The Rise & Fall of ECW (30 page)

Tazz wouldn’t need the TV title, or the world heavyweight title. He came up with an idea that was probably the epitome of championships for ECW. He called it the FTW title—Fuck The World. “We started it in Queens,” Tazz says. “I think I had an old TV championship belt, and painted it orange, and put these stickers that were orange and black over the belt and wrote FTW, and proclaimed it the FTW championship. The ECW called it the “unrecognized” FTW championship. But the title took on a life of its own because people started digging it. The character was anti-establishment, and the belt was anti-establishment. Most people hate their bosses, and I was telling them that I hate my boss, I hate the company, I hate everybody, and fuck the world. This belt said, ‘Fuck the world,’ and people got behind it. I think it started to get more popular than the real belt, Shane’s belt. It was actually the ultimate ECW title, and there were only two people to hold it, and that is Sabu and myself. I miss that. It was a cool part of the Tazz character, the whole FTW thing, and I loved portraying that. There have been attempts to copy it, but it has not been the same.

“The character Tazz couldn’t get a shot at the heavyweight title, so I took the attitude that this was a bunch of shit and I was so anti-establishment, before Steve Austin ever was, and Sandman was like that before I was,” Tazz explains. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Stone Cold, and I don’t think there will ever be a superstar bigger than Steve Austin in the industry, but this is what ECW brought to the business. The FTW belt was part of that whole fuck-you mentality. I didn’t get a title shot. I don’t want your belt. I’ll make my own.”

The promotion began taking its shows around the country, to Cobb County, Georgia, Dayton, Ohio, and the University of New Orleans. Meanwhile, the fight went on to keep talent and bring in new faces. ECW scored a victory when they welcomed back a familiar face to the promotion on October 23, 1999—Sandman.

In a tag-team match at the ECW arena between Justin Credible & Lance Storm, with Dawn Marie and Jason Night, against Raven—who had also returned to ECW—& Dreamer, with Francine. The match appeared to be nearing a close, with Storm and Credible going for double pins against Dreamer and Raven, when the lights went out. Suddenly, a spotlight shone on the back of the arena, and the Metallica song began to play, and there was Sandman, standing with his Singapore cane. The crowd went crazy in one of the most emotional nights in ECW history. It was like a step back to the ECW glory days.

As Sandman made his way to the ring, he caned Jason Knight and caused havoc in the ring. The crowd switched between chanting “Welcome back, Sandman” and singing the “Enter the Sandman” Metallica song, then ended up with “ECW! ECW!” Raven did his pose to Sandman before leaving the ring while Dreamer and Francine stayed, and the three of them drank beer together.

Heyman also kept looking for new talent and fought to keep the talent he had developed from leaving. There were a number of Japanese wrestlers who made their appearance in 1998, such as Gran Naniwa, Masato Tanaka, Atsushi Onita, and Gran Hamada. Tanaka’s presence would grow, as he would be paired against Mike Awesome for a series of battles. In fact, one year later, in September 1999, at the
Anarchy Rulez
Pay-Per-View in Villa Park, Illinois, Awesome beat Tanaka and Tazz in a Three Way Dance to win the ECW Heavyweight Championship. It would be a decision that would later come back to bite ECW.

Awesome held on to the title until December 13, 1999, when he lost to Tanaka, and ten days later, Awesome won back the championship from Tanaka. Then, three months later, Awesome left ECW for WCW. The problem was that he still held the ECW Heavyweight title. ECW threatened to sue, so Awesome agreed to come back to ECW for a one-time match to lose the belt to whoever they put in front of him. Who did they put in front of him? Tazz, who had left for WWE but was on loan to ECW. So you had a WCW wrestler defending the ECW title against a WWE wrestler. The incident illustrated the uncertainty that ECW was operating under at the time.

There was a lot of tension over this match. Awesome was not allowed in the arena and stayed in his hotel in Indianapolis with security until just before the match was about to begin. Then he came to the arena to carry out the plan to lose his title. The plan lasted all of three minutes. Tommy Dreamer, the conscience of ECW, came into the ring during the match and delivered a DDT on Awesome, and then Tazz made him tap out with the Tazzmission. Tazz grabbed the microphone and said he came back because when he left he did business “the right way” and that he just showed Awesome the right way by making him tap out.

“There was a big uproar about me leaving, and whether or not I had signed a contract, which I had not,” Awesome explains. “I had the belt. Paul was really coming after WCW. I was going to give that belt back to Paul. I didn’t want it. But the way it came about was that Paul wanted the belt to change hands in the ring, with me losing. I was willing to do it. It was set up through the attorneys. We had to sign paperwork. I had to sign papers saying exactly what I would do. They were supposed to send over the script and all that stuff. It was just a mess.

“Instead of doing all that, what I wish they had done is said, ‘Hey, Mike, we want you to lose this belt to Rhyno.’ Because Rhyno was a trusted friend of mine, and I would have gone in there and we would have given them a twenty-five-minute barnburner of a match, and that is the way it should have been. That would have been much better. A clean finish. I would have loved to have done that, instead of the way we did do it, which was strange. I wasn’t allowed in the ECW locker room. I had to come in by the front door when they did my ring music. The fans were all standing up and chanting, ‘You sold out, you sold out.’ I knew I didn’t sell out. I did what I did, and knew it wasn’t selling out, but I loved it. The fans were so loud. If I am working them, and they are yelling their asses off at me, then I am doing my job.”

Tazz then wrestled on
SmackDown!
with the ECW title against Triple H. Tommy Dreamer came running into the ring at the event and tried to save Tazz, but he hit Tazz with a chair, and then Dreamer wound up getting hit by Triple H, too. Tommy then beat Tazz for the belt.

Tazz’s departure went much smoother than Awesome’s would, and was orchestrated to get the most out of it. But his leaving was still a devastating blow to ECW, and the strongest signal yet that the promotion was in serious trouble. “At the time I was ECW World Heavyweight Champion, and in my prime,” Tazz says. “My verbal agreement with Paul Heyman had come to an end. We kept negotiating with each other, but the lawyers got involved and whatever. We more or less came to a verbal agreement, and we were going to have a contract, a written deal. If you ask Paul, he thought I was locked in, and he would probably be right to think that, but I was a little concerned that the company wouldn’t be able to swing this deal we had agreed to. I was nervous about that. I had my family to think of. I had an opportunity to talk to WWE, and chose to take that deal. But to Vince’s credit, we agreed that I needed to give ample notice to Paul, that I wasn’t just going to walk out and screw over the promotion that made me. I wanted to put guys over on the way out the door, the old-school way. We did the right thing, and Paul and I at the time were having some tense moments with each other. He was pissed, and he had a right to be pissed. He thought I was screwing him, and I wasn’t screwing him. I believe I wasn’t screwing him. I was just concerned because, ‘Hey, you cut me a great deal, but I don’t know if the promotion can swing it over time.’ He said, ‘It will, TNN is going to be a success. You will stay the champion.’ I said, ‘I am just worried about the financial future of the company.’ I was a family man and at the time worried about the future. In hindsight, I think I did the right thing. It was very hard for me to leave. Not that the company would go under if I left. I thought the company was going to do well. I just didn’t know if they could afford the deal that I agreed to with Paul.”

Tazz’s departure took place at
Anarchy Rulz 1999
on September 19, in a triple threat between Tazz, Masato Tanaka, and Awesome for ECW’s heavyweight title. It was arranged for Tazz to get beat early in the ring, going out the right way. The fans, who were well aware of Tazz’s deal with WWE, were not giving him a warm sendoff, yelling during the match, “Fuck you, Tazz,” and other cursing chants. But that changed when all the wrestlers who had come out on the stage to watch the match gave Tazz a standing ovation when it was over. Heyman came down and hugged Tazz, who handed the belt over to Awesome in an almost ceremonial passing of the torch. However, the light would not last much longer.

“The last straw was when Tazz left,” Kurt Angle says. “After that, all ECW had was Rob Van Dam.”

Van Dam was, as he often referred to himself, “The Whole Fucking Show,” and on the night Tazz left, gave fans the sort of match that would make him such a beloved ECW wrestler. He held the ECW TV title at the time and engaged in a wild thirty-minute brawl with Balls Mahoney; there were chairs flying and moves using the chairs, such as powerbombs. His high-energy style in the ring, combined with his cool personality, made him a fan favorite. “Rob Van Dam was a cool but brazen personality,” Heyman says. “The fans liked the coolness of Rob Van Dam and the laid-back interviews.”

ECW was losing the fight to hang on to its talent. But they were fighting on another front as well, caught in a trap that had at first appeared to be the final step to putting the promotion over the top—a national network television contract.

After getting their foot in the door on Pay-Per-View, the next natural step for ECW was to get on television on a regular basis. Up to this point, ECW was seen on syndicated television and network deals they had set up themselves with various regional companies—such as the Sunshine—with ECW often paying for the air time. The promotion needed to get on national television to kick off a series of video games and marketing deals. Heyman needed to expand his income sources to survive the epidemic that was sweeping the industry in 1999—outrageously escalating salaries.

“We crashed as a company in the beginning of 1999,” Heyman says. “We couldn’t make payroll. Our Pay-Per-View numbers were going up. The Monday Night Wars were dominating the industry. Bischoff started throwing out ridiculous money to entice our guys to jump. Vince had to create a scenario where if guys were going to leave, they could go to him, just to prevent them from going to WCW. The pay scale in the business became like the dot.com stocks. The pay scale was exaggerated and not based on actual income. By the beginning of 1999, WCW started to lose money just based on the enormous payroll it had.” At ECW, paychecks began bouncing, and some wrestlers would go for months without being paid.

“We had fallen into a Catch-22. We were popular and our numbers were going up,” Heyman says. “Pay-Per-View could foot the bill for the entire promotion, so we had to do more Pay-Per-Views. It’s $250,000 up-front costs to do a Pay-Per-View. But you don’t see your money for about a year. You get your first payment in four or five months, but you don’t see the bulk of it for a year. In Demand was contractually obligated to pay up a year later. Meanwhile, they are falling fifteen, sixteen, seventeen months behind, because they can. What are you going to do, sue them? Then they will just take you off Pay-Per-View.”

At the same time, trying to create new revenue, ECW was looking to secure a video game deal. However, to succeed they needed to be on a network. Heyman was working on finalizing a contract for ECW to be on TNN. They reached an agreement, and ECW was scheduled to begin on Friday nights on TNN in August 1999. Heyman said TNN had not revealed all the cards it was holding in those talks—that CBS Cable, which owned TNN, was on the verge of being taken over by Viacom. “Viacom was going to make a $25 million investment in WWE, and make an offer for Vince to jump from USA to the revamped TNN a year later,” Heyman says. “We didn’t know any of this. We start talking to TNN. They know something we don’t. They needed a guinea pig to see if wrestling would work on the country bumpkin network.”