ECW Quotes

I was so deep in red ink coming out of ECW that I had to make a good solid living just to get my nose above the water line because of ECW.

With what we were doing in ECW, the first thing you had to overcome was the fear of getting hurt.

Here's the funny thing: Nothing drives a performance like an audience that gives back and even takes over. ECW was a product that will be remembered as much, if not more, for its audience interaction as for the things that happened in the ring.

I had no desire to leave ECW, but in '95, I was reaching my mid 30s. I'd been the World Champ multiple times... I'd pretty much done everything in ECW - all I could do is repeat.

Man, it was a great ride back in the day. Obviously, I started out in WCW, and I was a good mechanic back in the day. Got fired from that gig, made a turn for ECW.

ECW stands for Extremely Crappy Wrestling.

If you look at who emerged on the horizon 12 to 18 months after ECW stopped running shows, I think it's very reasonable to believe that we would have picked up CM Punk and several of the other young stars that emerged in the independent scene in the early part of that decade. Punk obviously is the one that I would hope I would have noticed.

I owe my career to Paul Heyman.

Shane Douglas's work in the first 11 months as The Franchise of ECW was so groundbreaking. He made people forget about his on-air persona in WCW and successfully reinvented himself as The Franchise in ECW.

When Paul Heyman came and gave me the whole idea for the character, 'The Franchise,' I remember the NFL was just starting to classify one of their players as the franchise player. So that was the whole idea, that 'The Franchise' was the franchise player for ECW.

And what this ECW is doing is educating you people once again that there IS wrestling, spelt W-R-E-S-T-L-I-N-G, out there.

I never looked at ECW as wrestling. I always considered it more of a theology. I don't know whether I had or didn't have a messianic complex during that time. But I bought into the movement as much as, if not more than, anybody else. If I sold anyone on the religion of extreme, I was its number-one customer.

I got my break in the business with the now-defunct Bill Watts' TWF, the old Mid-South. Which was really, in many ways, the predecessor to ECW in its time, in that age. It was a really cool, high-impact, snug type of product.

What I think ECW presented was a big opportunity for a lot of WWE superstars. Definitely me. It revitalized my entire career when I moved to ECW.

I was the last person in the world that wanted to leave ECW.

I was discovered by Tommy Dreamer.

In ECW, hardcore wrestling wasn't done just for the fun of it. It was done for a purpose, for a reason. And for me, it was done to exist and produce a revenue for my family.

For a company the size of ECW, there wasn't room for multiple over-the-top personalities.

Shane Douglas accomplished quite a bit in and for ECW, but his career will forever be defined by the moment he threw down the NWA Title.

I really value my days down there in ECW in Philly.

With ECW, I had a lot of time for matches. I could go out there and do a 20-25 minute match, where normally I'd get to do a 7-8 minute match.

Philadelphia's awesome. It's one of my top home-away-from-homes. When I walk around on the streets there, people recognize me. They think I'm from Philadelphia, because I was there so much and because I'm so associated with Philadelphia through ECW.

When I was growing up, I thought there was only WWE. That's it. One promotion in the world. And then, as I grew up, I found that there's local wrestling. There's WCW, there's ECW. In Mexico, there are the luchadores. And then, finally, I realized there's wrestling in Japan.

To me, there are certain things you lay claim to proudly and others you hope the people look over them, and for me, the NWA title throwdown is something that I wear like a badge of honor and what we did and what it achieved for ECW at the time, and ultimately we failed, but damn, we came close to grabbing those keys to the kingdom.

I can speak for myself personally, I loved ECW. I loved everything about it. I loved the crew, I loved the fans, the style, working there.