• Jim Ross On How Much Money Vince McMahon Paid Paul Heyman Every Week To Keep ECW Alive
On an episode of ‘Grilling JR’ podcast, Jim Ross revealed how much money he thinks Vince McMahon was paying Paul Heyman (then known on TV as ECW promoter Paul E. Dangerously) to keep Extreme Championship Wrestling alive.
So far, we have only heard about the $1,000 per week to compensate for the sadly missed sponsoring money, after 2 Cold Scorpio left ECW and joined the World Wrestling Federation as Flash Funk.
Here’s what the 2007 WWE Hall of Famer had to say:
“We knew the dire straits that unfortunately Paul was in financially and we figured the logical conclusion in his case was bankruptcy.
At that point in time, we were prepared to buy the assets, which included the library in bankruptcy court.
We had been helping Paul, I think we paid Paul $50,000 a month, I can’t remember, I don’t remember. That $50,000 a month number sticks out, but I may be wrong on that too.
In any event, we were helping him. He was getting a regular cheque to try to keep his doors open longer so that if he did indeed have a legitimate buyer, he had more time to negotiate a deal. Vince was very, very kind to Paul in that part.
It would’ve been very easy to put him out of business, all of his top talent wanted to leave because I hired most of them.
We got everybody we wanted and they were calling me, I wasn’t soliciting them, they were calling me because at Vince’s insistence we’re not going to go out of our way to do anything harmful to ECW.
We wanted to buy the library at some point because we had the goal to do this network.
Paying Paul was like moving around the deck chairs in the Titanic, you kind of knew it was going down, so you just tried to stop the bleeding as best you can and get in line for some of those talents, they did have some really good talent, I think we did a nice job of hiring the best that they had.
Vince recognized talent, for any of us to try to argue the point that Paul Heyman didn’t have significant talent from a cerebral standpoint would be ridiculous.
He did a lot with the little engine that could, Paul did a phenomenal job motivating. Paul did a good job of us vs. the world mentality. We knew what we wanted to get out of ECW, the library #1, and select talents #2.
All of that worked out, we knew we could do better if we stayed closer to Paul and showed him our loyalty.
If the only person we got out of that deal was Paul Heyman and no talent, we’d win because he’s a brilliant TV writer and a great creative guy, one of the smartest I’ve ever been around.
I love the loyalty that a lot of those ECW cats have over their brand even though they had some challenging times making ends meet with the company. Heyman was the leader of that and unique motivator and we liked that trait.
It was obvious he was very creative, I knew that since I put him on his first announcing job on national TV in the late 80s.
It was a plan, we knew what we wanted from ECW and at the end of the day we got everything we wanted from ECW.
Vince’s positivity had a motive and it worked out.
The library had value knowing where we were going, you’re not buying contracts, you’re buying the library. That’s tangible, you can touch it, you can feel it.
Vince didn’t have the product knowledge at that time on the positives and negatives of the talent because he did not watch the show.
He didn’t know Joey Styles did commentary solo. The library in general is what we had our eye on.”
WATCH: Former WWE Diva Layla Shakes Her Knockers:
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• ON THIS DAY IN WWF HISTORY (March 3, 1997) – WWF Monday Night RAW
On this day in 1997, the World Wrestling Federation aired another episode of their weekly TV show ‘WWF Monday Night RAW’.
It was broadcasted from the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin, Germany, Europe and featured matches, interviews & storyline segments on the road to the ‘WWF WrestleMania 13’ PPV.
Here’s the match-card:
1. Triple H vs. Bret Hart
2. Rocky Maivia vs. Vader
3. The Sultan vs. Flask Funk
4. Sid Vicious vs. Mankind
5. European Title: Davey Boy Smith vs. Owen Hart
