Generic theme #420 brings us to… Byte This! Our hosts are Josh Matthews and Mark Lloyd… and Paul Heyman! Thank the Lord! I can’t believe it, all the bitching and moaning has actually paid off. Thank you WWE, I promise I’ll overlook your glaring technical problems and bland corporate speak… ah shit, I can’t do that. Heyman’s already rolling, comparing Byte This’s technical issues to ECW’s technical issues. Apparently the ECW DVD is already a hot seller, and for good reason: that DVD is the bomb, pure and simple. Heyman kicks out Mark Lloyd with a slew of hilarious smarmy remarks (“You’re the next Gene Oakerlund. Now go away.”) and MAKES ME LOVE BYTE THIS AGAIN! Heyman thinks the DVD is extremely authentic and very great, and so did the Blue Meanie when he was posting on the Wrestling Classic message boards yesterday, so just that alone should make you buy it. Sorry, I’m a biased ECW fan and can’t help but encourage its purchase. Anywho, Heyman promotes the DVD brilliantly, talking about the intense passion that everyone involved with ECW still has and what a remarkable moment in time the whole era was.
Heyman thought the three hour format did short change certain aspects of the promotion’s success, such as the multiple sellouts they managed whenever they made it out to areas outside of Philly. He also thought he could have been more honest when it came to answers he gave, but he only briefly mentions this. He loves that he didn’t have creative control over the DVD’s making, because he deserves any positive or negative opinions people have formed about him. Josh is asking great questions, incidentally, such as “Is this the rise and fall of ECW according to World Wrestling Entertainment?” Good one kid, you don’t need Mark Lloyd. Paul says no, but c’mon, a healthy dose of Joey Styles and New Jack comments would have made this that much more awesome. Heyman does actually miss ECW now, but he goes out of his way to not watch any old footage from his career. Watching ECW now would give him a false high because he needs to concentrate on his current projects and stop patting himself on his back for past successes. Break time!
Great DVD promo follows. What an awesome episode so far.
Droz is on the phone when we get back. He thinks that his brief stint in ECW was a great experience. He thought the DVD was a great look at the timeline of ECW, and this is a top notch DVD. He was also amazed that the Attitude era was so influenced by ECW. Droz is so good at saying nothing it’s mind boggling. Heyman breaks in and gives a great speech about how lame WWF was in ’95, and how fans chanted “ECW” when King Mabel was crowned in a Philadelphia arena. Droz remembers the Al Snow stuff the best, especially the hardcore matches the two of them had during the “Head” era. They drop Droz and announce that there’s no Byte This next week.
Edgefan03 asks Josh if they’ll be giving away ECW DVD’s on today’s show. Heyman freaks out and claims he has nothing to do with prizes, but eventually gives in and asks a great trivia question: What was the date they accidentally set a fan on fire? Josh thinks there’s a break coming up, but there isn’t and they end up filling time. Luckily, Paul Heyman is a hilarious motormouth, so it’s totally fine.
Bubba Ray Dudley is on the line outta nowhere. He doesn’t remember his five years in ECW because of all the concussions, but he vaguely recalls his first tag title win and the first Barely Legal PPV. He thinks he entire time in ECW was great, especially flaming tables. Damn right! Josh asks about the atmosphere at a typical show, and Bubba talks about how great the fans would be before a show and what an amazing rock show attitude they all seemed to have. He thought it affected the wrestlers as well, giving them the idea that they needed to wrestle like it was a PPV. Josh Matthews asks what Bubba’s other duties were besides wrestling, which were apparently trying to keep Paul Heyman in check while also attempting to adapt to Heyman’s schedule and lifestyle. All of you in “the know” can insert your own smarky comments about Paul E. here. He was a promoter and booker, as well as the main advertising man from town to town. He also says that Tommy Dreamer took the other duties for the most part. Apparently the Dudleys are taking a break from WWE in order to let their bodies heal, and they need to take some time off since they’ve wrestled almost steady since 1996. If that’s true, that’s really crazy. Bubba is dumped and Heyman immediately starts into a speech about how Byte This needs to go away so they can create a barbwire-laden ECW radio show.
Steve from Arizona calls about the trivia question, but gets the date slightly wrong. He was so close they give him a chance to get it right, and he does. Josh says that Paul’s delivering it himself, but Heyman freaks out as they go to break.
Footage of Taz/Bigelow with the totally genius broken ring spot. I remember the first time I saw that I practically shit myself.
Josh admits that he stole that PPV with an illegal cable box. Paul gives him the death glare, but now Tazz is on the line. They are having tons of crazy technical problems at first, but Tazz finally can hear them and they talk about Tazz doing segments for Video on Demand. Tazz gives Josh endless shit while Paul stays quiet, so Josh freaks out on Paul but Heyman has no sympathy. Tazz eventually lets up and they get to the questions. Tazz loved the DVD and thought it was the real deal, but he didn’t like the title because he didn’t think there were any negatives back then. Whoah, those are some rose-colored glasses Tazz is looking through. Luckily he manages to throw in the word “disingenuous”, which is quite hilarious. Mike from Pennsylvania is on the line, and asks if Tazz is coming back to the ring. “Slim and none” is the official answer. Josh asks what the difference between Taz and Tazz is. Tazz thinks that Taz would have been fired from the WWE right away. Heyman elaborates, saying that Taz was allowed to fight with Paul E. so that the show would still mean something to the two of them, and that’s just not the way the WWE is run. ECW was all about freedom, and they would freely fight about creative decisions because everything on the show meant something to them. Heyman also talks about how intensely passionate their encounters were, so again, all y’all smarks gotta fill in your own jokes, because I’m not going there. Tazz pretty much says the same thing in a different way, but since they’re showing a rare display of honesty on Byte This I won’t bitch. Tazz’s gotta run, but Heyman throws in a huge compliment about Tazz’s involvement in the DVD before he goes. Tazz also throws in a comment about how WWE’s production people are animals. Nice.
Josh grills Paul about being on the WWF payroll back in 1996. Paul talks about how WCW was taking everyone they could from him at the time. He was trying to start the first ECW pay per view, but Vince wanted to snag Terry Gordy, Furnas and Lafonge, and Too Cold Scorpio so he started throwing money at Paul so that he could help a small and respectable competitor and also throw young guys at ECW for some training. The money went directly to ECW, not Heyman, and the talent that Vince had sent down was given the option to stay in ECW. In the same vein, the talent that Vince was going after was approached openly and with Paul knowing about it. Vince even gave Heyman a loan in 2000 so that Paul could continue doing pay per views when he went bankrupt. Josh then asks what Vince had done wrong in comparison to all the good he did. Apparently when Tazz had gone back to ECW to beat Mike Awesome for the world title, he thought it was a poor idea to put Tazz in the ring with Triple H the next week. Vince says the same on the DVD, because it definitely weakened ECW’s world title in the eyes of the fans.
Josh then asks if NWA:TNA is any sort of competition with the WWE. Paul says no way, but that Jerry Jarrett is a genius for exploiting the situation they’re in. Apparently TNA has lost untold millions in the last two years, way more than ECW, but Jarrett is still a “genius” because he never talks about it and none of it is his money anyway. Heyman actually went bankrupt for ECW, while Jarrett is taking Panda Energy’s dough and won’t take the fall when they go down. In closing, he wishes they were legitimate competition but they just aren’t. Whew, break time!
Footage of Rob Van Dam/Jerry Lynn. Jesus, this match is totally great in every way. I haven’t watched this one in ages.
Rob Van Dam is on the line. Rob is apparently excellent, you never have to ask how he is. One word to describe ECW? Rob goes with the obvious: extreme. Rob misses the feeling that he had no boundaries in ECW; it was artistic freedom and he could be authentic in his ability to entertain his fans. He doesn’t miss Heyman’s rubber checks, which is quickly dropped by Josh. They talk about the Van Terminator and the genius promotion that went behind the move before he even did it. It was a lot to live up to but the night of the PPV he pulled it off. Rob loves it when old school ECW fans come up to him on the street, and thinks new fans have got to get their hands on his ECW stuff. Heyman is asked to give one word about RVD. In ECW? “Wow.” Heyman discusses the Jerry Lynn match and how it went against the B.S. idea that ECW was purely blood and guts. Heyman thinks that only in ECW could Rob go without handcuffs, so Josh makes it a segway into the upcoming RVD DVD. What? Holy shit, it sounds like there’s WCW, ECW, WWF, and WWE matches on it. Rob doesn’t think he’s had the chance to have a truly good match in the WWE, although his Jeff Hardy match came very close to those standards. What about the Guerrero ladder match? I don’t know why Rob always ignores that match, it’s totally great and alone would make the Guerrero DVD well worth it. They discuss the Jerry Lynn matches, and how the bar was continually raised from match to match. Rob’s gonna be back the week before his DVD drops (in January) so he sez goodbye. Dreamer’s up next, let’s take a break!
Footage of Dreamer vs. Raven right before he went to WCW. Shane Douglas is on commentary… ugh. I just don’t like that guy. Man, the crowd goes apeshit at the end of that.
When we come back to the show, Josh asks why there’s no music on the DVD. Heyman states the obvious: they don’t have the rights to all those popular metal songs. That is kind of suspicious though, because the DVD is even missing the ECW theme, which Heyman commissioned an outside songwriter to write. He even used it when he first joined the WWF. Hmmm… Anywho, next trivia question: what was the situation that Tommy Dreamer was in when they were thrown off of every TV station they had? Tommy is here and immediately starts dogging on the way he’s being treated by WWE. Apparently Josh has won more matches in WWE than Dreamer had won in three years. Dreamer talks in a fake shill voice to promote the DVD before discussing his honest love of the documentary . They talk about the Awesome/Tazz match, which was the first and last interpromotional match between WCW, WWF and ECW. When Dreamer beat Tazz for the title the next week, Paul needed to get the belt off of him immediately so that Dreamer could stay the “everyman” character. Heyman defends putting the belt on Justin Credible only 18 minutes into Tommy’s title reign, which obviously makes sense to him but made for quite the sucky ending to that event in the eyes of most wrestling fans. Of course they don’t actually say that. Dreamer tells us every day was the best day in ECW, and the last day was the worst day. Tommy was the last guy to leave the promotion, even after Paul, which gives the interview a weird pathetic silence that you never see anymore on this show. Mike the caller gets the trivia question right (the lesbian kiss) and not only wins a DVD, but gets to talk to Beulah McGillicutty! Holy shit, she’s on the phone! Apparently Heyman had offered her thousands to do a catfight, but she said no because her neck break angle was her official exit from ECW. Heyman elaborates, telling us that it was to be a match with Dawn Marie but Heyman couldn’t convince her to come in. He then admits he wasn’t gonna watch the DVD at all until Tommy and Beulah (who is Dreamer’s wife) called him up crying after they had just watched it. Heyman admits he was being an ass for not trying to watch the documentary, and they knocked him out of that mindset. Heyman thinks they couldn’t make Beulah a heel no matter how hard they tried, and that the ECW fans who are now on WWE’s writing staff still totally love her. Dreamer asks how a writing staff full of fans can’t find room on either show for Tommy Dreamer. Ouch! Why the hell isn’t he on Byte This instead of Mark f*cking Lloyd? He was the best host this show ever had and they replaced him with an announcer that’s worst than Michael Cole and Mark Madden combined. Again, my rant, not their’s. Tommy has talked to Sandman, New Jack and Shane Douglas about the DVD and they’re all elated that it’s coming out. Douglas? I’m sure he’ll bitch about it on TNA next week, you just wait. Tommy is dropped and it’s break time.
Footage of Psychosis vs. Mysterio. That match blew my f*cking socks off when I first saw it. All their matches in ECW were awesome; there’s a quickie tag team match with Psychosis/La Parka vs. Konnan/Mysterio that just destroyed me when I caught it. That alone would make a bad ass DVD.
We’re back with some trivia. Name at least six Dudleys. Now Mysterio’s on the phone from San Diego. Josh wonders if Rey would have been accepted in North America if he hadn’t have had the exposure that ECW gave him. Mysterio thinks that since that was the way it went, he would have to think that it had an influence in the short run. Mysterio talks about how ECW had such a large amount of cruiserweights because they would take a chance on short guys. Heyman says that losing Malenko, Guererro, and Benoit in one night led to him reaching out to Konnan for a new breed of wrestlers. Konnan sent Mysterio and Psychosis for the first show, with La Parka and Juvy to follow. Paul thinks the fans never cared about the massive loss because they gained those amazing wrestlers on the next show. Josh asks about the state of the cruiserweight division in WWE, and Mysterio states the truth: they are not given enough time to show how great they are. There are guys like Funaki who don’t even get a chance to strut their stuff while the guys who get pushed don’t get a chance to expand on their matches. If he could do one more ECW match, he would do it with Sabu because they could get really crazy and use tables and chairs. They discuss the Juvy match when they went outside and did a hurricanrana from the top of a car, leading to Rey bemoaning the loss of such a creative force in wrestling. Rey has to go, but gives a brief tribute to ECW first.
Josh asks Paul about Super Crazy getting deported after an ECW show. Paul doesn’t elaborate on the situation, but shares a few stories about the bad ass Super Crazy matches with Nunzio and Tajiri. He remembers the audience’s hilarious use of Spanish whenever they were counting Super Crazy’s punches or pinfalls, which leads Paul into a lengthy diatribe about the fan’s dedication to ECW. He admits that WWE’s success is obviously bigger, but no one ever chants WWE. He also notes that no one ever chanted WCW, unless they yelled “sucks” right afterwards. Man, Heyman is the shit, pure and simple. They get to the trivia question and Paul thinks they can give away a bunch of old WCW crap along with the DVD since they still have thousands of Hulkamania T-shirts in the vault. Some guy calls (didn’t catch his name) and gives us Not, Dudley, Dances With, Big Dick, and Sign Guy Dudley. Heyman bitches out Josh for not promoting the WWE website before they finally wind down. We leave with footage of Taz vs. Sabu from ’96.
Holy shit, a two hour Byte This with honest interviews, a bearable co-host for Josh, discussion about a current non-WWE company, and a brief guest appearance from an ex-wrestler who’s not on the WWE payroll. This is exactly what this show has been missing, and two weeks from now when some midcarder is giving an interview in character and Mark Lloyd is blabbing on about the fantasy game, I’ll at least cherish this totally amazing episode (which ranks up there with the Steve Austin appearance from 2002). Listen to this!
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