Remembering The Last Days Of ECW
When late 2000 rolled around Heyman found himself painted into a corner. He was burned out, yet he wouldnt relinquish his creative control over ECW, believing his vision should continue to drive the product.
Heyman had also gotten into a personal war with TNN, the very network that carried the ECW show Hardcore TV. TNN had merely used ECW as an experiment to see whether wrestling would draw, then theyd gone on to court the WWF. It left ECW stuck in a hole. They couldnt legally negotiate with another TV company until their TNN deal was cancelled, but they knew full well TNN had no intention of keeping them around.
Hardcore TV reached 400 episodes (having originally aired on local TV around the country prior to the TNN deal) in December 2000, and never saw the light of day after 401. On the 400th show Rhino retained his World Television Championship by defeating Spike Dudley. Both men would sign for the WWF, Rhino before ECW was officially announced as closed, little Spike immediately afterwards.
ECW, even at their nadir, were still creating superstars, something both the WWF and WCW were struggling with. Paul Heyman had a well-documented knack of hiding weaknesses and amplifying strengths, which inevitably led to talent raids throughout ECWs existence.
WCW had come in, time and time again and raided the top talent. Whether it was Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Saturn, Sabu, Raven, Mikey Whipwreck or The Sandman, theyd all gone to WCW as well-established, fully-fledged characters.
ECWs final PPV was in January 2001, the same month the company stopped running shows. 2,500 people attended the card in New York City at the Hammerstein Ballroom.
The headline attraction was one final match between Rob Van Dam and Jerry Lynn. The duo had contested a slew of great, ECW-defining matches over the previous two years, the biggest of which was the match at Hardcore Heaven 99. While their final ECW match didnt live up to the hype, itd be easy to forgive the two wrestlers. For one thing, RVD was owed thousands of dollars from ECW and knew hed never see that money. When ECWs financial issues were later revealed in court, RVDs debt was a staggering $150,000.
Other revelations from Paul Heymans day in court were that the company had $8.8M worth of unpaid bills. A long list of wrestlers were revealed including Shane Douglas ($48,000), Francine ($47,275), Little Guido ($25,000), Rhino ($50,000), Joey Styles ($50,480), Tommy Dreamer ($100,000), and the company's books were such a mess that a litany of other workers were owed unknown quantities. Naturally Paul Heyman filed for bankruptcy, unable to pay the enormous debts hed accrued.
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