The Rise & Fall of ECW (20 page)

Little did anyone know that the lesbian kiss nearly proved to be the kiss of death for ECW.

“We built up to that lesbian kiss,” Heyman explains. “Just as Beulah comes out, she grabs her by the face, the screen freezes, the show ends, and we put across the screen, ‘To Be Continued,’ which had never been done in wrestling before. None of the station managers knew where I was heading with this. This was in the days before the Internet, where everything you are going to see on TV winds up on the Internet. It wasn’t as widespread. They didn’t know what was coming. They aired the cliffhanger of what happens next. They don’t realize what happens next. They think one of these girls is going to get hit by a chair or something. That is what ECW is all about, right? So when the next episode arrives at the station, they didn’t even really pay attention to it. All of a sudden late Friday night they are airing the show, and someone in the control room says, ‘Hey, we got a lesbian kiss going on here.’

“One by one these station managers are calling up and saying, ‘We can’t air this.’ The backlash was devastating. We got thrown off everything. Joe Talnoid, the station manager at MSG television network, had his right-hand man, Paulie Arnold, call Steve Karel and said, ‘We are canceling your contract, you are off MSG. You have violated our content standards.’ Once MSG threw us off, then nearly everyone followed suit. We got thrown off about 90 percent of our stations.

“We lost everything but Philadelphia, and maybe Wichita, and a few other stations, and everyone else threw us off, no matter how much we were paying,” Heyman recalls. “Some stations let us back on pretty fast, but others didn’t. MSG didn’t let us back on for six months. I had to find other stations. I had to go to TV 31. We had to shop our show around after MSG threw us off. We lost Pittsburgh, Chicago, Buffalo.”

Heyman, who was often ahead of the cultural curve, was caught off guard by the reaction to the lesbian kiss. “I didn’t see that coming. I knew it would be controversial. I figured it would cost us a couple of stations. I couldn’t believe the reaction. This was under the Clinton administration. This wasn’t a repressive era. Female homosexuality was not seen on television yet. But we ended up getting it all back.”

As Beulah was an integral part of this story line, so were many women in ECW. The promotion made much use of women as sex symbols in various roles, from valets to wrestlers. There was Woman, Beulah, Francine, Kimona, Dawn Marie, Electra, Lita, Missy Hyatt, Tammy Lynn Sytch, and Jazz, among others.

“Being a woman in ECW was probably the one experience that made me tough,” says Dawn Marie, one of the most popular females in the promotion. “It made me learn how to protect myself and have confidence in myself. There were no prima donnas in ECW. They groomed us to be tough.”

If you thought Heyman learned a lesson from the lesbian angle and the controversial angles surrounding women, and was ready to back off, forget it. He was pedal to the metal, with one shocking angle after another.

“If I had backed off and just presented milquetoast wrestling with flashy production values, I would have been like everybody else,” Heyman explains. “What kept me afloat was that I didn’t back off. In an environment where two giant multimedia corporations were breathing down our necks, ECW survived for seven years. And the reason we survived was because I believed in what we were doing. We had a different product. The moment we made it the same, there was no reason to watch us. I couldn’t violate that.”

He violated nearly everything else, though, with another angle—having Sandman’s son Tyler turn against him and join up with Raven.

“I had a friend who was going through a bitter custody battle,” Heyman says. “My friend worked on Wall Street, and was the most ruthless SOB I had ever seen in that field. He was a killer. Nothing affected him. Nothing was ever personal for him. He was a badass businessman. No emotion. But yet I saw when he was going through the custody fight…she moved in with another guy, and she had gotten custody of the child. Their kid was about four years old, and he started calling the other guy Daddy. That crumbled my friend. Just destroyed him. It fucked him up bad. I said, ‘Wow, this is something that really preys on human emotions.’

“So we created a scenario where Sandman’s ex-wife would return as a disciple of Raven. Sandman did a match at the arena, and Raven came out with Sandman’s ex-wife, and Sandman says, ‘I don’t care how much you fuck my ex-wife. It didn’t bother me before, it doesn’t bother me now. Try it with her heels on, she likes it better that way.’

“He is having fun at Raven’s expense, but then Raven says, ‘Well, you may not care about your ex-wife, but you care about your son.’

“So the boy comes out dressed like Raven, with a black T-shirt with Raven’s picture on it and a black leather jacket, throws his arms out in a Raven pose, and says into the mike, ‘Daddy, you’re a drunk. I worship Raven now.’ Raven went back to the locker room with Sandman’s wife and kid. Sandman was in the ring crying. People were moved by the story. We never depicted or insinuated or made sure there was no way to misconstrue this that Raven was spanking the child or anything like that.

“Raven would do promos where he would say, ‘Sandman, I know you are going to challenge me for my title. While you are sitting there thinking about taking my title, think about this. Today I didn’t go to the gym. I played catch with your son, and he appreciated it.’ Little things like that. There was never a hint of abuse. Yet stations were affected by this. It was a soap opera. They said, ‘We can’t air this. It’s too personal. It’s not wrestling.’ Right. Wrestling is a soap opera. ‘We can’t air it. It is about a child.’ Why? What am I doing wrong? Why is this so egregious that you can’t air it? What are we doing that is so offensive to the audience? I think the audience will want to watch this compelling soap opera.”

Here is how that “compelling soap opera” unfolded on the ECW show:

With Raven outside the ring, as Sandman holds a Singapore cane over his head, Sandman’s son kneels down next to Raven and declares, “Daddy, you’re a drunk. I’m with Raven now.”

“He worships me,” Raven yells.

Announcer Joey Styles comments, “This has nothing to do with wrestling. We are talking about life here, and you don’t mess with the man’s family.”

Sandman walks back to the dressing room, clutching his Singapore cane, in tears, screaming, “God, don’t do this to me.”

Then there were the promos.

Raven with Tyler and Lori (Sandman’s ex-wife) both dressed in leather jackets like Raven, and Raven is kneeling down, next to Tyler: “Hey, kid, you know your divorce was your daddy’s fault.”

“I know,” Tyler says.

“Hey, Sandman, heh, heh, heh, heh,” Raven responds.

Another time Sandman is in the middle of the ring on one knee, with Tyler in front of him. He is dressed just like Sandman.

Joey Styles sets the stage: “We have been waiting to see this.”

Tyler hugs Sandman and the crowd roars and cheers. But Raven slides in the ring, as Tyler backs off, and slams Sandman in the back of the head, nearly knocking him out.

Tyler, now sporting a leather jacket and dressed like Raven, strikes the Raven pose, with arms out: “Quote the Raven nevermore.” Raven stands next to him, laughing.

“It was the most emotional angle we ever did,” Heyman declares.

It was also one of the most painful for some participants. “Me and Stevie became fodder for Sandman’s Singapore cane in that feud with Raven,” Blue Meanie recalls. “There were plenty of nights where they designed spots for us where Sandman would get a cane and take off on us. There were a few instances where he would hit me right in the forehead, and the Singapore cane would reach over my head and pull a piece of skin off my back, pinching off a piece of skin. This went on for six or seven months.

“It became a contest between me, Stevie, and Nova as to who could loosen up Sandman’s Singapore cane. On the cane were these little red strings, and depending on where they were on the stick, if you brought them down a little bit, they loosened up, and if you brought them up to a certain point, it was like a baseball bat. Nova had his cape and while Raven and Sandman were brawling out in the stands, Nova would go over and throw his cape over the Singapore cane, and one of us would get under the cape and loosen up the strings. When it came time for us to get back in the ring for our spot, he would hit me with the cane and I would go to myself, ‘Aaahhh, I didn’t feel it.’ One time they designed a spot where me, Stevie and Nova would take turns caning the Sandman, and we fought over who would cane him first, after getting beat with it for six or seven months. The cane knocked the stuffing out of me and toughened me up.”

Not all of the promos were so emotional or controversial. Some were humorous, in particular one created by a trio of Raven’s lackeys—Stevie Richards, Blue Meanie, and another addition, Mike “Nova” Bucci—called the Blue World Order, a takeoff on WCW’s New World Order.

Nova joined Raven’s flock after being discovered using a superhero gimmick on independent shows in New Jersey in late 1995. “I started wrestling in 1992,” he says. “There was a guy in New Jersey, Iron Mike Sharpe, who had a school in Bricktown, New Jersey. A buddy of mine used to go to his school. I was going to Ocean County College at the time and working at Wendy’s. I was a wrestling fan growing up, and I used to go with my friend to the wrestling school.

“After a few months Mike Sharpe and Tom Rumsby, the Executioner, started talking to me about trying it myself,” Nova explains. “I wasn’t really athletic. I said I would try it, and I did, and I liked it. Mike had shows at the school every two weeks. It cost $2,000 to go to his school, but you could pay whatever you wanted, whenever you could. I paid like $100 down and $50 a week. Mike was an old-school veteran. I only had intentions of doing the shows at the school every two weeks, and here it is fourteen years later and I am still doing it.”