Paul Heyman has a very interesting column up on The Sun in the UK at this link looking at how Tommy Dreamer winning the ECW Championship recently was a fairly big accomplishment considering how he was looked at by Vince McMahon and creative not long ago.
Here is a portion of what Heyman had to say:
“If you’re looking for this blog to contain one of those gushing, glowing testaments to how Tommy Dreamer winning the ECW championship is the salvation of the Extreme Vision, the resurrection of all that’s right in the world, or the absolution of the Spirit of the Original ECW, then I am sorry to say that you’re reading the wrong person’s perspective.
While many members of the creative team, like Ed Koskey and David Lagana, actually grew into wrestling fanatics cheering in the bleacher section of the ECW Arena during the 1990s, Vince McMahon just didn’t understand the character.
“Paul,” the Chairman of the entire industry would say, “what exactly IS a Tommy Dreamer? I don’t get it!”
This was never more apparent than a few weeks into the re-birth of ECW as a television property in 2006, when Vince had an epiphany.
Kill off the originals. All of ’em. Well, we’ll keep Sabu and Rob Van Dam, but the first week after Big Show won the ECW title, Vince wanted the newly-minted “Heel Heyman” to come out on television and publicly fire Sandman, Balls Mahoney, Little Guido, Francine, Al Snow and especially Tommy Dreamer.
Vince declared: “Time to let people know that concept is dead, and so are those guys, one and all.”