Many people aren’t fond of WWE’s version of ECW.
When WWE revived ECW through their One Night Stand pay-per-views, both shows were a fun blast from the past that provided good to great wrestling. So when the company announced the return of ECW, many fans were excited about it's potential.
Unfortunately, the excitement disappeared once Paul Heyman was fired due to the December to Dismember pay-per-view, a show that’s still deemed as the worst ppv of all time. Fans loathed WWE-ECW from that point on. So did some of the wrestlers. One of those wrestlers happens to be the Sandman, who made his return for the rebooted version of ECW, but didn’t stay within the company long because he was having such a miserable time there.
Speaking with his fellow ECW brother Rob Van Dam on the 1 Of A Kind podcast, Sandman voiced his frustration working under the WWE umbrella, and he did not hold back on his disdain for the company at the time.
“I assume this is like right after SummerSlam because right before SummerSlam, Johnny [Laurinaitis] calls me into his office and he goes, ‘You can’t drink the beer anymore,’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ And I’m pissed. I’m like, ‘Johnny, how about you give me my release? He’s like, ‘Hak, wait.’ And I got two raises or at least one raise out of them by asking for my release, but it was up to like $125 to $150,000, but then I find out I gotta stop drinking. Next thing I know, Austin’s in the f***ing main event for SummerSlam.
So they’re taking the beer away from me so I can’t do it on my entrance. I was freaking pissed. I was hot. And I hated it there, dude. I had no friends. It was soul sucking. It honestly was soul sucking to me. I hated to get on a plane. I hated to go there. I hated to be in the locker room. I couldn’t wait to get out of the f***ing building.
Everybody goes on TV and they want to get as much time as they can. They had to tell me to stop going home early. I was going in there and giving him five minutes to go. And then finally … Kevin Dunn says down to maybe [Mike Chioda] – he goes, ‘Dunn says DO NOT go home early.’ I went home early every single match.”
Check out the full podcast where they talk about him learning from Jerry Lawler, getting Metallica for his ECW theme, and so much more regarding his long career.