The Rise & Fall of ECW (8 page)

Terry & Dory Funk vs. The Public Enemy.

“One of the main things I tried to preach was that it is not just important what we had to do,” Heyman continues. “It was equally as important what not to do, and we really had to learn from the mistakes that were killing the wrestling industry in the United States. One of those things was the nonfinish, the disqualifications and the countouts. We were going to avoid that at all costs.

“All of a sudden, Jim Crockett, who was one of the biggest proponents of my ‘Let’s change the business’ mentality, started to get very conservative once he saw the product, despite the fact that people were going crazy for it. Jim said, ‘We have to slow this down.’ He was in shock. He wanted to go back to 1986, but you had to be progressive, not retro. Other people were doing retro and were dying. We were doing progressive and people were going crazy for the product.”

So Heyman abandoned his plans to join Crockett on a new national venture, and with Gordon, plans to take Eastern Championship Wrestling national. He met a media consultant named Steve Karel, who handled the production on the Jim Crockett project and had worked in ABC advertising sales. He also had a show that was on a lot of sports channels called
Muscle Sports, USA,
and was in the body-building business with the National Physique Committee. Heyman brought Karel into ECW. “He was a hard-nosed businessman and very tough in negotiations and knew how to use lawyers,” Heyman says. “Steve had his show on MSG and Sunshine Network and he had his show on Prime Sports Midwest. In the expansion of ECW, he was a necessary component to start getting this TV show on in other areas besides Philadelphia. Immediately we got on the Sunshine Network in Florida, our first expansion.”

That cost money. The Philadelphia show was free, but Eastern Championship Wrestling had to pay to get on other networks—an expensive but necessary component for expansion in 1994 and for building up the new stars they were hoping to get over. They had to expand—to show these up-and-coming wrestlers that there was a future with ECW—or else risk having them move on to the other companies. This was something that ECW would constantly battle against throughout its existence. They had to show they were growing, and that every market was a new market for them to conquer. These wrestlers were putting their bodies on the line, crashing through tables and putting on shows the likes of which fans had never seen before. To do that, they needed to believe in the promotion, and the chance for their careers to grow with it. So expansion was vital to ECW’s survival.

Besides being on television in Florida, Eastern Championship Wrestling made plans to put on shows there and start running smaller shows in Delaware and New Jersey. The Public Enemy were becoming stars and engaged in a feud with the Funk brothers. Shane Douglas and Sabu were also growing in popularity.

ECW followed
The Night the Line Was Crossed
with their next big show,
Ultimate Jeopardy,
on March 26, 1994, in Valley Forge, where Crash the Terminator defeated Pitbull #1; Jimmy Snuka beat Tommy Dreamer in a Steel Cage match; Tommy Cairo defeated Sandman; The Bruise Brothers beat Paul Diamond & Pat Tanaka; and, in a War Games match, Shane Douglas, Mr. Hughes & The Public Enemy beat Tazz, Terry Funk, Road Warrior Hawk & Kevin Sullivan.

The show
When Worlds Collide
took place on May 14, 1995, at the ECW Arena, where Tommy Dreamer beat Rockin’ Rebel; Jimmy Snuka defeated Kevin Sullivan; in a handicap elimination bout, JT Smith & The Bruise Brothers beat Shane Douglas, Mr. Hughes & The Public Enemy; Sabu & Bobby Eaten beat Terry Funk & Arn Anderson; and the person who might have been voted least likely to be a professional wrestler beat 911—Heyman’s former giant bodyguard—for the TV title in a disqualification. His name was James Watson, but he went by the name Mikey Whipwreck in the ring, and he would become an ECW legend.

911 towers over Sabu and Paul.

Born in Buffalo, New York, on June 4, 1972, Whipwreck was trained by Sonny Blaze, who, as the story goes, didn’t even charge him for the training because he doubted this 5-foot-7, 180-pound kid with more guts than talent would ever be a professional wrestler. He desperately wanted to be in the business, though, and wound up in Philadelphia working as part of the ring crew at the ECW Arena. One day, Heyman saw Whipwreck practicing some moves on his own in the ring. He had been begging Heyman for a shot, and he finally got one. “Mikey Whipwreck was the lovable loser,” Heyman explains. “He never had an offensive maneuver. People started to get behind him because he took such great beatings.”

Joey Styles, commenting during a Whipwreck match, summed up the Mikey Whipwreck appeal: “Mikey Whipwreck is taking the beating of his life. I’ve never seen this kid land a punch, a shot, a kick, anything on anybody ever.”

It was during
When Worlds Collide
that a weapon was introduced that would play an influential role in the development of the promotion—the Singapore cane.

In March 1994, America was transfixed by a case in Singapore involving an 18-year-old United States citizen named Michael Peter Fay. He had been convicted on vandalism charges, and part of his sentence was to be struck with a cane six times. The case dominated the headlines here and created a wave of outrage over the punishment. President Bill Clinton asked the Singapore government to waive the caning, which he called “excessive.” But they refused, and went ahead with the caning of Michael Fay.

“In wrestling there was this weapon used called kendo stick, a martial arts weapon, bamboo sticks all tied together,” Heyman recalls. “Nobody ever used it as a prop all the time. I said, ‘Let’s do a Singapore Caning match. The Sandman will use the kendo stick, but we are not going to call it a kendo stick. We’ll call it a Singapore cane.’ Who knows the difference? People don’t know what they cane you with over in Singapore, so people called it the Singapore cane. Now, nobody refers to a kendo stick as a kendo stick anymore. It is always a Singapore cane. There was a martial arts show that was on ESPN not long ago, and they never referred to a kendo stick as a kendo stick. They called it a Singapore cane. It became part of the pop lexicon.”

They were looking for a feud partner for Sandman, so they planned something with his former best friend, Tommy Cairo. They used Nancy Sullivan, Kevin Sullivan’s wife who had served as his valet in wrestling, as a character called Woman, and hooked her up with Sandman. “Nancy was very popular with the crowd, despite the fact she managed Kevin Sullivan, who was a heel. We did a thing where the Sandman started to be managed by Nancy, and all she would do is light a cigarette. He would take out a cigarette, she would light it for him. She would always have one line on television, something like, ‘You know, I don’t know about you, but lighting my man’s fire puts me in the mood for violence.’ Sandman would look over and say something like, ‘What Woman wants, Woman gets, and if she wants violence, she is with the right guy.’ People were eating this up.”

So they had Tommy Cairo come on television and take Sandman to task for his relationship with Woman.

“You know, my former best friend, the Sandman, has become a real jackass,” Cairo said. “He smacked his wife. Then he is always at the bar ignoring his kid when his kid needs help with homework. Now he is running around with Woman, and totally ignoring his wife. Okay, two can play that game.”

In the meantime, Sandman’s wife, Lori Fullington, had appeared with him on television and was called Peaches when he still had the surfboard. Cairo went on TV to do an interview with Joey Styles and said, “Sandman, pay attention to this…I have been training and I have been hanging out in my backyard, eating peaches.”

Everybody got the reference.

Cairo and Sandman were scheduled to have a Singapore Cane match at the May 14 show. Sandman went on TV, with Woman, for an interview. Sandman’s beeper went off during the interview.

“You’ve got another phone call,” Woman said.

“My beeper hasn’t stopped beeping all day,” Sandman said. “Tommy Cairo, let me lay this out for you. You’re banging my wife? I’ll tell you the same thing I tell everyone else. You owe me money. I figure my wife is good for three romps in the hay a day. I’ll charge you $25 a romp. That means you owe me $75 a day. You have probably been with her for ten days, that means you owe me $750, Tommy Cairo, and I’m collecting this Saturday. Pay your bills, Tommy Cairo. You can drink my beer, watch my TV, you can raise my kids, but damn it, if you bang my wife, you’re paying your bills.”

When they met in the ring, as Cairo came out, everyone in the arena started chanting, “Pay your bills! Pay your bills!” And Sandman gave Cairo a Singapore Cane beating.

Next came the
Hostile City Showdown
on June 24, 1994, at the Philadelphia arena. Tazz defeated Pitbull #1 in a Dog Collar match; Chad Austin & Don E. Allen fought to a no contest; Tommy Dreamer beat Hack Myers; The Bruise Brothers defeated Shane Douglas & Mr. Hughes; Tommy Cairo beat the Sandman; The Public Enemy went to a no contest with Terry & Dory Funk, Jr.; and, in a match that would help set the stage for another leap forward for ECW, Sabu beat one of the most colorful characters to ever walk into a ring—Cactus Jack, known in real life as Mick Foley.

Foley had several personas while bouncing around the independent circuit. He made a name for himself in WCW wrestling as Cactus Jack with his hardcore style of wrestling and his willingness to take unheard-of punishment and sacrifice his body. According to Foley, in an arrangement with Kevin Sullivan and WCW, a so-called talent exchange was supposed to take place between ECW and WCW that would benefit both companies. As it turned out, it would not work out that way for ECW, just one of the many bitter disputes between the two companies. But for now, the relationship was cautiously civil, though Heyman wasn’t thrilled with it. This was an arrangement worked out between Sullivan and Tod Gordon, who worked out a deal for Foley, as Cactus Jack, to come wrestle in ECW against Sabu in
Hostile City
1994.

“Kevin Sullivan, when he came back to WCW in the spring of 1994, he had just come from ECW, and he loved it,” Foley remembers. “He loved the character development and the crowd, and I believe he was the one who wanted to establish the relationship. I went over as a favor, because a lot of real hardcore fans saw the matchup of me as Cactus Jack and Sabu as a hardcore dream match.

“I had seen Sabu on tape many times,” Foley continues. “I saw he was taking the hardcore style and innovating it with some athletic moves. He was taking what I had done, and adding a touch of athleticism to it, and in so doing he kind of ushered in the ECW era. I think without Sabu you wouldn’t have seen the popularity of hardcore. He kind of set the bar that other ECW wrestlers tried to live up to, and that carried over into all of the other organizations and aspiring independent wrestlers. You could argue if his style changed wrestling for better or worse, the same way you could argue whether or not my style did. But I don’t think there is any arguing that without him, it would be a different game today.”

It turned out to be a rough night for Foley. “The arena was hot, with no showers. After the match I ended up herniating a couple of discs, and I wound up being taken to the hospital at about 4
A.M
., in incredible pain. I also broke out into hives over about 50 percent of my body, which I guess was caused by waiting around for hours to do postmatch interviews, rather than taking a shower. But taking a shower was not an option in that building. I have no idea what move caused the herniated discs. It could have been just the straw that broke the camel’s back. I had a lot of wear and tear on my body by 1994.”

Before he left the arena, though, he did an interview that ended with him showing his disdain for WCW by spitting on his WCW Tag Team title belt: “It’s your friend, Cactus Jack, bringing you tidings from WCW. What this belt here says is that Cactus Jack is one half of one of the best tag teams in the world. It means a lot to me. These people say it is the first belt that Cactus Jack has had in a long time, and indeed it is very dear to me.” Then he spit on the belt and threw it down. “Not anymore. Not anymore. You might think it is nice for Cactus Jack to come in and give one of the performances of his life, lose, and walk away saying I still got a title. But it is not true. Bang bang. Because tonight, I lost the three titles I held for the last five years—most suicidal wrestler, ugliest wrestler, and Jack Kevorkian’s favorite wrestler.”