Kayfabe! – Timeline The History Of ECW 1994 As Told By Shane Douglas

KAYFABE!
Timeline: The History of ECW 1994 as told by Shane Douglas

This is the second in Kayfabe Commentaries’ “Timeline” series devoted to ECW. The year is 1994, the year that Eastern Championship Wrestling became Extreme Championship Wrestling, and Douglas was the man right at the forefront of that change. As usual for KC, the production is excellent. It’s essentially the same thing as the 1997 Timeline with Sabu, only with the addition of a little blurb in the top corner, some of which are pretty funny.

How does this overall compare to the Sabu Timeline? Well, honestly, it doesn’t. You’d think someone so outspoken would have a lot to stay and a lot of good stories to tell, but he really doesn’t. When he does tell stories, they’re pretty good, he just should have done that a lot more. At one point he talks about the weapons the fans would try to bring in, but Atlas security usually got the bad ones. One time, they missed a guy bringing in a storm window, and Saturn got cracked over the head with it and got tons of tiny cuts on his head. Shane can only assume that Atlas thought it was plexiglass. He tells another good story about working with Sabu and the plan was to turn right into a plancha from him. He sees Sabu’s feet leave and then he get leveled in the back of the head. Shane assumed that it he badly mistimed it. Nope, a crazy fan cracked him with a baseball bat.

Shane gives his take on all the big names that came up in ECW and usually has some interesting nuggets of info about them. For instance, Mikey Whipwreck was named as a rib on a promoter in the Baltimore area. The Sandman started in ECW asa beach bum character, and realized it was going nowhere, so he just started being himself. Tommy Dreamer was “Jersey Shore before there was a Jersey Shore” and after the big caning incident, he became the Tommy Dreamer that everyone knew and loved. Heyman slowly started filtering out the Eastern Championship Wrestling names with more of the names that became famous in Extreme Championship Wrestling. Shane agrees that, as great a guy as Salvatore Bellomo was, he wasn’t the guy to take ECW to the next level.

The two big things that are talked about are the working relationship between WCW and ECW, as well as the NWA Title incident. He was surprised by the fact they were working with WCW, since Bischoff and Heyman hated each other so much. Bischoff also screwed Paul over a few times, such as telling Paul he’d make Austin and Pillman available and then reneging on him. Shane thinks Cactus spitting on the belt was Mick’s way of flipping WCW the bird for all the political bullshit he had to deal with at the time. This leads to a small discussion of “Dick” Flair, who Shane idolized when he was a child, but got disenfranchised when he saw how Flair acted in public a lot, as well as Flair’s own political bullshit that he used while the booker.

The NWA Title discussion is the best part of the whole interview. Paul pitched it to Shane ahead of time and told him that he could take the title and work so many dates for the NWA and then make occasional trips back to ECW. It’d be like Flair in the old days occasionally coming back to Charlotte, only without working in front of 40,000 in Reunion Arena in Dallas. Or, Shane could stick with Heyman and they could shake things up and make their own name. Shane eventually decided to go with the latter, but he didn’t decide until the last possible second. He only decided to after three things happened. First, Dennis Coralluzzo buried Shane on Mike Tenay’s radio show, telling people not to book him because he no shows, which would have made Shane rely on the NWA for work (ECW still only ran a scant few shows per month). Second. Dennis pestered him all day about signing a contract, even waiting for him outside the bathroom. Shane kept telling him that he wouldn’t sign anything without his attorney reading it. Finally, when he got the pin on Scorpio, Coralluzzo almost looked disappointed, so he went through with it.

How stupid was Coralluzzo? After Shane buried him and the NWA, he actually cut a promo for ECW TV saying Shane WAS the NWA Champion and had to defend the title! There’s other talk about Coralluzzo too, Coralluzzo and Todd Gordon had an agreement about not running each other’s towns, which they both wound up breaking. When Coralluzzo realized he got screwed over, he worked with Cornette to crown a new champion, so ECW ran an extra show on two weeks notice.

Sean asks if there was true that Flair was coming to ECW? At one point there apparently was. Flair wanted a huge guarantee, $150,000.00, which wasn’t feasible for Paul. So the plan was to run three shows with Flair vs. Shane, a match in Charlotte, Pittsburgh, and Philly at the Spectrum, but Flair backed out and re-signed with WCW.

Shane and Sean finish up by talking about ECW and what made it work. Shane said it was because WWF and WCW were stuck in the ‘80’s and there were tons of 18-34 males looking for something new, and ECW gave it. He says the same holds true today with WWE and TNA, and he says the next ECW could be just around the corner.

The 411: The best stuff here is when Shane gets to cut loose and tell a story that he can really sink his teeth into, like the Dennis Coralluzzo stuff. But, Shane is all business most of the time. It's an interesting look into ECW, but not as good as '97 with Sabu.
Final Score:  7.5   [ Good ]