"Your friends won’t have a job if you leave" - Former WWE star on Paul Heyman convincing him to stay in ECW
Former WWE Superstar Tommy Dreamer recently revealed that Paul Heyman cried and asked him to stay in ECW when he got an offer to join WCW.
Dreamer was an ECW Original who was with the company from 1993 until it came to a close in 2001 before joining WWE. He also had a few stints with TNA (now IMPACT Wrestling) following his departure from the company in 2010.
In his recent appearance on the Reffin' It Up podcast, Dreamer stated that WCW tried to sign him on several occasions. Heyman, who was then in charge of ECW, pleaded with him to stay in the company, stating that the promotion would not survive without him.
“Then towards the end, they offered me a boatload of money and I was going to go, but Paul [Heyman] cried and he said something to me that really messed with my head. I forgave Paul for a lot, but he literally said, ‘ECW won’t survive without you,’ because I was running all the live events. I was booking. I was doing TV. I was doing everything. He straight up said, while crying, ‘All your friends won’t have a job if you leave.’ Think of that," said Dreamer. [H/T WrestlingNews]
As the Heart and Soul of Pro Wrestling there isn’t much Tommy Dreamer has not done in wrestling. His passion started at a young age when he fell in love with wrestling. It continued to ECW, then WWE, and now to IMPACT Wrestling.
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Dreamer also stated that WCW had tried to sign several top ECW stars like Raven, Rob Van Dam, and Sabu, to name a few.
Tommy Dreamer says he has no malice towards current WWE personality Paul Heyman
Dreamer also stated in the podcast that he has no malice towards Heyman for "scre*ing him over" in ECW and that he has forgiven him. He said that he had moved forward and had forgiven the current WWE personality.
"I went down with the ship even longer than the owner. It’s all good. I don’t have any malice towards him [Paul Heyman] because of that. You have to just move forward, and honestly, I forgave him on WWE television when we did a whole sit down,” said Dreamer.
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Dreamer was later a part of the WWE's reincarnation of ECW and was even an ECW Champion in 2009.
After the promotion folded in 2001, it was reintroduced again under the World Wrestling Entertainment banner in 2006, with Paul Heyman taking the reins once again. It went defunct in 2010 and was introduced sporadically in angles and match stipulations. Heat Wave, a pay-per-view made famous by ECW, was brought back as a television special for NXT in 2022.
What did you make of ECW during its existence? Let us know in the comments section below.