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Post by Natural Born Farmer on Apr 2, 2019 13:26:45 GMT -5
Rob Van Dam also remains highly complimentary of Heyman as well. Probably has to do with the fact that Heyman most likely took care of his high priority guys like a Raven, Van Dam, Storm, Awesome, etc. Pretty sure Awesome jumped to WCW while still ECW champ specifically because he wasn’t being paid in a timely fashion.
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Post by cassonova on Apr 2, 2019 14:06:18 GMT -5
Rob Van Dam also remains highly complimentary of Heyman as well. Probably has to do with the fact that Heyman most likely took care of his high priority guys like a Raven, Van Dam, Storm, Awesome, etc. Pretty sure Awesome jumped to WCW while still ECW champ specifically because he wasn’t being paid in a timely fashion. I also believe Storm gave an ultimatum stating that if Paul missed a payment, Storm would leave.
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Post by The Summer of Muskrat XVII on Apr 2, 2019 14:32:25 GMT -5
Pretty sure Awesome jumped to WCW while still ECW champ specifically because he wasn’t being paid in a timely fashion. I also believe Storm gave an ultimatum stating that if Paul missed a payment, Storm would leave. I believe Lance was insistent on a 3 strikes rule, where if pay was late 3 times his contract would be void and he’d be a free agent
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2019 14:53:57 GMT -5
I also believe Storm gave an ultimatum stating that if Paul missed a payment, Storm would leave. I believe Lance was insistent on a 3 strikes rule, where if pay was late 3 times his contract would be void and he’d be a free agent Yeah, he reached 2 strikes, called Paul E and said "one more and I'm a free agent" and he never got a late cheque again.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2019 14:57:43 GMT -5
he probably feels he got to do a character that's lasted 25 years and he can still do conventions and mail order from it
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Apr 2, 2019 18:53:10 GMT -5
Rob Van Dam also remains highly complimentary of Heyman as well. Probably has to do with the fact that Heyman most likely took care of his high priority guys like a Raven, Van Dam, Storm, Awesome, etc. Pretty sure Awesome jumped to WCW while still ECW champ specifically because he wasn’t being paid in a timely fashion. Awesome repeatedly tried to get Heyman to sort things out but he kept getting fobbed off and was left with no choice because excuses don't pay travel expenses and feed families. Paul played the victim, of course, and people lapped it up for the longest tine because he booked some good shows.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2019 18:58:27 GMT -5
I remember listening to an old Observer Radio that was recorded during Raven's final sting where he's debating with Meltzer that ECW has a shot still to be competitive with the big two while Meltzer tells him point blank how wrong he is and it's almost adorable how optimistic Raven was about things despite how off the mark he was.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2019 18:59:49 GMT -5
I remember listening to an old Observer Radio that was recorded during Raven's final sting where he's debating with Meltzer that ECW has a shot still to be competitive with the big two while Meltzer tells him point blank how wrong he is and it's almost adorable how optimistic Raven was about things despite how off the mark he was. That could have been Raven trying to work some angle mind. Hard to tell with him.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2019 1:46:51 GMT -5
Yeah, Heyman‘s no saint and he’s definitely to blame for its downfall, but ECW legitimately did grow to an unsustainable level. Expenses inflated, income didn’t. They were too big for what they were, but never got big enough to make that next step And yes, Heyman did hit a point where he was willing to just let it die. He was incredibly burnt out, mentally and financially, and had checked out knowing ECW was dead in the water like 6 months before it closed. Heyman was also living an unsustainable lifestyle of minimal sleep, and presumably lots of alcohol and cocaine. If ECW doesn’t fold, Heyman is probably long dead by now. I'm a little surprised that it became unsustainable. They had action figures, a video game, international distribution. And it's not like they brought in a ton of ex-big 2 guys on massive contracts, they'd have the occasional one like Sid/Hall for a short run. The core was always ECW Originals, who you'd think would be on a lower wage. The production never looked amazing, so I'm not sure how much would have gone into that. They must have been kinda crappy deals like the TNN one, which goes back to being really bad with money/legal stuff. Action figures, video games, etc. are nice, but any money from that is a drop in the bucket compared to the operating expenses of a company like that during its time. As some have pointed out, they never really saw much of that money either, and it took forever to get paid on PPVs from months prior. They were renting major arenas. They had to pay for TV time infommercial style (not get paid for it) in some major markets, and were far behind on payments to some of them. Paying (or not paying) the guys to bump every night was a small fraction of what it cost to run the shows, and if they couldn't cover all the rest, there would be no shows for them to be bumping on.
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Post by OldDirtyBernie on Apr 3, 2019 6:33:24 GMT -5
I would imagine that he's also got a soft spot and wanted to hang onto it, maybe to the point of denial. If I recall correctly, he credits Heyman with helping him get clean from hard drugs. If that's the case and I'm not just mis-rememering, then he probably mentally wanted everything to be fine and not just go away while seeing Heyman in a different way than a lot of people.
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Post by cjh on Apr 3, 2019 7:08:47 GMT -5
I believe Lance was insistent on a 3 strikes rule, where if pay was late 3 times his contract would be void and he’d be a free agent Yeah, he reached 2 strikes, called Paul E and said "one more and I'm a free agent" and he never got a late cheque again. Storm said on The Rise and Fall of ECW that it got to three strikes, so he went to Paul and verbally broke his contract as he promised he would. For the rest of his time in the company, he worked with no contract and had his checks came directly to his home.
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Post by kingoftheindies on Apr 3, 2019 14:43:06 GMT -5
Yeah, Heyman‘s no saint and he’s definitely to blame for its downfall, but ECW legitimately did grow to an unsustainable level. Expenses inflated, income didn’t. They were too big for what they were, but never got big enough to make that next step And yes, Heyman did hit a point where he was willing to just let it die. He was incredibly burnt out, mentally and financially, and had checked out knowing ECW was dead in the water like 6 months before it closed. Heyman was also living an unsustainable lifestyle of minimal sleep, and presumably lots of alcohol and cocaine. If ECW doesn’t fold, Heyman is probably long dead by now. I'm a little surprised that it became unsustainable. They had action figures, a video game, international distribution. And it's not like they brought in a ton of ex-big 2 guys on massive contracts, they'd have the occasional one like Sid/Hall for a short run. The core was always ECW Originals, who you'd think would be on a lower wage. The production never looked amazing, so I'm not sure how much would have gone into that. They must have been kinda crappy deals like the TNN one, which goes back to being really bad with money/legal stuff. There is a book called I believe Hardcore History that is an independent retelling of ECW (I have the book somewhere and when I find it I'll give actual title) while ECW did grow too big. Paul also made a lot of bad business decisions that ended up costing ECW more than the growth. He basically screwed over a lot of venue owners to the point they didnt want to book ECW, and I guess Paul did a lot of things venue owners told him not to do which resulted in a lot of fines. Plus how Paul acted with TNN executives made him person non grata when it came to getting a TV deal.. or even getting financial help with the program. Just to give an idea, while Eric Bischoff has spun him not buying WCW was due to not having a TV deal in recent years, the actual reason was his financial backers were tired of negotiating with Jaime Kellner who legit just wanted rid of wrestling and he kept changing the deal on them. The plan was for WCW to be off TV for months as they were gonna relocate To Vegas and basically redo contracts. Everything else was set. Paul could get no financial backers or help with business because he wasnt a good business man. So in short ECW did become sustainable because Heyman, as great of a creative mind as he was, could not run the other aspects of a business. He was too disorganized too scatter brained, and too irresponsible with money. Maybe if Todd Gordon stayed as a business partner the growth could have continued
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