The Rise & Fall of ECW2004

Tommy Dreamer:
Around that time, Michael Fay was convicted of a crime in Singapore. And it was a big deal here in the United States; he was gonna get caned, and how could America let someone get caned. We had the Sandman, who walked around and he was drinking beer and smoking cigarettes coming to the ring. In the early stages of ECW, I was labeled a pretty boy, and Paul came up with the idea of a Singapore cane match. And the loser of the match, uh, had to get caned. And I lost. The first time he hit me, boom, I went down; the place cheered. Second time, he hit me, the place cheered again. The third time, he hit me so hard, they could start seeing my back start to bleed. I remember the first couple of shots, they hurt like hell. And then after that, adrenaline kicks in. No matter how much I hurt and really wanted to stay down, there was nothing that would have made me. I remember fans telling me to stay down. I remember two girls crying, just telling me to stay down. People I... I didn't know. I just kept getting up and getting up. It-it was brutal. And ECW preyed on human emotion with a lot of angles. Paul made that "Rocky"-type of story. I remember facing off with the Sandman after that, and his lip was quivering, 'cause it was so emotional, and he was like "Oh, my God", you know, "We're living this great moment right now." That was a turning point in my career, but it was also a turning point in ECW, where it was a form of redemption to violence forming, and to the fans. It's the best drug in the world, that rush from the fans. And it's amazing. And that's... that's what always kept me going. Pretty much the fans.

Paul Heyman:
We did a lot of things with the Sandman and Tommy Dreamer that-that broke a lot of taboos. We did the thing where Tommy Dreamer had a cane match with the Sandman, and Dreamer knocked the cigarette in the Sandman's eye and then caned Sandman in the other eye, and Sandman was blind. And-and we tore down the dressing room wall, and you saw both the good guys and the bad guys co-mingling over this hurt wrestler. And Tommy Dreamer saying "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt him." Which was *really* taboo back then. And then the Sandman, to his credit, stayed at home for a month. So that nobody saw him around town. So that you didn't say "Yeah, they're doing this thing, with the Sandman blind." He stayed at home. He never left his house, he never answered his door. His wife answered the door. It was unheard of back then for somebody to-to stick to the storyline to this degree.