10 Biggest ECW Controversies

Extreme Championship Wrestling accomplished much during its relatively short lifespan and made such an impact on fans that it is still very much mourned today, decades on from when it folded. 

While fans may be quick to remember all the positives that ECW gave the wrestling world, it’s also worth remembering that ECW was often extremely controversial. From firings and lawsuits to fist fights and other unsanctioned violence, there was often something salacious for Paul Heyman’s promotion to deal with 

These are the 10 Biggest ECW Controversies. 

10. The Exploitation of Tammy Sytch

Tammy Sytch, AKA Sunny, may have made some very bad decisions during her life, but there’s no escaping the fact that she was also, on numerous occasions, treated very poorly by the professional wrestling industry. 

One of the most egregious instances of this was ECW’s decision to air a tabloid-style ‘exposé’ of Sytch on the October 8, 1999, episode of ECW on TNN.

With no new in-ring material to offer, Paul Heyman built the show around a candid interview with Sytch, who was very clearly in the throes of addiction at the time. Interspersed with copious shots of Sytch in a bikini was an interview where the one-time most downloaded woman in the world spoke about her prescription drug problem, cried over the death of her close friend Louie Spicolli, and then broke down over the death of her 16-year-old niece. 

Filmed in an uncomfortable close-up, the situation screamed of being a ‘ratings ploy’, while Heyman himself could be heard egging Tammy on from behind the camera. The interview produced ECW on TNN’s highest ratings to that point but was widely condemned after it aired. 

Unfortunately for Sytch, she has continued to struggle with personal issues and today she is incarcerated on DUI and manslaughter-related charges related to a car crash in March 2022 that resulted in the death of 75-year-old Julian Lasseter. Sytch's blood alcohol level was three-and-a-half times above the legal limit and an open bottle of vodka was found in her car at the scene. 

9. Paul Heyman Publicly Fires Sabu

The main event of ECW Three Way Dance on April 8, 1995 was scheduled to be Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko defending the ECW Tag Team Titles against both Public Enemy and Sabu & The Tazmaniac in a match that would act as the culmination of several storyline threads. 

However, Sabu had accidentally doubled-booked himself on a New Japan Pro-Wrestling card that same day and, faced with a choice, opted to honour his commitment in Japan, since New Japan had promised him a push along with future, more lucrative bookings. 

When Heyman found out that Sabu wouldn’t be working the ECW show by listening to his answering machine message, he publicly fired what was arguably the top-drawing singles wrestler in ECW. 

During the show-opening opening promo at Three Way Dance, Heyman outlined the situation and asked the fans not to apply for a refund until the intermission. Heyman’s promo turned the fans against Sabu, with ‘F*ck Sabu!’ chants ringing out inside the ECW Arena throughout the evening. 

Sabu later admitted he was in the wrong but he didn’t appreciate how the situation was handled. Sabu also noted that he took the booking because he was only wrestling sporadically for ECW at the time but he had a career wrestling in Japan, although based on Cagematch it was very much a 50/50 split for bookings in 1995 until his firing. Sabu did note, however, that financial security was a motivating factor as he made several times more in New Japan than he did in ECW. 

Regardless, Rick Steiner replaced Sabu at Three Way Dance and the show ended in a title change as Public Enemy won the ECW Tag Team Titles after Rocco Rock pinned Dean Malenko following a senton bomb. Sabu was then back with ECW at 1995’s November to Remember. 

8. Bounced Cheques

Although ECW was thriving from a popularity standpoint during the mid-to-late 1990s, the promotion often came up short on paydays and in the final months, contractors, vendors, and wrestlers often received cheques that bounced. 

Per the company’s bankruptcy records, Rob Van Dam was owed a staggering $150,000, while the likes of Joey Styles and Rhino were due $50,000 and Shane Douglas was owed close to that amount. Tommy Dreamer, meanwhile, was down $100,000 in salary but had, as part-owner of the company, invested a lot more that he wouldn’t be able to recoup.

Dreamer, who has claimed he turned down an offer from WCW to remain with ECW, fell into a deep depression after ECW folded and he was so incensed by his former boss joining WWE that he contemplated killing Heyman live on air at WrestleMania X-Seven, before then committing suicide. 

Dreamer said on his House of Hardcore podcast in 2019: 

“I remember I did a show there, and I saw a sign that said, ‘Guns Welcome,’ and I was in Houston. I did an indie show, and I said, ‘What is this?’ I’m from New York, what do you mean, ‘Guns welcome?’ and they said, ‘Oh you are allowed to bring a firearm into the venue.’ I was across the street from the Astrodome. When I tell you it resonated in my head so, so much. That I’ll tell you what I wanted to do. It’s sick that I think this. At WrestleMania, I was gonna hop the rail and I was gonna whack Paul E in the back of the head right at the announce table, then I was gonna whack myself. The ultimate martyr, I was gonna hit my pose crack, boom, pull the trigger. Because I was that insane. Don’t know if I would have went through with it, but that’s what I was thinking about every day. I was like, ‘I will go down in history.’ Pop, boom. First they’d think it was an angle until I shot him. I was so severely depressed and so mental with rage, I needed help.

“Think of how stupid I would have been, how dumb and how messed up my thoughts would have been if they would have come to fruition. I am so happy I didn’t do it, I am so happy that I did get that phone call, from someone who was a stranger, I barely knew the guy. There was another day, there has been a lot of other days.”

That phone call was from WWE Head of Talent Relations Jim Ross and WWE signed Tommy Dreamer, bringing him in as part of the Invasion in July 2001. Several other former ECW talents, including Rob Van Dam and Justin Credible, also made their way to WWE.

H/T talkSPORT

7. Paul Heyman vs. TNN

With the company struggling financially despite doing good business on the road and shifting a tonne of merchandise, Paul Heyman and the rest of the ECW crew believed that securing a TV deal with TNN in the Autumn of 1999 was the answer to their prayers and would help keep them in business for a long time to come. 

A deal was secured, with ECW and TNN agreeing to a three-year deal, with ECW being added to the network’s Friday Night Thrill Zone line-up.  

Issues quickly arose between ECW and TNN, though, as TNN President David Hall insinuated that ECW’s more violent content would be toned down on the network. The first show on TNN, which was intended to serve as an introduction to ECW for new viewers and featured a compilation of promos and older matches, was 'crapped on' by TNN, according to ECW commentator Joey Styles. 

The issues continued after Taz signed with WWE only months after ECW on TNN premiered as TNN allegedly wanted to retain the former ECW World Heavyweight Champion. The issues between ECW and TNN were reflected on-screen with The Network stable and Cyrus (Don Callis), an oppressive network representative. 

ECW only remained on TNN for just over a year and they were kicked off the network after WWE reached a deal with Viacom to broadcast Monday Night Raw on TNN from September 2000. The moment led to a shoot promo from Paul Heyman live on air on June 2 in which he declared that ECW hated TNN and demanded the promotion be thrown off the air. 

"Since this show is apparently going to make it to air this week, I'd like to take this moment to thank you for watching ECW. See, you have to be an ECW fan to watch this show because God knows the network has never put out one freaking commercial or one press release to let you know that we're here, but that's their scheme of things. You see in just a few weeks the network is going to give $100 million to Vince McMahon, like he needs it, to replace us, if they haven't thrown us off before then. And the fact of the matter is that we're not a publicly funded company like Vince McMahon or WCW, we survive, or even thrive, on your support and for that we thank you," Heyman said.

"Now, in an industry where everybody wants to be real, and everybody wants to do a shoot, this my friends is a shoot. We hate this stinking network, we hate their guts for abandoning us, we hate their guts for not supporting us, we hate their guts for not advertising us and we hate their guts for not having the balls to throw us off the air. And in case you're watching this, hey network! I dare ya to throw me off the air, because I'm going to break every rule you put in front of me until you throw me the Hell off the air. Now this my friends is a shoot, you better take that $100 million that you're going to give Vince McMahon and you better spend it on attorneys because I promise you network, the war has just begun."

Paul Heyman tried to keep ECW on TV after exiting TNN through a deal with USA Network, the channel Monday Night Raw was leaving, but no deal came together. 

6. The Mole

In WWE’s The Rise and Fall of ECW documentary, Tommy Dreamer said that Heyman remained loyal to the crew, so long as the crew remained loyal to Heyman. One person who seemingly didn’t remain loyal to Heyman was Tod Gordon, the founder and booker of the original Eastern Championship Wrestling before he sold ECW to Heyman in 1995.

Gordon abruptly left ECW in September of 1997 under suspicious circumstances. Publicly, Heyman downplayed the exit and said that Gordon had simply resigned due to business differences. Privately, it was a very different story. 

Gordon was actually fired after Heyman and Tommy Dreamer heard voice messages between Gordon and WCW’s Terry Taylor, where Gordon was negotiating to bring in ECW talent for a supposed inter-promotional ‘invasion’ storyline. Gordon, as the broker, would receive a fee for every talent he was able to bring to WCW, while he was also heard lobbying for his own full-time job with Eric Bischoff’s promotion.

Meanwhile, Bill Alfonso was also implicated and supposedly only saved his job after putting in a great performance in his bloodbath with Beulah McGillicutty. 

Gordon has disputed the ‘mole’ story and claimed in 2023 that the whole thing was a work orchestrated by him and Heyman:

"You have to understand it was always us against the big guys. We were the little engine that could, us against WWE, us against WCW. We were shooting at them and we’re trying to equate ourselves with them. So what happened was things got bad at a certain point around ’96, ’97 in the locker room. What used to be this great family-loving atmosphere in this locker room had become a splinter group. There was a crew over here. Here was the Philly crew over here. Here’s a guy with his own he made up for himself, his own championship over here. The whole thing was really getting bad. Everybody’s coming to me saying, ‘Look, you helped Public Enemy. Can you help us? Can you get us a job somewhere? I can’t live like this anymore worrying about whether or not I’m gonna get a cheque that clears and I can eat my dinner. I don’t want to buy anything as I’m definitely afraid.’ 

"I said, ‘Paul. You’re losing these guys. I’m going to make the phone call.’ He goes, ‘Wait a minute. I’ve got a brilliant idea. You’re leaving anyway, right?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘How about there’s a mole in the company and I can get the locker room back together again, all of us, against whomever and now we tighten the ranks again.’ 

"I wanted the company to succeed. I wanted it to go on forever. I still get my money out of it and it wasn’t just the financial out of it. My best friends were there. They’re still my best friends, Sandman, Fonzie, Sabu, Scorpio. I mean these are people I talk to like religiously. Were that close as a group. So basically he went with that, and of course, you have to understand the way Paul operates like, ‘You will come back in a year as the greatest heel in the history of professional wrestling. You have no idea how big we can make this.’”

H/T Wrestling Headlines

5. Mike Awesome's ECW Departure

Paul Heyman’s big booking idea for the year 2000 was to build to a pay-per-view match between ECW Television Champion Rob Van Dam and ECW World Heavyweight Champion Mike Awesome. The match didn't happen, though, as RVD broke his ankle and Awesome jumped ship to WCW after refusing to sign a new deal with ECW over overdue pay. 

Awesome was still ECW World Heavyweight Champion when he no-showed a couple of ECW shows before his planned debut on WCW Nitro. What followed was legal wrangling between ECW and WCW before a compromise was reached. 

Awesome made his WCW debut on the April 10, 2000 edition of Monday Nitro, aiding the New Blood in an attack on Kevin Nash. Awesome then made a one-night return on the April 14, 2000 episode of ECW on TNN to drop the ECW World Heavyweight Championship to Tazz, who was by this point signed to WWE. 

There was serious resentment against Awesome in the ECW locker room from that point on, though his defenders will point out that he did what he needed to for his family.

Awesome ‘redeemed’ himself in the eyes of many by stealing the show with Masato Tanaka at the original One Night Stand pay-per-view in 2005, before sadly taking his own life in February of 2007.

4. Shane Douglas Throws Down The NWA Title

On August 27, 1994, NWA affiliate Eastern Championship Wrestling held a tournament to crown a new NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion. In the tournament final, reigning ECW World Heavyweight Champion Shane Douglas defeated Too Cold Scorpio to win the title. 

All hell then broke loose as, during his post-match promo, Douglas threw down the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Title while declaring that he didn’t want to be the champion of a ‘dead’ organisation. He instead put over ECW and its own championship belt, declaring it to be a ‘world’ title. 

The stunt – which was orchestrated by Paul Heyman – caused immediate controversy, with then-NWA President Dennis Coralluzzo declaring it a ‘disgrace’. Two days later, Tod Gordon announced that he had ‘folded’ Eastern Championship Wrestling and that his promotion would henceforth be known as Extreme Championship Wrestling. 

It was a watershed moment that kickstarted the ECW revolution, while acting as another nail in the coffin of the National Wrestling Alliance.

Almost two decades after the fact, Heyman admitted that he wasn’t exactly proud of the double cross, but that he didn’t regret doing it and would do the exact same thing again if he had to do it over. 

3. The Sandman Crucified

At High Incident on October 26, 1996, Olympic gold medallist (and Pennsylvania native) Kurt Angle took a trip to the ECW Arena in Philadelphia. Angle had been weighing up whether to wrestle for ECW - which he was led to believe presented a product closer to amateur wrestling - and teased a future match with Taz in a segment on the show. 

Before the night was over, Kurt not only had zero interest in ever wrestling for ECW, but he left the arena in disgust and threatened to sue the promotion if they ever aired his appearance on their television show. 

This occurred due to a scene that unfolded following the match between ECW World Heavyweight Champion The Sandman and 2 Cold Scorpio which saw Raven attack Sandman before ‘crucifying’ him by tying him to a wooden cross and adorning his head with a crown of barbed wire.

Not only was the Olympian offended by the blasphemy but, according to reports, so too was much of the ECW audience. Raven was forced to make an out-of-character apology afterwards and footage of the crucifixion never aired on ECW television.

2. XPW Invades

ECW, mere months away from going under, may have been limping along in the Summer of 2000, but they still had a dedicated fanbase and managed to pack almost 6,000 fans into LA’s Grand Olympic Auditorium for their West Coast debut.

Among those in attendance at the Heat Wave 2000 pay-per-view were members of rival upstart promotion Xtreme Pro Wrestling, who sat in the front row and, prior to the main event, put on their XPW t-shirts as they had been instructed to by XPW promoter Rob Black.

This piece of self-promotion caught the attention of Tommy Dreamer and Francine (who confronted Kristi Myst after Myst had removed her top, somewhat spoiling a similar spot that was planned for Francine during the main event) and, following a brief skirmish, the XPW crew were bounced by security and members of the ECW roster. 

The story didn’t end there, however, because the publicity stunt had angered the rest of the ECW locker room, resulting in a brawl in the parking lot. With the encouragement of Heyman, the ECW roster went out and beat up the vastly outnumbered XPW gang until the cops were called and the fight was broken up.

1. The Mass Transit Incident

Axl Rotten was unable to make the November 23, 1996, ECW house show in Revere, Massachusetts due to a family emergency. 

17-year-old trainee Erich Kulas, who wrestled with a bus driver gimmick as Mass Transit, convinced Paul Heyman to let him fill in for Rotten by lying about his age and credentials, falsely claiming to have been trained by Killer Kowalski, which Erich’s father had vouched for. 

Kulas teamed with D-Von Dudley against The Gangstas in what should have been a routine outing. It turned into one of the most notorious matches in wrestling history. 

That’s because New Jack – who was upset at his inexperienced opponent’s arrogant backstage conduct – bladed Kulas with a surgical scalpel (as they had agreed) but cut too deep and severed two arteries in his forehead, causing blood to immediately spray from Kulas’s head and eventually leave him lying unconscious in a pool of his own blood.

The mauling almost caused the cancellation of ECW’s first pay-per-view, Barely Legal, while New Jack faced criminal charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, as well as a civil lawsuit from the Kulas family. The ECW wrestler was acquitted in both cases as Kulas asked to be bladed. 

New Jack consistently maintained that he felt no remorse over the situation. Kulas, meanwhile, passed away in May of 2002, at the age of just 22, due to complications from gastric bypass surgery.