Paul Heyman Names The ECW Stars He Thinks Should Be In The WWE Hall Of Fame

WWE

Before Paul Heyman was the special council to the Tribal Chief, and even before he was the advocate for the Beast Incarnate, Heyman ran a little promotion called Extreme Championship Wrestling. You may have heard of it.

The influence of ECW is still felt today, with promotions such as GCW and CZW. Heyman recently appeared on the Battleground Podcast to discuss the influence of his extreme promotion.

He said:

“I don’t think you should limit (ECW influence) to CZW and everybody else, you should incorporate the Monday Night Wars and even modern-day WWE and certainly AEW, which seems to follow the ECW format with a WCW budget, which is what their owner said was going to be their concept over a year ago. The extreme influence on this industry is exactly what we were shooting for back in the 1990s and into the new millennium. We were the disrupters in the industry and what was needed for the industry to propel itself into the billion dollar global conglomerate that it is today and we take full credit for it because we earned that credit because ECW was indeed the revolution and evolution that the entire industry needed,”

Arguably ECW’s most popular star of all-time was Rob Van Dam, who was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame during the 2021 ceremony. Heyman was asked about what other ECW legends he believes deserve that honor.

He replied:

“Sabu definitely belongs in the WWE Hall of Fame because the concepts that Sabu was introducing were 20 years ahead of its time. I don’t just mean the breaking of the tables. The manner in which he performed in the ring was so far ahead of its time that he never got the credit he deserved. Joey Styles was a very progressive announcer that no one understood just how valuable he was to the ECW brand. Here you had these criminals and gangsters and bar room brawlers and misfits, yet you also had these supreme, elite, exquisite technicians that came over from Japan or Mexico, we scoured the world for the greatest talent and no American announcer had called the moves for what they were. Joey Styles did. He ushered out the era of ‘that looks great, here’s a replay and was calling the moves by the names associated with the moves. He was different because he did his job solo for so many years. Joey Styles, absolutely. There are a number of characters and personas that came alive in ECW that belong in any legitimate Hall of Fame. ECW itself belongs in the Hall of Fame.”

ECW closed it’s doors in 2001, with Heyman becoming a part of the WWE landscape. Heyman will be in the corner of Universal Champion Roman Reigns in the main event of WrestleMania 38 Sunday against his former client, WWE Champion Brock Lesnar in a winner take all title unification match.

transcription via Fightful

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• ecw
• hall of fame
• paul heyman

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