4. Trying And Failing To Spin ECW's Most Controversial Moment
In late 1996, Axl Rotten no-showed a ECW spot show in Revere, Massachusetts. A barely trained teenager named Erik Kulas was backstage and volunteered to take his place...against The Gangstas. As you can guess, it didn't go well for him. They beat the hell out of him with weapons and eventually, New Jack cut him with either a scalpel or a Xacto Knife. Kulas was OK with being bladed by New Jack, but this was way beyond blading. An artery was cut with blood spurting everywhere and he had to be hospitalized. Not only was Kulas's father screaming about lawsuits, but ECW was trying to get clearance for its first pay-per-view event. This was a complication, to say the least. In speaking to Wade Keller of the Pro Wrestling Torch, Heyman claimed that the PPV companies were moving forward after being briefed on what happened. They were all notified that Monday morning (after the incident that weekend) that we had an incident that is most probably going to cause bad publicity and we wanted to be the first ones to alert them to the situation, tell them our side of the story, and give them a tape so they know what happened. Here it is guys, this is how bad it is, if youre going to dump me, tell me now. It turned out that not only had Heyman not sent/shown the tape to the PPV companies, but of the two main distributors, one (Viewer's Choice) had already refused to carry ECW based on the content of their demo tape. With Request TV saying they weren't even told what happened, things looked bleak. Not only were both carriers out, but one had been badly alienated. Miraculously, ECW and Request made a deal a few months later, but it was a dark, dark time in ECW history.
