7 Questions With Tommy Dreamer

If you want to talk about ECW stalwarts, the first name that springs to mind is Tommy Dreamer.

Making his ECW debut on October 2, 1993 at the ECW Arena in Philadelphia, Dreamer faithfully served the company until the bitter end. In fact, Dreamer not only wrestled on the final ECW show on January 13, 2001 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, he ran it after owner and booker Paul Heyman had abandoned ship.

After ECW filed for bankruptcy and its trademarks and intellectual property were acquired by WWE, Dreamer worked for WWE as a wrestler and, later, as an employee in the office, overseeing developmental. He was heavily involved in WWE’s ECW One Night Stand reunion pay-per-view on June 12, 2005, and in the company’s full-time ECW revival from June 2006. He finally left WWE in January 2010.

In 2012, Dreamer set up his own organisation, House Of Hardcore, which promoted its first show in his home state of New York. Since then, House Of Hardcore has presented events in California and Canada and, at time of writing, was preparing to visit Australia for the first time.

We spoke to Dreamer via telephone on June 6 about House Of Hardcore’s expansion, the original ECW, his former boss Paul Heyman and more ...

The House Of Hardcore roadshow continues to travel ever further afield. It has cards scheduled in Melbourne, Australia on June 24 and Pasadena, Texas on August 6. Two years ago, HOH promoted a show in Valley Center, California. In July 2015, it ran the Ted Reeve Arena in Toronto, Canada and drew over 1,500 fans for a card featuring Austin Aries, Team 3D, Johnny Mundo, Rhino, The Young Bucks, Michael Bennett and yourself. Last month, HOH’s fourteenth live event took place in Niagara Falls, Canada. Was this the goal from the start: did you intend to promote shows nationally and even internationally when you ran the first HOH show on October 6, 2012 in Poughkeepsie, New York?

“No. When I first started, I really set out to do one show. But I had a lot of fun doing it. The next year, I did two more shows. Everything was in the right place at the right time, and I had good venues. I saw how the shows kept on growing and were getting a positive response, and the ball just kept on rolling.

“Then the old ECW Arena opened up, and that was a natural setting for me. And then I got a little TV deal with the Fight Network. I did Toronto last year, where the Fight Network is based, and we actually set the attendance record for the Ted Reeve Arena. My last show was at Niagara Falls, Canada a couple of weeks ago. Now, I’m planning on doing one or two shows per month. I have a lot more dates lined-up.”