7 Behind The Scenes ECW Stories That’ll Shock You
2. Shane McMahon Wanted To Buy ECW
It’s fairly well known that Vince McMahon was paying undisclosed amounts to Paul Heyman to keep ECW afloat during the mid-to-late-90s, but this goes beyond that. One time, Vince gave Heyman as much as 500k so ECW could run Heatwave 2000 on pay-per-view. Then, there were more talks in December of that year.
Slightly different talks at that.
Vince's son Shane suggested buying the company from Paul outright. It was going to the dogs, and would perish the very next year. Vince, seeing the writing on the wall, told Shane he’d rather just have Heyman as an employee, then they could watch ECW go bankrupt so he could pick it clean. In hindsight, that was the best move.
The WWF picked up various ECW stars like RVD afterwards anyway, and they managed to get their grubby mitts on the ultra-important tape library into the bargain. That helped with the WWE Network years later, but it also enabled extreme to play a part in the ongoing WCW invasion of the federation too.
Looking back, it's mad to think that Shane could’ve been the extreme boss. That was part of his pitch. Heyman revealed via Chris Van Vliet's 'Insight' podcast/show that Shane was high on the renegade promotion - probably more so than most on the WWF side of the fence. He saw value in it, and believed it could be something special with his dad's funding.
That's something Shane believed all the way up until 2006 and the launch of WWE's very own version of ECW.