ECW was the fact that, like I said before,

Paulie wasn't the best businessman beyond the wrestling ring.

He was tired.

He was so tired, you could see it in him.

I think he wanted it to be done.

I mean, I believe that in my heart.

He was a great promoter, a great wrestling booker, and a terrible

really believe that.

Paulie just died at the end. I think Paulie just gave up.

Paul did things his way. Paul was going to live by the sword and die by the

sword. He lived by his ways and he died by his ways. And that's why ECW is not

around today. Because of mismanagement is probably the best word I could give

it.

ECW died because we couldn't get on another network in time.

It's that simple.

We had no network and no money. We're out of business.

Had ECW landed on another network in time, then everybody in this room right

would either be working here or would be working for me. It would be a whole

different industry.

If we got another network, we would have been hugely successful, or at least had

the opportunity to be hugely successful.

We definitely would have survived.

But we didn't get on another network, and without another network, there's no

business. And so it died. It's that simple. We died because we couldn't get

another network in time.

Bottom line. And anybody that thinks anything different, is dead wrong, or

doesn't know what they're talking about.

Please welcome to the World Wrestling Federation broadcast team, Paul

Heyman!

It was a whirlwind time.

You know, I had no choice.

How to do it.

How to go.

Made no sense not to.

ECW is dead.

There was no denying that.

The king is gone, and in his chair is Paul E., and the E is for extreme.

How's that? Not bad, huh?

I don't know what I did to deserve this.

Anybody that didn't take the next step would be in denial.

And I've always learned, accept reality and move on.

And this was moving on.

I remember two things about that night.

I remember sitting next to J .R. and looking over towards him, and he just

looked at me and he went, We'll do just fine, kid.

And I pretty much knew that we would.

All right. No problem.

Another day at the office. Come on, Paul.

Don't worry about nothing. Just follow me, kid.

All right. And I remember everybody in the headsets gasping when I said the

about Trish Stratus.

I'm going to get to see Bush.

And you just hear about 30 voices in the headsets panicking. Because we're live.

And I have a live mic.

And I'm talking.

And Vince is in the ring.

So there's no governor on me.

It's just full bore.

I think at that moment, they got a taste of who they had.

And I got a taste of what ceiling I shouldn't be crashing through.

Own your own company and be the boss or come someplace else and work way down

the ladder taking orders from people. I don't think Paulie's the type that likes

taking orders. I think he wanted to be successful, just the cards were against

him.

I do not think that Paul Heyman got what he wanted because Paulie is an evil

genius.

Paulie is Dr.

Frankenstein, and Dr. Frankenstein didn't want an answer to anybody.

Paul really likes to run his own ship.

and was infinitely proud as well as he should be for what he accomplished.

And I think that if Paul had his brothers today, I think he would still

running ECW, and ECW would be more successful now than it ever was. I

think that that was Paul's dream.

And for it to go into bankruptcy, and yet for Paul to still want to be in the

business that he loves, I think speaks highly of the individual.

So I don't think he got what he wanted.

It's not his dream. His dream was to have ECW perhaps surpass WWE.

I think that was his dream, and he didn't have that. But he does

have the reality of what his dream was, and that's something to hang on to and

something that Paul Heyman can be extremely proud of forever.

Worldwide, this little company that started in Philadelphia in front of 1

people on Ratner Street, you know, in South Philly, exploded into this global,

worldwide thing where everybody wanted to work there. I wanted to work at ECW.

called for a year.

To me, it's the mark of excellence, because if you could make it there, you

could have made it anywhere.

And you look at the guys who are in this business, you know, Chris Benoit, Eddie

Guerrero right now, top of the game, and they got noticed and got jobs because

of their time at ECW.

So many people have come through that locker room, you know, come through the

doors, you know, stars of yesterday, stars of today.

He gave people opportunity that maybe would have never got it, and he gave

people opportunity that propelled them to come here.

I think that people still remember how great ECW was. To this day, when I step

into a WWE ring, me and D -Bomb still get ECW chants.

The place closed down four years ago.

Four years ago, they're still chanting ECW.

I think fans chant ECW because it gives them a warm, fuzzy, nostalgic feeling.

I really do. I mean, they liked those days. It was a rebellious group. I think

people, when they show up and chant ECW, it's kind of showing their

individuality, and it's paying tribute to a bunch of guys who did things, you

know, a little bit differently.

There's so many things.

that ECW will live on, it's not just one thing. It's not just, you know, one

match. It's not just one pay -per -view. It's not just one show. It's the

product, the people, the company as a whole that will live on forever.

You cannot achieve success without the risk of failure.

And I learned a long time ago, you cannot achieve success if you fear

If you're not afraid to fail,

Man, you have a chance to succeed.

But you're never going to get there unless you risk it all the way.

I'll risk failure.

Sometimes half the fun is failing.

Learning from your mistakes.

Waking up the next morning and saying, okay, watch out. Here I come again.

A little bit smarter.

Licking my wounds.

I'm really not looking forward to getting my ass kicked the way I just did

yesterday. So now I'm just a little more dangerous.