Read The Rise & Fall of ECW Online
Authors: Tazz Paul Heyman Thom Loverro,Tommy Dreamer
The Rise & Fall of ECW (32 page)
Perhaps it it best left to the conscience of ECW, Tommy Dreamer, who may have loved the promotion more than anyone and who stayed until the end, often without getting paid, to summarize the rise and fall of ECW and what it meant to the wrestling industry.
“The bottom line is that ECW changed the face of professional wrestling,” Dreamer says. “We didn’t get the financial rewards that we should have. We were responsible for the ‘Attitude Era.’ And we were responsible for anything that could happen on
Raw
when we invaded, when WWE was getting their ass kicked by WCW in the ratings. That whole ‘Attitude Era’ was all stuff that we were doing and they were just copying it. They were making millions, while we were struggling. ECW, four and a half years
after
it went out of business, people are still clamoring for it. Every time I walked out, people never let me forget ECW. I was probably involved in most of the big moments. I was a fan. I wanted to give, and still do, what the fans want to see. I don’t think the business, as a whole, would have boomed without ECW, and we never got the credit we deserved. Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero would have never had jobs in the industry if it wasn’t for ECW. Stone Cold wouldn’t have learned how to talk. Rey Mysterio would have never come to the States. It was a lot of guys who gave their hearts and souls to the company. As much as guys wanted to complain about Paul not paying people, most of us stood by him because we loved the product so much. It was our choice to come to work and not get paid. I don’t know how many people would do that here [WWE], if Vince couldn’t make payroll for one week. I worked for six months without getting paid. I broke my neck and my back and continued working because the show needed me.
“If you go back, and they talk about it here at the first
WrestleMania,
and look at Vince McMahon’s face, he put everything on the line on that one Pay-Per-View, and it paid off for him,” Dreamer says. “That was me every single day. And Paul. Every show was at that time make-or-break, and it was always for the show.
“We were so close. It was heartbreaking how close we were.”
Chapter TenThe Passion of ECW
T
here were so many factors that helped to make ECW rise in the entertainment industry—the right location, the right performers, the right fans, and the right mastermind. Without any of these, ECW may never have had the success it enjoyed. Here, in their own words, are the creators, performers, fans, and others who all contributed to the uniqueness of ECW.
Joey Styles: “The arena was a second home to me. I had been there so many times. It was a real dive when we worked there, but it was home. There was something about it that you cannot understand if you weren’t there for an ECW event. Nothing can accurately describe or convey the family atmosphere that we were all in on a secret that the world wasn’t ready for—a great big wrestling party.”
Pee Wee Moore: “Sandman was one of the comedians in the locker room, but everyone kept the place loose. The crowd was loose and everyone knew each other. There were some times when the checks were bouncing when some guys were strung out, but for the most part everyone had fun and joked around with each other. Everyone in the dressing room was cool, because they knew ECW wasn’t a place to get rich. It was a place to get noticed so you could get that contract. So there wasn’t a lot of backstabbing. I don’t recall a lot of tension, other than when the money got tight.
“The ECW Arena was the nucleus of ECW. If you could get over in the building, you could go to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and people would like you. But if you got booed in that building, and went to Grand Rapids, the people would hate you. Philly set the tone, then later the New York crowd got hot, too, and they helped set the tone. But there is no question that the Philly crowd was very intense, and knew their wrestling. The crowd dictated a lot of guys getting jobs.”
Tazz: “The ECW Arena was brutal. We didn’t have air conditioning. There was no locker room facility, it was like a big storage area. They used to keep stuff from the Mummers Parade there, floats from the parade, and that was our locker room. And in the winter, it got cold as hell, and all we had was this football sideline heater that at times blew fire, and that would heat up the backstage area. It was in the middle of the locker room, and it could burn you. That is what ECW was. It wasn’t pretty.
“One of the big things for me about WWE was that you could take a shower after the matches, and there was a real locker room where you could chill out. But as time goes on, I miss those seedy locker rooms and rough conditions, because it was the product in the ring that really mattered, and not how fancy the locker room was. I miss it now. They were great moments, and it was a great place to work. It was blue collar and rough-edged.”
Mike Awesome: “The atmosphere in the ECW locker room was the best I have ever experienced in the business. It was like everyone got along, and those that didn’t just stayed away from each other. Everyone was hungry, and people were willing to do anything to make it. They would put their bodies on the line and not get paid and get screwed over and still be cheerful and happy about it. That is the way it was.”
Tommy Dreamer: “We had incidents where fans would try to cross the line and prove they were tough, but we would beat the fans up. We would have old-school riots. I remember Balls Mahoney fell over the top rope and was leaning against the guardrail. A fan punched him in the face. Balls looked up and he punched him again. By that time, the wrestlers came running out and we had a huge fight with him and his friends. Everyone started fighting. They called in the SWAT police and dogs. There was a time when the locker room would clear and we would lay out everybody. There was one time when a bunch of state troopers who were drunk at a show and pulled guns out and put them in our faces. We were truly the crazed rebels.”
Al Snow: “One time we are in a spot show in Pennsylvania, and a good example of the comradery in the locker room, Meanie and Nova and I forget who else, they were doing the bWo, and they were in the ring doing the YMCA routine. I am looking through the curtain, and see that the entire building is doing the YMCA dance. I turn around, and everyone in the locker room is doing it, too. There is Big Dick Dudley, Bubba, D-Von, Shane, everyone but Tazz, of course, all doing the YMCA dance, Balls Mahoney, Axl, singing it along with the crowd, and it cracked me up. You didn’t see that anywhere else. The boys were geniune fans of the business and of the company and what we were doing, as the fans were.”
Francine: “The best part for me was to work with people who became my extended family. It was never really a job for me. I enjoyed going to work. It was like, ‘Hey, I get to perform for fifteen minutes and then hang out with my friends.’ There was never a moment where I dreaded going. I knew guys from WCW and WWE and they all say that there has never been a locker room that they heard of like ECW was. I am going on my twelfth year in the business now and have worked a lot of locker rooms, and there will never be a locker room like that one.
“There were a lot of girls that came through that door who quickly walked out. I was there for seven years. You had to love the business and appreciate wrestling. The girls that stuck it out proved themselves. We took the bumps and were dedicated to the sport.”
Mick Foley: “It was incredibly hot, and the fans were incredibly passionate, and pretty knowledgeable as far as fans knowing their product. The fans were far more passionate than WCW and what I had been used to. I guess I had a love-hate relationship with the fans there. I loved the fact that they knew their wrestling and that they were so diehard in their love for it. But I hated them in the sense that they really expected a lot out of the wrestlers, physically and emotionally, and they weren’t very forgiving when it came to human error. As a guy who knew how much punishment the human body could take, I felt fans were encouraging guys to push themselves past that limit. But they also, in some cases, could appreciate a well-done scientific match.”
Spike Dudley: “I’ve been in a lot of riots. It wasn’t that uncommon that there would be a big fight and the cops would show up. Generally when all-out chaos broke out, I wouldn’t go out for them. Generally, our guys in Atlas Security would do just fine. I would not go out unless I heard a wrestler was down or something like that. I was involved in a number of them, and it was scary. I trusted our security guards.
“There was always some idiot taking a cheap shot. I was scared sometimes. I had stuff thrown at me, shots taken at me. But it would be one fucking asshole, out of a group of great fans. I was hit with batteries, golf balls. One time I was going through the crowd, slapping hands with everyone, and one guy just flat-out punched me in the face. I was just doing my entry. But that is not just ECW. That happens in all of wrestling, and always has. They had more opportunities for that in ECW because we were so involved with the crowd.”
Mike Bucci: “I remember the huge brawl outside the ECW Arena, when one of those guys from the Mummers Parade took a swing at Sunny and Chris Candido. This is after a show one night. Next thing I know bodies are flying everywhere. It was on.”
It was never so “on” as it was one day in Los Angeles in 2000, when ECW was running a Pay-Per-View and clashed with a small wrestling promotion there called XPW—Xtreme Pro Wrestling. A group of XPW Wrestlers threatened to sabotage the ECW event, and showed up at the Pay-Per-View wearing XPW shirts. This was not like WWE invading or some other promotion. This was an unwelcome intrusion. They were seated ringside, and a fight broke out in the arena between XPW and ECW wrestlers. It spilled out into the parking lot, and eventually, the police were called.
Mike “Nova” Bucci: “I was in the back in a sound booth, doing voiceovers, when that went down. I saw Paul, with his hat turned around, throw his headset down and storm out of the arena. When everybody went outside, it was like the OK Corral gunfight. We were on one side of the street. They were on the other side of the street. I don’t know who blinked first, but I know who blinked last. Then they went on the Internet and complained about their injuries.
“The XPW thing in Los Angeles was such a defining moment. It rallied the company. We went outside and said, ‘You motherfuckers.’ Paul Heyman was leading the charge. The company that fought together went out of business together.”
Security guard Joe Wilchak: “We were told to watch them at the show to see what they were going to do when they showed up. If they had tickets, we couldn’t refuse them the right to come in. They showed up and promised they weren’t going to do anything. Everything was going pretty good. But at the start of the main event—they were sitting in the front row—they started doing some stuff, put the shirts on for the company they were with, and we stopped them from doing that because we were waiting for it. The boys in the back emptied out of the locker room, and we thought we were going to have a riot. The ECW guys were serious about not having their work used by another company. We ended up pushing them out into the street in front of the building, and a bunch of the boys came outside and it then did turn into a big fight in the street. Typical of a fight, it lasted about a minute or minute and a half and broke up. Then it erupted again for another minute or two. Then it was all over, and both sides separated.
“What was funny was there were four LAPD officers in the area when this fight was going on. They were just watching. I’m sure they thought it was part of the show. When everyone fought for the second time, at that point they started to realize this was real. It wasn’t part of the show. Just as it was breaking up, I was on the end of a line trying to get our guys back into the building. One guy came up next to me with his riot baton out and yelled, ‘I want all of you in that building in ten seconds or I am going to call the paddy wagon and you’re all going to jail.’ He was so wound up and ready for a big confrontation, and I said to him, ‘The doors are locked. Can you call somebody inside to unlock the doors, and we are out of here.’ He called and the doors opened up and everyone went back inside.”