Crowbar Recalls Talks With WWE Early In His Career, Being A Fan of ECW

In an interview with Fightful, Crowbar spoke about talks he had with WWE early in his career, his enjoyment of ECW and more. Here are highlights:

On his run as Devon Storm and how DDP helped him: “When I first went in, it was as Devon Storm. Bad mullet, bad outfit. Bad everything. Bad outfit. Everything. Kevin Sullivan reached out through a northeast promoter, Tony Rumble, and they brought me out there for the cruiserweight stuff. From there I went from that to ECW, spent about a year there or so, maybe a little less, then I went back to doing enhancement matches and doing tag matches with Ace Darling and we were both in school full time. I had met Dallas Page while I was there, and I tell everybody, ‘You can work as hard as you want, you ultimately need somebody to help open a door for you.’ Dallas was there at that time. He goes, ‘Bro, you got a lot of talent,’ this that and the other thing — but back then it was also different — ‘If you keep doing these matches, you’re going to get typecast as a job guy.’ So he goes, ‘Leave for now, finish school, get your degree and get better and if I can help you down the line, I will.’ He essentially got me in. Very grateful.”

On what he liked about ECW: “I loved the product. I still like mixing in the chairs and the more hardcore type. It’s a style that I like. I don’t like garbage wrestling where you just smack guys, but I like where you have a wrestling match and it just gets so heated [that] it degrades. I’m also a big fan of using objects that naturally occur at ringside. A guard rail, a chair, a bell. The tables have been grandfathered in. For whatever reason, we don’t know why, but there are folding tables under a wrestling ring. They serve some function. I’m not sure what they are. That’s an accepted part of wrestling now. Way back, you can’t bring the announcers tables in the ring—they’re gigantic now—but old ECW, they used to have the folding tables. We used to piledrive guys on the table, bring the tables in the ring. So what I’m getting at is, I like that a lot more than a big garbage can full of junk, you know what I mean? I loved the product. I was excited about going. It didn’t work out too good for me there me. I was probably the most unpopular guy in the locker room.”

On negotiations with the WWE: “I did the light heavyweight stuff as Devon Storm. There was talk at that time, believe it or not, that when I graduated I would have been an opening match guy and also be the on the road physical therapist for the guys. That just never happened.”