WWE News: Sabu comments on if the ECW brand was set up to fail, why Heyman is not a genius
What's the story?
Former ECW legend and WWE star Sabu recently spoke with The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling. During the interview, Sabu spoke about his new book, Paul Heyman being labelled a genius, his time in WWE's ECW.
In case you didn't know...
Sabu was one of the founding fathers of the original ECW. While he did compete for a while in WWE's version of ECW, his time spent on the brand was brief and was mostly remembered for an incident involving Rob Van Dam, in which the two superstars were arrested for possession of marijuana.
The heart of the matter
During a new interview with The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling, Sabu offered his thoughts on whether or not he believes Paul Heyman is a genius.
"No, because nobody would let him run away with their company the way Tod Gordon let him run away with their company," Sabu said, h/t to Chad & JP of The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling for the transcription. "First, when he came into the company he had to follow Tod Gordon's rules on wrestling but then when I came into it we didn't follow anybody's rules and he let Paul do what he wanted to do because he thought Paul was a genius for bringing me in. But nobody would have given him that credit if it wasn't for me and him hooking up and people seeing what was really in his mind."
Sabu also discussed his time in WWE's ECW, noting that how the brand evolved is not necessarily what WWE told him before he signed on to be part of the new ECW.
“"Well, they lied to me. They said they were going to keep Sabu the way he was and push it the way ECW was and keep it in the small venues and all that stuff which I agreed with because I didn't want to do the big venues. I like the more intimate venues where the people think they are special and part of the assembly line but anyways I wasn't happy there. First couple of months was okay but they slowly wanted to completely change what they said and they went from liking Sabu to not liking Sabu and I could feel it."
"It just looked like WWE with different lettering, the ECW lettering. It was the same show and no different. There was no extreme to it, no hardcore to it and we couldn't even have the ECW Extreme Rules match every night. We had them every other night. Some nights we'd go to house shows and not one extreme match."
"I was afraid people were thinking we were lazy or something but we were being told that we couldn't break a table and could not do this and could not do that. Before I could say, could I do it? Before it they would say well you can do that tomorrow so instead of me doing stuff and saying I couldn't do it anymore they'd stop me before I could even do it."
Sabu was also asked if he feels the WWE ECW brand was set up to fail. He noted,
"I don't think they tried to kill ECW, they were just trying to show that WWE style is stronger I guess. I don't know, I don't think they were trying to kill it because why would Vince spend the money on it to try and kill something? He could've killed it by not using it again."
What's next?
Sabu has not returned to WWE since leaving the company and the ECW brand, and while he is infrequently active on the independent scene, he is not yet retired.
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