The Rise & Fall of ECW (2004 Video)

Tommy Dreamer: Tommy Dreamer

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Quotes 

• Tommy Dreamer : When Taz broke his neck in Florida, he finished his match. And he just kept on saying "Damn, my neck is... my neck his hurt." I walked him into the hospital. And... we just, you know, we would always travel together and... they asked him "How'd you get in here?" He's like "I walked." And, uh... they're like "There's no way you walked in here." He was like "Yeah, I did. I walked in here." And they're like "Well, sir, you have a broken neck."

  Taz : I was out for, actually, about nine months. And Paul paid me every single week of our agreement in my guarantee. I didn't have no contract with the man. I had a handshake with the guy. And he stuck to that, and I will never, ever forget that.

• Tommy Dreamer : If you watch early ECW, Paul Heyman was pissed off and hell-bent to... take down WCW. I believe when Paul had left WCW, he was actually supposed to come here and wr... do the whole Paul E. Dangerously in WWE. But he was just waiting, and then he started with the whole ECW thing. Paul had painted Eric Bischoff and WCW as... the most vile people and organization that you could ever, ever work for. You were joining the Taliban if you went and joined up with WCW and Eric Bischoff. Eric Bischoff was Satan.

  Paul Heyman : It just... I-I didn't like them, and they didn't like me. I didn't like the way I was treated, they didn't like the way I treated them back. I pretty much told them to go fuck themselves when... they were treating people like shit. And I don't think they enjoyed that. This was during the Bill Watts administration. And Bill wasn't really a people person.

  Tommy Dreamer : I think why he started ECW was because he hated WCW so much. He didn't have any beef with WWE. He *hated* WCW. And everything that they stood for. He had a bitter... contract dispute with them. Um... they screwed him over, and he wanted to do nothing but take them down.

• Tommy Dreamer : [about winning the ECW Championship]  The night I won the belt, I was actually pissed off. I wanted to go my entire ECW career without ever winning a title. When Mike Awesome left, Paul put the belt on me because he knew I wasn't going anywhere. The only reason why I won titles was because guys left.

• Tommy Dreamer : Around that time, Michael Fay was convicted of a crime in Singapore. And it was a big deal here in the United States; he was gonna get caned, and how could America let someone get caned. We had the Sandman, who walked around and he was drinking beer and smoking cigarettes coming to the ring. In the early stages of ECW, I was labeled a pretty boy, and Paul came up with the idea of a Singapore cane match. And the loser of the match, uh, had to get caned. And I lost. The first time he hit me, boom, I went down; the place cheered. Second time, he hit me, the place cheered again. The third time, he hit me so hard, they could start seeing my back start to bleed. I remember the first couple of shots, they hurt like hell. And then after that, adrenaline kicks in. No matter how much I hurt and really wanted to stay down, there was nothing that would have made me. I remember fans telling me to stay down. I remember two girls crying, just telling me to stay down. People I... I didn't know. I just kept getting up and getting up. It-it was brutal. And ECW preyed on human emotion with a lot of angles. Paul made that "Rocky"-type of story. I remember facing off with the Sandman after that, and his lip was quivering, 'cause it was so emotional, and he was like "Oh, my God", you know, "We're living this great moment right now." That was a turning point in my career, but it was also a turning point in ECW, where it was a form of redemption to violence forming, and to the fans. It's the best drug in the world, that rush from the fans. And it's amazing. And that's... that's what always kept me going. Pretty much the fans.

  Paul Heyman : We did a lot of things with the Sandman and Tommy Dreamer that-that broke a lot of taboos. We did the thing where Tommy Dreamer had a cane match with the Sandman, and Dreamer knocked the cigarette in the Sandman's eye and then caned Sandman in the other eye, and Sandman was blind. And-and we tore down the dressing room wall, and you saw both the good guys and the bad guys co-mingling over this hurt wrestler. And Tommy Dreamer saying "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt him." Which was *really* taboo back then. And then the Sandman, to his credit, stayed at home for a month. So that nobody saw him around town. So that you didn't say "Yeah, they're doing this thing, with the Sandman blind." He stayed at home. He never left his house, he never answered his door. His wife answered the door. It was unheard of back then for somebody to-to stick to the storyline to this degree.

• Tommy Dreamer : Paul never lied to the fans. He lied to the wrestlers, but he never lied to the fans. Anything that the Internet or any magazine or story that got out, Paul alloted time to address. And he would do it by going to the ring and telling them.

• Bubba Ray Dudley : Me and D-Von knew that it was time to do something, because we saw that the financial problems were really having an effect on the company. Myself and D-Von were never owed a dime by Paul Heyman. We cannot ever turn around and say "He owes us money." He doesn't. Paul E. always payed me, Paul E. always payed D-Von. We never thought that we, eventually, one day were gonna jump to WWE, but we had to start thinking about it. And when we got the phone call, we sat down with Paul E. and said "Listen, they called. Now we'd like to hear from you." Paul E. told us "I can't compete with them, and I can't compete with their money." We said "We're not asking you to. Do something to keep us here. Make us understand that you appreciate the fact that we put our bodies on the line for you." Paul E. thought that he could not compete with them, and that's the day, I think I truly learned that ECW was the minor league, and the breeding ground, for WWE.

  Tommy Dreamer : Paul had instilled in everyone, and in myself, "You want to leave? Goodbye." The Dudleys asked for a one dollar raise before they came to WWE. The Dudleys did not want to come here. They asked for one dollar more, and Paul said "Absolutely not." And he said "I can't compete with WCW. I can't compete with WWE financially. People stay here 'cause they want to stay here."