Why Shane Douglas Will Always Be ECW's Franchise

(Are YOU going to tell him he's not?)

Welp, I knocked off a little early today, hooked up with my buddy Steve, hooked up with BatBong, and now we're watching ECW's first-ever PPV, Barely Legal on WWE Network. I don't know how many times I've seen it & it's still great. I loved that ECW got nationwide exposure with TNN (Yeah, I know...) & were able to sell out bigger venues, but the feel of the PPVs were much different on the road than they were in ECW country. Road fans gave it their best, but nothing was better than the quickness & spontaneity of the (pun probably intended) hardcore ECW fans.

Real quick, if you don't watch wrestling stoned, I really have to shake my head, bro. You really don't know what you're missing. Taz v. Sabu is on right now & the first "ECW!" chant went up & when I'm high, it takes on such a weird vibe. It's like deja vu mixed with Saturday morning cartoons. I dunno. I'm high.

Anyway, just finished watching Shane Douglas take on Pitbull Anthony (Rassle In Peace) after breaking Pitbull Gary's neck, and there was a swerve with Rick Rude & Brian Lee & Douglas got his comeuppance. It was a solid match. Not his best, but far from his worst. Everything's unfolding & the crowd is rooting against Douglas passionately, as they have subliminally been instructed to, and I'm thinking of what "The Franchise" really means.

Any promo Douglas ever cut as an ECW wrestler was fucking brilliant. I'm not saying that as a kiss-ass mark (well, a little, I guess), I'm saying that as someone who has a lot of public speaking experience & has worked as a broadcaster/journalist for 30 years & understands people and the psychology of crowds. Douglas reached into these people & pulled something out, something substantial. The night he threw down the NWA belt (something even I heard about while living in Spain & not having watched wrestling in three years; it was a big fucking deal), he cut a promo that still gives me chills, especially now having heard him provide the backstory about his dad.

The crowd lapped it up like dehydrated puppies.

"Face Shane" has always been over for the same reason ECW still has rabid fans: because first & foremost, he respected the fans & didn't treat them like idiots. He didn't talk down to the fans like they were six & still sleeping with their Hulk Hogan pillows; he talked to them the way they talked to others. Bluntly. Directly. Honestly.

And that's why "Heel Shane" is even more over. He built that equity on the fact the fans knew he was a real shooter. So when Douglas went rogue, his promos fucking KILLED. Every time. And no matter if he left for Monday nights, he was still given the respect he had earned as the first ECW champion.

Because he's The Franchise.

(And behind every Franchise is a Head Cheerleader. Oof. #IHaveToTakeCareOfSomething)

Paul E. was the brains, and Tommy Dreamer was the soul, and that's a fact. Those two went down with the ship and are the two most recognized figures. In my opinion. And what do I know, I'm just a fan. And a stoned one at that. Watching a 21-year-old PPV with my stuffed bear, Steve. My opinion is suspect. But my point is that with Sandman being the spirit of ECW; the Dudleys as its sense of extreme violence; and Raven, its dark side; Shane is The Franchise and that means something.

Shane was the ECW wrestler with the mainstream look. The fact WWF & WCW couldn't do anything with him shows how ridiculous they were (and based on what they're trying to do with Becky Lynch, still are). Fuck, if Shane had been in WWF instead of Austin & they let Shane be Shane the way they let Austin be Austin? Fucking PLEASE. He'd be a goddamned legend. I mean, MORE of a goddamned legend. You know what I mean.

It was that mainstream look that gave his words weight. This guy had been around. He'd been tabbed for NWA gold. He'd been a WWF champ. But he was a shooter, and the newly-evolving internet message boards proved that out.

(I'm sorry, we're doing the intros for the Barely Legal Three-Way Dance to see who will fight Raven & I always get a little wet-eyed when Terry Funk comes to the ring. Sorry again.)

More importantly, he went toe-to-toe with the best & usually whipped their asses. He could go hardcore, he could bleed, he could be athletic, he could & fucking DID carry that company on his back during those first couple years, the years that laid the foundation for the most influential wrestling company since WWF put the belt on Hogan. That's still a factual statement. You show me a wrestling federation out there right now that isn't basing their foundation on what ECW did. I'll wait.

So when Douglas is dismissed as a guy who, yes, was a key figure in ECW's history & success, but other wrestlers deserve more recognition, I ask who? Taz? I think we all knew Taz would leave, and that's no disrespect to him. People have families. I get it. Not Tommy either. Tommy had a different role to play within the company.

Douglas is like Batman in The Dark Knight. Maybe Shane Douglas wasn't the wrestler fans felt they deserved. But he was the one they needed.

Because he's The fucking Franchise.

(Yeah, even this one. He's the fucking Franchise, too, by God.)

New Jack, Sabu Say Hardcore Things; Hardcore Fans Pissed

(SPOILER Alert: These two men said something mean about a dead person. I know, right?)

Sunday, July 29, 2018, was a shitty day to be a wrestling fan. For a lot of reasons. Most of us woke to the news we lost WWE Hall of Famer Nikolai Volkoff, legit badass Brickhouse Brown, and the former Grandmaster Sexay and son of WWE HOFer & Announcer Jerry "The King" Lawler, Brian Christopher. In addition to styles & eras, the three deaths ran the gamut as well from natural causes to cancer to, in Christopher's case, suicide in a jail cell.

While I know Brown by name & rep, I've not seen a ton of his work, but I don't think I ever heard a bad thing about him. And Volkoff was as much a part of my childhood as Santa Claus. He & the Iron Sheik (who wrote some incredibly-touching tweets about his former tag-team partner) were two of the best heels in the history of professional wrestling. He had the best gimmick of the 80s because no matter how goofy it sounded, when he was in the ring singing the Russian Anthem, you were PISSED.

Christopher is a different deal. A WWF Attitude mainstay with Scotty 2 Hotty as Grandmaster Sexay forming the team Too Cool. It was kinda goofy, a shot at the club kids and whatnot, but he was a strong in-ring performer. Oddly, the angle got even better with the addition of Rikishi. Not gonna lie; I would give a little pop watching RAW at home when they finished a match with their dance. Christopher was also given a solid push for the new WWF Cruiserweight Division (or whatever they called it), losing in 1997 to Taka in the Cruiserweight tournament finals. I literally just watched that match last week on WWE Network & found it hysterical watching JR bust Lawler's chops about "your boy."

I had read he had been arrested for DUI July 7 & didn't think anything about it. I figured he posted bail & went home. So reading the drama from Sunday was gut-wrenching. I don't care if you didn't like Lawler as a wrestler or don't like him as an announcer, I can't imagine getting that phone call. I pray nightly to a God I'm not sure I believe in anymore that I don't get that call.

(Sabu, however, feels differently...)

Now, I say all this as a fan. Period. I've worked in media my entire life but I haven't covered wrestling on anything even resembling a regular basis. I worked as a producer for a sports-talk radio station in St. Louis and as such, pre-interviewed some wrestlers coming on our shows (as a newspaper reporter, I also did a story on Christian during his TNA run in 2006 when they did a PPV in St. Louis. He & Christy Hemme were incredibly nice). One of those wrestlers I talked to was Jerry Lawler. He was promoting RAW coming to St. Louis & our host loves sports history, so the Lawler vs. Kaufman story was told to much hilarity. My brief conversation with Lawler was pleasant. He asked if I was a fan & I said yes & he said "Good, I won't have to dumb this down for you!"

That was a single phone call. The guy could be the biggest dickhead in the world & I wouldn't know it. Now, apparently, Sabu had some pretty memorable run-ins with young Lawler back in their USWA days. It doesn't take much research to find that BC struggled with relationships with colleagues at times. But that's Sabu. No one else is going to disrespect a dead wrestler like that, right?

(...aaaaaand we have a new leader in the clubhouse.)

Sabu's rants were, for whatever reason, kept pretty low key. There wasn't a lot being said about it. When New Jack jumped online, that shit changed with a quickness. Whereas Sabu was making hit & run comments & responding to individual fans re: BC, New Jack just flat out said what he was thinking, no ambiguity at all.

Their reasoning is this: Sabu didn't like how BC treated him in the old days. New Jack said BC was an unrepentant racist. On any given day, these two saying these things wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Saying them the day BC was found hanging from a jail cell...just a touch different.

Also, using New Jack's racism rant, another Twitter follower posited the question: Why is Hogan getting a pass for definitively saying incredibly racist shit while New Jack is getting heat for pointing out that both BC and The King have said/done racist things? The obvious answer is, well, one of them is dead & can't defend themselves.

Here's the bigger theme behind this whole story, though: Why the fuck are we shocked that Sabu & New Jack, two of the most legit extreme athletes in the history of pro wrestling, said shocking things online? This pair, more than probably anyone, took ECW to the extreme more times than fucking ANYone (Google "Mass Transit ECW"...I'll wait). They were held up as wrestlers who were hardcore, both in & out of the ring, in both word & deed.

Let me say I absolutely don't agree with what they said. At all. It's incredibly disrespectful, regardless of your personal issues with them. But here's the problem, kids. Sometimes, when "extreme" people do "extreme" things, we don't always agree with them because we don't have a real gist of what REAL extreme really is. When you idolize someone for being hardcore, and then bail on them when they actually do something hardcore kinda makes you a hypocrite. Or fucking stupid.

When it comes to your heroes, be careful what you ask for. Sometimes, you get it.