2. "FLAIR IS DEAD!"
When Jim Crockett Promotions (the company that eventually became WCW) expanded nationally, Philadelphia was one of their hottest cities outside of their traditional home base in the Carolinas. Philadelphia (similar to Baltimore, another strong WCW city) was different from most towns, though, in that the fans were bloodthirsty and loved the heels. And if they loved the heels, they especially loved Ric Flair, the hero of all heel fans and newsletter readers alike. As popular as Terry Funk, Jerry Lawler, Eddie Gilbert, the Midnight Express, and Mick Foley (as Cactus Jack) were, there was not a single wrestler more beloved by that subset of pro wrestling fans. Not one. Fast forward to ECW in 1994. One of Heyman's top guys is "The Franchise" Shane Douglas. Douglas legitimately felt that Flair, as booker and top star, held him down in WCW, so with Heyman's coaching, he worked it into his ECW promos, proclaiming that "Flair is dead!" This was a key part of the ECW aesthetic as it really started to take shape, profanity-laced promos that were counter to everything that the fans thought they knew about the professional wrestling business. Douglas usually spent more time cutting promos on Flair than he did on his opponents in ECW. It got over so well that hardcore wrestling fans in Philadelphia started chanting "FLAIR IS DEAD!" on the regular. It wasn't quite the equivalent to turning Bruno Sammartino heel, but it wasn't so different, either. In some ways, it's Heyman's crowning achievement as a booker, because nobody could have expected that level of mind control over fans. Well, that, or a similar incident not long thereafter...