7. Hes Responsible For Bringing CM Punk To The WWE...
Tommy Dreamer first entered the then-WWF as part of the Invasion storyline. In the story, recently defunct promotions WCW and ECW had banded together to take over the WWF. This was a genuinely cool idea and led to some thrilling moments (Rock vs. Booker T for the WCW belt, Kurt Angles babyface turn, Rob Van Dams debut and etc), but it was largely botched in the execution. WWF creative massively underestimated the popularity of ECW talent and, as a result, generally mishandled them. It is a real shame, because a number of promising ECW upstarts were never taken seriously as performers (Tajiri, Jerry Lynn, Justin Credible and others being prominent examples) as a result, these wrestlers never achieved their full potential as WWF talent. After an infuriating stint as a Brooklyn Brawler-esque jobber (which, in hindsight, amounts to a seemingly endless parade of six-minute squash matches with poor old Tommy staring at the lights, every single time), Dreamer began to look like a dead duck. For all WWE announcers put ECW over as the incredible promotion it was, the companys heart and soul was being jobbed out every week on second-tier shows like Velocity or Heat. Whilst he got to hold the Hardcore Championship on 14 occasions (according to Wikipedia), this is still the same Hardcore Championship that was also held by Shawn Stasiak, one of The Godfathers Hos and all three members of The Mean Street Posse...So, um, yeah. Eventually, Dreamers wrestling contract expired, so he took an office job with the WWE, acting as an agent and a behind the scenes guy. He was the driving creative force behind both ECW One Night Stand Pay Per Views and was even (briefly) involved in the WWEs re-launch of the ECW brand. However, he was also partly responsible for the acquisition of new WWE talent during this time, the most successful of his picks was CM Punk. Says Dreamer, He (Punk) was on the indies, he had worked a little bit in TNA and I liked him. He was a hard person to get hired and thank goodness he worked his butt off and has got to where hes at today. (Interview given before Punk did a runner, obviously). Dreamer also hired now-3x World Champion Sheamus, Cody Rhodes (son of his childhood hero, Dusty), Brodus Clay (now Tyrus in TNA, whom he met when the big man was working as a nightclub bouncer and a fight broke out, which Dreamer helped settle), Zack Ryder and many others besides.
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
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Latcho Drom,
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