The Rise & Fall of ECW (18 page)

Early in the evening, during a match between Konnan and Jason, Tazz came out to the ring in a referee’s shirt to work the bout, and took the microphone.

“I want to let everyone know that my neck is not healing right, and this is what I have to do to pay my bills and feed my family,” Tazz said. “I have to be a referee. So if anybody has a comment about it, we can go outside after the show and have a conversation in the parking lot, because my hands still work fine. I just can’t get medical clearance to wrestle. And everyone in this building knows that if I really want to wrestle, nobody can stop me. So Konnan, are you ready for this match?”

Konnan answered, “Yeah.”

“Jason, are you ready for this match?” Tazz asked.

Jason started to answer. “Tazz, I would like to tell you something—”

But Tazz shut him up and said, “Jason, I don’t think you heard me. I’m a referee. I don’t need this shit. So shut your fucking mouth. Now, are you ready to wrestle?”

Jason replied, “Well…”

Tazz said, “Sounds like a yes to me. Ding.”

Konnan nailed Jason and beat him with an inverted power bomb in three seconds.

Later, Tod Gordon and Bill Alfonso had their match, and it was a bloody affair. Five minutes into it, they were hitting each other with cookie sheets, and they bumped the referee. When they bumped the referee, Tod Gordon knocked out Bill Alfonso with a cookie sheet. He covered Alfonso, and Tazz ran down in his referee’s shirt and counted, “One, two,” and then stood up without continuing the count.

Tod Gordon stood up and demanded, “What are you doing?”

Tazz nailed Gordon and decked him. He threw Bill Alfonso on top of Gordon and counted, “One, two, three.”

Bill Alfonso, the most hated man in the ECW, pinned the commissioner, Tod Gordon. It was, for ECW fans, an unbelievable scene.

Then Tazz got on the microphone and delivered his bitter tirade: “I suppose you are all wondering why I did this. Two reasons: number one, when I broke my neck, did anybody call me, anybody care, anybody send me a card, anybody send me a telegram? One man did, Bill Alfonso. Bill Alfonso called me. What did you guys do, forget about me? What about me? What about Tazz? Reason number two: you want to know why this happened? Because of Sabu. Sabu takes a booking in Japan, and fucks this company? I never fucked this company. And then we bring him back? Paul Heyman sucked his dick in the ring. He never sucked my dick in the ring. Why does Sabu get the royal treatment? Why does Sabu get treated like a god? He fucked this company over. He fucked you people over, and you cheer for him? I am going to keep dogging you people, I am going to keep dogging everybody, until Sabu fights me.”

The crowd is going wild, chanting for Sabu, hoping he will come out and give Tazz the beating he deserves. But it won’t happen—at least not that night, or the next time or the time after that. “We did that for a whole year, with Tazz calling Sabu out every night, which is unheard of,” Heyman declares. “A heel calls out a babyface, and the babyface doesn’t accept the challenge, especially a top babyface? That is unheard of in this business. That was historically the biggest moment of the
November to Remember 1995.
We now are literally planning out a year later. We wanted this to be on Pay-Per-View, and were starting to put together our Pay-Per-View matches. Tazz vs. Sabu was going to be on our first Pay-Per-
View, there was no doubt about it. We were starting to put things together.”

There were other big moments: a Two Out of Three Falls match featuring Rey Mysterio against Psicosis; Steve Austin helping to put Mikey Whipwreck over by losing to him in an ECW heavyweight title bout; Tommy Dreamer and Terry Funk against Cactus Jack and Raven in a tag team match (Cactus Jack wore a T-shirt under his typical black and gold Cactus Jack T-shirt with airbrushed faces of the Faces of Fear from WCW; when Dreamer tore off the shirt to reveal another shirt he had under it—a T-shirt with an image of Eric Bischoff on the front and the words “Forgive me, Uncle Eric” on the back, Dreamer went crazy and pummeled Cactus Jack); Sandman and Too Cold Scorpio beat The Public Enemy for the ECW Tag Team belts. ECW began in part on the strength of The Public Enemy, who had become so big that they were now being courted by both WCW and WWE. Heyman felt they could afford to lose The Public Enemy, because he knew what the other promoters didn’t—they were a total creation of his, perhaps more than any other act or gimmick Heyman had come up with in ECW. “If anyone truly understands the business, they’d know that they were terrible. But we made people believe they were great, using the interviews and the vignettes, and we had them doing things no one else was doing, and you couldn’t do those things in WCW and WWE. You couldn’t bleed all over the fans and use weapons. Outside of the very careful control that I exercised—accentuating your strengths and hiding your weaknesses—no one really knew how to hide their weaknesses. Vince and WCW were both convinced they were the best tag team in the world. No one realized they sucked. Many people today believe if you want to see a testament to the talent of Paul Heyman as a booker, look no further than The Public Enemy. I think the greatest thing I ever did was Tazz. He was the greatest bit of smoke and mirrors I ever pulled off. But a lot of people say The Public Enemy because I convinced people in the business they were great.”

After
November to Remember
came
December to Dismember.
On December 9 The Eliminators defeated The Pitbulls; The Public Enemy defeated The Heavenly Bodies; Raven beat Tommy Dreamer again; in a Steel Cage match, The Public Enemy, The Pitbulls & Dreamer defeated The Heavenly Bodies, The Eliminators, Raven & Stevie Richards; Hack Myers beat Bruiser Mastino; Dances with Dudley and Dudley Dudley beat Bad Crew; Tazz beat El Puerto Ricano; and in an ECW Heavyweight Championship Three Way Dance, Sandman won the title by defeating Mikey Whipwreck and Steve Austin, with Austin pinning Whipwreck and Sandman pinning Austin.

Despite a few well-placed shots by The Pitbulls, The Eliminators won.

Though the year 1995 would end in ECW with
Holiday Hell
on December 29, at Lost Battalion Hall in Queens, New York, it would be another beginning for two more talented performers who would have a big impact on ECW. In that show, Hack Meyers beat J.T. Smith; Tazz defeated Koji Nakagawa; Raven, of course, beat Tommy Dreamer, then lost to the Sandman for the ECW Heavyweight Championship; The Eliminators beat The Pitbulls; Bruiser Mastino defeated El Puerto Ricano; Sabu beat Cactus Jack; The Gangstas defeated The Public Enemy; Mikey Whipwreck beat Too Cold Scorpio for both the ECW TV and half of the tag team title (Scorpio and Sandman were Tag Team Champions); and two recent arrivals faced each other—a new Dudley named Bubba Ray and a strange-looking character named The Blue Meanie.

Mark Lamonica—Bubba Ray Dudley—was born on July 14, 1971, in Massapequa, New York. He was built for mayhem, standing 6-foot-4 and weighing in at 275 pounds. Like many of the New York-born wrestlers, he was trained by Johnny Rodz and also Sonny Blaze. He broke into wrestling in 1991 as a character called Mongo Vyle, and then came to ECW at the end of 1995 as a Dudley, the dancing Dudley brother who also suffered from stuttering until one of his brothers, Big Dick Dudley, supposedly cured him by hitting him with a crutch. He would later be teamed up with his black half brother, D-Von Dudley, to become known as the Dudley Boyz. They became one of the most popular tag teams in wrestling history, known for using weapons and firing up the fans to hate them. They held the ECW Tag Team titles eight times during their tenure in the promotion.

Brian Heffron—The Blue Meanie—came to ECW from a very different path. Born May 8, 1973, in Philadelphia, Meanie, like most wrestlers, got hooked watching the sport on television as a kid growing up in Atlantic City. “The first match I ever saw on TV was World Wrestling Federation. It was Tony Garea and Rick Martel vs. Mr. Fuji and Mr. Saito,” Meanie recalls. “After that, I was hooked. I grew up watching guys like Bob Backlund and Hulk Hogan, Ted DiBiase, Ricky Steamboat, and the British Bulldogs.”

When he got older, he started looking around for wrestling schools. His quest would bring him good fortune, as he would wind up being taught by Al Snow. “I had been looking in a newsletter, the
Wrestling Observer,
and they had ads for wrestling schools,” Meanie says. “I started corresponding with a woman named Phyllis Lee who ran a school in Tampa. We had corresponded for about a year and a half. She told me how much the tuition cost and she told me how much the cost of living was down there in Tampa. I was living in Atlantic City at the time.”

At 6-foot-1 and 295 pounds, Meanie was an imposing presence, and after graduating from Atlantic City High School, went to work as a security guard at Trump Plaza, working the graveyard shift. “I spent all night walking around looking for money on the floor and kicking bums out,” Meanie remembers. “It helped build character and taught me responsibility. I was able to pay my own way through wrestling school. I had a supportive family that allowed me to save up.”

The cost of living in Tampa was too high for Meanie, but he was told about a school in Lima, Ohio, run by a wrestler named Al Snow. So in March 1994, at the age of 20, Meanie began training with Snow. “I went there, and I was really lucky,” Meanie declares. “Not only is he an excellent wrestler, but he was an excellent trainer and has been an excellent friend. He was like my big brother. He was very patient and very persistent. If you did not know point A, you would not go to point B until he felt you were ready. If it wasn’t for him, I probably would have quit the first month. He helped me along, and I owe a lot to him.”

Living in South Jersey, Meanie had become a big ECW fan, and even when he was training in Lima, he would drive once a month to Philadelphia to the ECW Arena for a show. “I started watching ECW when I was a junior in high school,” he says. “I attended my first ECW match in September 1993. I was sitting in the front row. There are a lot of shows that if you look at now early on, you can see me in the crowd. I went from being a bleacher bum to being one of the wrestlers.”

While he was training with Snow, Meanie—going by the name Brian Rollins—started working on independent shows in Ohio, Michigan, Canada, Chicago, Indiana, and Kentucky, in front of crowds ranging from thirty to three hundred people. He started wearing zebra tights and then changed his name to The Zebra King, the name he would use until he came to ECW—which was his goal in the business.

While he was working the independents, he met Raven on a Pittsburgh show run by Steel City Wrestling. Raven and his lackey, Stevie Richards, were on the show, which ran for two days. They were staying at the promoter’s house when Raven, who liked what he saw from this fat kid from New Jersey, came up with a way to use him in ECW.

“Hey, kid, I got this idea for a character for a sidekick for Stevie—a big fat guy who can take a bump,” Raven said. “You can take a good bump. You can do some good moves. Would you be up for wearing Daisy Dukes [cutoff denim shorts] and a half shirt?” That was the garb of Stevie Richards, and the goal was for Meanie to be a lackey to the lackey.

Then Raven came up with the idea of calling this character The Blue Meanie. “Hey, kid, I got an idea for you,” Raven said. “You ever see the movie
Yellow Submarine?”

“Yeah, when I was a kid,” Meanie answered.

“Maybe you should watch it again,” Raven said. “There is a character called the Blue Meanie, and you fit the description perfectly. When you see it, you’ll want to paint your whole face blue.”

“Well, maybe we can just do the hair,” Meanie said.

They rented the movie and went to Raven’s house to watch it together. “I hated it, but I went with the character,” Meanie recalls. “I said I would give it a try. I had respected Raven so much that I figured he was probably onto something. He had great ring presence and a great feel for ring psychology. He has a great mind for the business. He is very underrated. When it comes to wrestling, what he says and does means so much.”

The year would end with a Christmas greeting from Cactus Jack for the ECW TV show
A Hardcore Christmas.
The scene is Cactus Jack’s house, with Burl Ives’s “Holly Jolly Christmas” playing in the background. Cactus Jack, clean-shaven, sits in front of the Christmas tree with his two-year-old daughter, Noelle, on his lap, with his wife taping as Cactus Jack delivers his good cheer in a wimpy voice:

“Ho, ho, ho—Happy Hardcore Holidays, everybody. This is Cactus Jack, along with the rest of the Foleys here to wish you and your family a Happy Holiday Hardcore season. I took this time out today to try to explain what Christmas means to me, and, by golly, I found out that Christmas can mean a lot of different things. First off, I found out that Christmas can be fun! Ha ha. Why, just the other day there were some Christmas carolers and I snuck up on their little group and, as the door opened and they began to sing, I started chanting, ‘ECW, ECW, ECW,’ ha, ha, and I’ll tell you what…I would have gotten away with it too, but all the neighbors heard me yelling as I made my way through the neighborhood. But you know, they didn’t care. They just thought, ‘There goes that nutty Cactus Jack.’ But you know what, they realized it doesn’t hurt to have a hardcore person in the neighborhood. Second of all, Christmas is for family. Why just the other day, I was taking gingerbread men out of the oven, and I’ll tell you what, I took one look at that cookie sheet and I was wishing that I could, ‘Powee!’ ha, ha…hit someone over the head with it—right in the kisser. Ha, ha, I bet you could get some juice out of that one! Bang bang!