Date: February 24th The story of Vince McMahon helping Paul Heyman and ECW out from a financial (Heyman denies this part) and talent standpoint is well-known by now. However, in February of 1997, seeing Heyman and several of his ECW wrestlers on Raw in a not-so-takeover fashion was pretty crazy. ECW was the distant third of the "Big Three", but their cult following was the most passionate of any fan base in all of wrestling. Their wrestlers were generally something completely different than fans of the WWF or WCW were used to. They didn't have the same physiques, and they weren't as flashy, but that's what the ECW fans preferred. Seeing someone like Mikey Whipwreck, who looked like he worked at the mall, and Taz, who was nearly a half-foot shorter than someone like Shawn Michaels, who was one of the smaller workers on the WWF roster, was different. Seeing Sabu dive off of the "R-A-W" logo in the entrance way (even though it was more of a fall than anything else) was a new style of wrestling that was being introduced to WWF fans. It never really led to any sort of true working relationship, from a fantasy booking point, but it was still exciting to see Heyman and his band of "Extremists" running wild on WWF programming.
Columnist/Podcaster/Director at LordsOfPain.net for nearly seven years, with nearly 2000 total columns written. Interviewed and/or involved in interviewing the likes of Tyler Black/Seth Rollins (twice), Diamond Dallas Page, Jimmy Jacobs, Christopher Daniels, Uhaa Nation and more.
