6 Wrestlers That Visibly Hated Working For ECW

5. Raven

Raven was the coolest wrestler in the United States during his initial ECW run. One of very few wrestlers to capture the times in which he wrestled, his look, demeanour and presence were outstanding. A dark and creative mind, Raven was such an effective heel that he achieved the impossible: when he crucified the Sandman, he actually outraged the ECW fanbase. 

His WCW run wasn’t all that great in retrospect, a red-hot spring of 1998 aside, but the very idea of Raven was so captivating that people deem it a disgrace that he wasn’t in the main event scene. Raven himself believed he was capable of more, requesting and receiving his release from the company in August 1999 - a condition of which prevented him from signing with the WWF for nearly a calendar year. Via loophole, Raven found himself back in ECW in a dreaded marriage of convenience. 

The night of his shocking return was handled brilliantly. Raven, unbeknownst to Tommy Dreamer, helped his former blood rival win the ECW World Tag Team titles. If Raven was the grunge wrestler in the self-styled grunge promotion, this night, August 26, 1999, was ‘Dam That River’ by Alice In Chains. It rarely got louder. Watching Raven, of all people, crack a smile was surreal and beautiful. It did not get louder, nor better. 

It was difficult to tell that Raven was checked-out, since he played a miserable, misanthropic character. It was practically his job to project minimal emotion - but the fact that he formed a reluctant tag team with Dreamer was a bit on-the-nose. An air of reluctance cloaked everything, and the genius of the Raven character was in those rare times he did express feeling. There was very little of that in 1999 and 2000. Raven was clever. He knew ECW was without a purpose all the way back in 1997. Things had not changed in the interim; if anything, Raven’s premonition of the WWF swooping into ECW’s creative nest had become even more true. 

In a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet, Raven softened his stance, claiming that he was “really happy” to be back in ECW - but if he was so happy, he wouldn’t have counted down the days until he was contractually free to join the WWF.