Posted on by bdamage1
The year was 1997, and the WWF were in the middle of a ratings war with WCW. In the cross fires of this war, was a small, but resilient promotion called Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW). Many of ECW’s talent and ideas were being plucked bu both the larger, more prominent promotions. Despite ECW’s lack of money and exposure, hardcore wrestling fans knew all about it.
Various times during WWF or WCW matches, loud ECW chants would ring through the arenas. It only made good business sense that either WCW or the WWF would somehow partner with the little wrestling promotion that could. The person who owned and operated ECW was none other than Paul Heyman. Heyman realized that partnering with either one of the “Big Two” would help get ECW much needed national exposure. While both WCW and the WWF stole from ECW, Heyman knew exactly who to partner with in making a deal with a devil.
Heyman had a lot of bad blood throughout the years with WCW while Heyman was employed by that company. He even filed a lawsuit against WCW for racial discrimination. That lawsuit was eventually settled out of court, but Heyman still had ill feelings towards the company. So the WWF became the promotion that Heyman decided to partner with. The conduit that would be used to ignite the inter promotional feud between ECW and the WWF was Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler.
Lawler, at this point, was used mainly as a broadcaster on WWF television. He would do something that was truly taboo for the WWF and still is to this day and that was acknowledge another wrestling promotion’s existence on TV. Lawler would start badmouthing ECW on WWF television by saying the letters stood for “Extremely Crappy Wrestling.” That of course, set the table for perhaps one of the greatest semi inter promotional feuds of all time.
On one side was Paul Heyman and his “wrestling misfits” representing ECW and on the other was Jerry Lawler supposedly representing the WWF. The ECW contingent started showing up ringside at WWF events and that led to them getting an exhibition of their stars at the Manhattan Center in New York City for Monday Night Raw. The exhibition or “invasion” ended when Heyman and Lawler (both doing commentary) ended up brawling each other.
Later in March of 1997, the two would go head to head in what was deemed an “Extreme Debate.” It was basically a worked shoot where Lawler talked about his disdain for ECW and the so called wrestlers that worked there. He also said that ECW wouldn’t exist, if not for Heyman’s parents bankrolling the company. Heyman outed Brian Christopher as Jerry’s son and said Brian Christopher was too embarrassed to even wrestle under the Lawler name. Several ECW wrestlers jumped in the ring during the debate including Tommy Dreamer, Sandman and the Eliminators. Lawler called for back up from the WWF locker room, but nobody showed up in his defense.
The hatred between Jerry Lawler and Paul Heyman was something that was deep rooted from Heyman’s days working in Memphis. Lawler did truly have resentment towards ECW, feeling that his Memphis territory did that hardcore stuff years earlier. Heyman simply took what he learned down south and called it “extreme” to get over on more of a national level.
For the most part, the Lawler/ECW storyline was kept off WWF TV…it played out more on ECW TV and Lawler’s USWA promotion. Some of that stemmed from Sabu and Rob Van Dam nearly killing the working agreement between the two companies. Sabu had a match with Flash Funk in which a table didn’t break in the match. Sabu reportedly threw a fit backstage. Secondly, RVD was scheduled to have a one on one match with Jesse James aka The Road Dogg on Shotgun Saturday Night…but Van Dam refused to job to James cancelling the match.
Those two incidents soured WWF management on ECW and the deal nearly fell through. It took Heyman to convince Vince McMahon to keep the deal in place.Tommy Dreamer was the guy thrust into battle with Lawler seeing as Heyman wasn’t a wrestler. The two wrestled each other in Memphis and that even created real life problems as Dreamer (who was playing the heel in the USWA) was cheered and ECW chants broke out. While Lawler didn’t have a homebase in this feud, he certainly came off as one of the biggest heels in ECW history.
The King would invade the ECW arena on a couple of occasions and he was never alone. He once was accompanied by Jake the Snake Roberts, who was late arriving at the arena and according to New Jack was in no real condition to do anything…wink, wink. Lawler also arrived with Jim Cornette (who had his own real life personal issues with Heyman) Cornette had to be convinced to do the angle by Chris Candido who played the middleman. Cornette would only agree to do it, if Heyman would apologize to his friend Dennis Coralluzzo…who Heyman screwed over when Shane Douglas threw down the NWA world title. Heyman agreed and apologized to Coralluzzo in the back of a limousine that Heyman got for both Cornette and Coralluzzo to arrive in.
Jim Cornette made his appearance inside the ECW arena to one of the loudest pops in the company’s history…only to get tremendous heel heat by the end of the appearance. That night saw Tommy Dreamer get a Singapore cane shot from Lawler that hit him in his testicles. The shot was so hard, it nearly ruptured them. Dreamer was legitimately rushed to the hospital and had viles of blood pumped out from the stiff shot.
The Jerry Lawler vs ECW feud had some big highlights and some real lowlights, but ultimately was extremely well done (Pun intended). As Lawler’s WWF broadcast partner Jim Ross put it…”It was brilliant creative that executed perfectly. Very cool for ECW.” Very true indeed.
David Fullam
Shows you how much times had changed. ECW is supposed to be the enemy in Memphis, and they get cheered on the TV show.