Paul Heyman on Between the Ropes Recap
by Richard Trionfo
This week on Between the Ropes, Fritz and Dickerman had an opportunity to interview the owner of Extreme Championship Wrestling and current WWE superstar, Paul Heyman to discuss the recent release of ‘The Rise and Fall of ECW’ DVD, his work in WWE, his involvement on the creative team, and how ECW has permeated all facets of society.
On ‘The Rise and Fall of ECW’ DVD:
‘Well, you know the funniest thing was at first I was kind of pissed off that they were even coming out with it because I quite frankly didn’t think they would do it any justice. I didn’t think they could do it any justice, and I didn’t think they would do it any justice. And when it first came out, I didn’t even watch it. When the preview copies came out in the studio. It took Rob Van Dam, and Tazz, and the Dudleys, and Tommy Dreamer, and even Tommy Dreamer’s wife, who was known as Beulah McGillicutty. All these people got on the phone with me and said basically you gotta watch this because they actually did us justice and when I watched it I was beyond pleasantly surprised at the fact that they did do us justice. You could only expect so much to be told of the seven year history in only three hours. They made the most of those three hours, and it’s pretty much the most comprehensive look at who we were and what we did and what happened to us that I’ve seen so far. . . I don’t really know the word that could convey how I felt watching it, except I was pleasantly surprised of how extraordinarily accurately some of the subjects were handled.’
On what was missing from the DVD:
‘I think just the scope of how big we got towards the end because if you look at the history of ECW, we sold out Chicago . . . first day of sale for Anarchy Rulz. We sold out Los Angeles in 48 hours . . . for the Olympic Auditorium. [w]e sold out Mississauga . . . at the Hershey Centre, and we were there and we did 5,500 to 5,700 people. We did crowds of over 4,000 in Pittsburgh and Detroit. We sold out Tokyo with the help of FMW. We sold out Dallas, Texas. We sold out Houston, Texas. . . It doesn’t even talk about the rabid fans that we had in New York and the fact that we sold out four shows at the Hammerstein Ballroom, all first day of sale. That was an enormous feather in our cap. If anything, if you watch the DVD, you get a sense that at the end it is was like all death and despair, and part of the despair at the end was that we were doing so much business, that we just couldn’t get our money out of pay per view and couldn’t get a network to sign us.’
On the success of the DVD:
‘It’s an appreciation for seven years of a body of work that the audience to this day remembers fondly. I think that the audience knows that it’s a work ethic that cannot be duplicated today within the structure and the regimen, and the environment that wrestling is presented in today. . . Back in ECW, the structure was go out there and give them their money’s worth to the best of your ability, and then one step further. And I think that the audience kind of misses that today. And I think it’s indicative by the sales of the DVD.’
On what he would do if he was in charge:
‘I think there’s so many guys who are underutilized, or who are boxed in by the parameters that the current presentation of wrestling sets. You know, we’re still in the same model that we were in 1999 in this industry. That’s not healthy for the industry. I think what needs to happen is that the structure of the business or the regiment, or the regimented structure needs to completely change for some of these guys to break out. As popular as Rey Mysterio may be, I would suggest to anybody that he would be five times more popular now under different circumstances. I would say the same for Rob Van Dam. I would say the same for a lot of different guys. If you look at the roster today, there are so many different people that I would have an absolute f’in blast with just getting the most out of them and having them lose their inhibitions and accentuating the strengths and hiding the negatives. We don’t do these things as well as we could.’
On the ECW locker room:
‘Well, I also think that it was also a matter of the locker room in that everybody in the locker room had an attitude of ‘ECW comes first, and everything else is secondary’. I had guys, even guys who are legendary pains in the asses . . . who would sit there and say ‘Hey, see that guy over there, oh man, I could make him look so good. Let him beat the crap out of me,’ or ‘Listen, I was the main event last time, let this other guy be the main event, and let me be in the middle,’ or ‘Let me open up the show’ or ‘Let me be third, so people know everybody has their turn on top, and let me work with that third match guy and make him a main event guy, and we’ll bring the rematch back in the main event. Everybody in ECW had the mentality of ‘let’s make ECW work, so that we go along with that ship.’ It wasn’t a matter of ‘Well, gee, I would really like to be in the main event because then I get more money.’ First of all, there was no money; and secondly, it was about making ECW mean something because then you had a home. It was about building your own home. . . What happened was . . . and that was at everyone’s insistence. That wasn’t me having to say ‘Hey listen, guys, it would be good for business if we get a lot of heat on these guys first.’ It was everybody coming to me saying, ‘Yo, let’s get these guys hot . . . let’s really go for the heat. Let’s build these guys up to as big as we can make them. So, then we can draw money with it.’ That was the mentality of the ECW locker room. It was that if we found something that was just a little bit hot, everybody lined up to make it hotter.’
On Eric Bischoff:
‘I think Eric is, in many points, self delusional when it comes to just how much he stole from ECW. Listen, he talks a wonderful game, and he is a far better executive than I will ever hope to be. I couldn’t get iNDemand to pay us money at the end that would have kept us alive. This guy had the opportunity to get hundreds of millions of dollars of funding from Turner Broadcasting to fund his dreams. So, he is a far better business man that I am, but when it comes to the creation of style of character, I don’t think he held a candle to what we put together in ECW. I don’t know how he feels in his heart today. I know what his public presentation is, in those effects. Really, I couldn’t give a damn what he thinks to be honest with you.’
On Jerry Lawler and his comments about ECW and the reaction by the locker room:
‘Well, I think Jerry Lawler kind of understood the fact that, as much as . . . people in the locker room did . . . I mean, Taz wanted to just kill him. . . Taz was so mad a Jerry Lawler. I mean, Taz and I, and we didn’t get a chance to tell this story on the DVD, but at the Manhattan Center that night, Taz and I had to get locked in a room. . . Taz wanted to go confront Lawler when Lawler kicked in the curtain on Raw. I had to lock him . . . Taz and I had to get locked into a room together with Tommy Dreamer blocking the door. I said to Taz, ‘we may fight, but you are not getting through this door’ because he wanted to choke out Lawler. That was the sentiment from a lot of people in ECW. They really, really hated Lawler. But at the same time, when Lawler came into our dressing room, and we had to sneak him in. We went through all of these security measures to get him into the building secretly and safely. But when the guys saw him in the locker room, the first thing the guys said to each other was ‘Wow, this is going to get us a lot of notoriety’ and ‘Wow, this is going to be a great angle’ and ‘Wow, this is going to attract a lot of attention’ and ‘Wow, this is going to draw more money, so how can we help.’ Remember, in his first night at the ECW arena, it was Lawler, Sabu, Rob Van Dam, and Bill Alfonso laid out our entire locker room. . . And laid out the locker room a second time. This time it was Lawler and Jim Cornette, and Sabu, Van Dam, and Bill Alfonso. They laid out the entire locker room. What happened was . . . and that was at everyone’s insistence. That wasn’t me having to say ‘Hey listen, guys, it would be good for business if we get a lot of heat on these guys first.’ It was everybody coming to me saying, ‘Yo, let’s get these guys hot . . . let’s really go for the heat. Let’s build these guys up to as big as we can make them. So, then we can draw money with it.’ That was the mentality of the ECW locker room. It was that if we found something that was just a little bit hot, everybody lined up to make it hotter.’
On a return of the ECW Brand:
‘Yes and no. Do I think that somebody could shake up the entire industry? I hope it happens. I think it’s necessary for the health and the survival and the viability of the industry. Do I think that it will be ECW? No. I think we are all four years older. . . Time has moved on. Do I think we could ‘get the band back together’? It’s not going to be the same again. Could we do it for one night? Yeah. Could we present a ‘one night only’ or once in a great while, do a reunion show? Of course we could, and we would blow the doors off anything else that is out there today. Do I think that ECW itself could, like a phoenix, rise from the ashes? No. I don’t see how that could possibly happen. Do I think that somebody could rise from the ashes or something else should come along? Oh my god, I hope so. I think it’s so necessary for the industry. The grunge movement can’t come back. It happened already. There will not be another Nirvana. There will not be another Soundgarden that just shakes up the whole music industry. However, there will be something else. There will be a new form of hip-hop. There will be a new form of rock. There will be a new form of music that shakes up the whole industry. It just won’t be the same thing that it was the last time. That’s what I think is going to happen in this industry is that someone’s going to come along with a new concept, and they’ll shake everything to the ground again. That will be in the tradition of ECW, but it can’t be ECW.’
On ECW’s influence on the sports and entertainment world:
‘I look at some of the revolutionary things that we did in ECW on television, and I see how much of it is copied today on local, regional sports networks; and even by some of the big networks. Some of the things I know were copied from ECW.’
On who has the final say in WWE:
‘Listen, it is his company and I don’t think anybody should draw the sword against Vince and say ‘I challenge you for the right to do this’. It’s his company, it’s his ball, and it’s his yard. . . The winners write history, and the owners make the final decision. It’s Vince’s right to make the final decision because he’s the owner, and nobody would dispute that.’
On TNN:
‘They had no idea, and then, of course, we started getting the phone calls going into the Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve shows, saying why don’t you just send recap shows because you know that you are going to be doing a .3 or a .4, which is what RollerJam was doing. So we said, no we’re not going to lose our audience at all because it’s destination programming, and people are going to watch it. We didn’t lose any viewers on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. We had our audience. We did 1.2s or 1.3s on both New Year’s Eve and Christmas Eve, which was just a testament to the fact that we were destination programming and the hottest show on their network at the time. . . You know the funniest thing was and I remember the conversation that I had with Brian Hughes, who was the Executive Vice President of TNN at the time. Because part of the deal was that we were supposed to be all of these synergistic opportunities, and all these different commercials run on radio, and on TV, and on TNN for ECW. The only time that I saw ECW in commercials was in the body of the ECW shows. I called up Brian Hughes, and I said, ‘Listen, I really appreciate these commercials. They are very cool, and they are very good for our promotion, and the only thing wrong with them is that they are airing in our show. Maybe you could air them in some other shows that would entice people to watch OUR show.’ . . . And his answer was ‘Well, we air it in your show because that’s the target demographic.’ . . . And so I figured right there that this was pretty much someone telling me to ‘f off’. That they didn’t really want the show on the air, and that was the end of it.’
On the WWE Creative Team and their non-wrestling background:
‘You sit there and you say to somebody ‘Well, OK, what are we building to’ and ‘Let’s do this, and we end up with wrestler A versus wrestler B’. And you have a guy sitting there saying ‘Well, I don’t know. Let’s not talk about the match. Let’s talk about the motivation of the character.’ And of course I’ll sit there and say ‘Yeah, but what are you building to?’ Because you got to know where you are going, and then you understand how the motivation of the character leads you to the payoff. I mean, what’s the climax of this story. . . So is it frustrating to listen to a Hollywood guy say ‘Gee, I don’t want to talk about what the payoff is, I want to talk about the childhood motivation of why this character became who he is.’ Yes, it’s very, very frustrating. . . Am I frustrated by some of these people? In the visuals, yes. But per se, I never bought into the thing of ‘well, he’s not a wrestling fan so he can’t book wrestling’ or ‘he comes from Hollywood so he doesn’t understand wrestling.’ . . . So I never believed in the fact that because someone isn’t in a wrestling background they can’t write wrestling. I think that you can either write it or you can’t write it. It has nothing to do with whether you are a wrestling fan or not a wrestling fan.’
On the competition between brands when he was lead writer:
‘[t]here was legitimate competition between Raw and Smackdown because, you know, Raw had their writers; and I was the lead writer of Smackdown and it was balls to the wall. It was let’s see who had the better show and we blew them away. We blew them away quality-wise and we blew them away in terms of ratings. It was the first time that Smackdown pretty much became the ‘A’ show; and Raw, simply by the definition of losing in the competition, was becoming the ‘B’ show. I would love for that to be the case again.’
On the buildup and payoff in ECW:
‘You know, I always knew that Sabu and Taz would have a match; and I made you wait eighteen months for them to even lock up. I always knew that Tommy Dreamer would beat Raven one day, but not until the last day. And you waited two and a half years for that payoff. So, what’s the payoff; and once you understand what the payoff is, you know how to get there.’
On giving the creative team the benefit of the doubt:
‘I never want to pass a judgment like that for this reason, I had to come into the business one day, and I was given a chance by a lot of guys to implement things that were new. So if these veterans that I had the honor and privilege of working with would have said ‘Who’s this kid to tell me what to do? Who’s this kid to call a finish? Who’s this kid to give me an angle? Who’s this kid to tell me what my promo is about? Who’s this guy to produce a pay per view. He’s never taken bumps. He’s never broken his neck. He’s never done that. Who did he ever beat? Who did he ever put over? What matches has he had? When did he ever sell out Madison Square Garden? And if the guys had looked at me like that, and not given me the chance to show them a different way, then I never would have had the opportunity to be labeled all these wonderful things that people label me in this business because I never would have had the chance to succeed. I was only given the chance to succeed because these guys who had come before me gave me the chance to shake up the business, and show them different finishes, different strategies, different ways to do videos, different ways to shoot interviews. Different ways to present the product. So if I close my mind and give a myopic view of ‘Oh, he’s from Hollywood. He can’t teach me anything.’ Then I’m doing to him the greatest disservice of all, and doing it to myself as well.’
On ECW’s television future after TNN:
‘We were scheduled to sign papers with USA, through the president of USA, Steven Chow. We were ready to jump. We were there. The president of USA, Steven Chow, was signing us on and at the very last minute. I mean right before the official announcements that we were going on USA, and they were buying into the company. Then Barry Diller, who was the chairman at USA, decided that he wanted to take the network in a different direction, and the decision was made not to put any more wrestling on. We were out. That was it. We had several discussions with Fox Sports Net about doing an afternoon strip, which was their vision for wrestling at the time. We were so far past the point of being saved. The only thing that could have saved us was an actual spot on the network on a regular weekly timeslot. The daily thing just would have required so much post-production that there was no way that we could have sustained even launching the show. Just doing the show itself would have put us out of business. There was nothing left to do.’
On his contract status with WWE:
‘I am under contract to them. I have some time left on it. They’ve always been very private in their dealings with me, so I’d like to respect them back in terms of how long my contract is for. Just as a matter of they’ve showed me the respect to be private, I’d like to return that favor to them. I do have some time left on my contract. I would assume that I will be working through the end of that agreement. At least I’m willing to. . . I don’t know what happens once it expires. I don’t know if they want me to stay. I don’t know if I want to stay. I don’t know yet. There is certainly time for both sides to think about it.’
Between the Ropes airs every Wednesday from 10:00 p.m. until Midnight on 740 The Team in Orlando, Florida with Brian Fritz, Dickerman, and Vito DeNucci. Check out www.betweentheropes.com to listen to the live stream of the show every week. Archives of past interviews with Mick Foley, Ric Flair, A.J. Styles, Bobby Heenan, Steve Corino, Elix Skipper, and many more wrestlers can also be found on www.betweentheropes.com.
Credit- Dave Meltzer & The Wrestling Observer
