“That Was Extreme” with The Blue Meanie, Joel Gertner, and Josh Shernoff debuted this week on AdFreeShows.com. The show will include tons of behind-the-scenes stories from ECW and this week’s show covers ECW’s first pay-per-view, Barely Legal.
Here are some transcribed highlights and scroll down to watch/listen to the entire podcast.
Blue Meanie made an interesting observation about the Mass Transit incident in ECW: “The whole irony about Mass Transit was every New England show, Boston area show, Killer Kowalski would come to those shows and bring his students. One time there was a young China who was a student there watching the pre-show workouts. So this kid, Mass Transit shows up and says he’s a student of Killer Kowalski and he trained with Killer Kowalski. This is the one show Killer did not show up at. So the one time Killer Kowalski doesn’t show up, this kid shows up and says he was trained by Killer Kowalski. If Killer Kowalski had been there, he could have said this is bull s**t and things could have been averted.”
Joel Gertner on the rumor if the power went out right after the PPV ended: “There are urban legends, still, that we had enough juice for exactly the amount of time we were on the air and that right as we went off the air, we were going off the air, that the transformer blew and the power went out. I’ve heard so many stories about so many different things revolving around either the power or the transmission feed or the audio that it’s like a movie. We just, by the skin of our teeth, got that show up and running.”
Gertner talked about rumors he heard about saving ECW before they went out of business: “Later on in ECW, maybe towards the very end to try to save it, you want to talk about urban legend, some of us are hearing that maybe there is talk about ECW becoming a reality show similar to what they have now with Miz & Mrs. or Total Divas or Total Bellas where it seemed like maybe what ECW might become is half what it already was, an in-ring episodic wrestling show like the rest, and the other half would be the boys riding with each other to the towns, and in town, and just show how crazy the Extreme Wrestling life was like. I think the reason why we were given, if it is true, that we were being given serious consideration for the reality format towards the end, I think the reason for that is our company and our troupe and our roster, we had the kind of family and we had the kind of morale and bond that it would have made for riveting, compelling television to see these guys riding to the towns and through the towns as family and then going in the ring and killing each other.”
Blue Meanie talked about Joey Styles’ reaction after the Barely Legal PPV: “Once that PPV ended, my main memory was watching Joey Styles standing in the middle of the locker room full of other performers and just breaking down and weep, openly weep. He just stood there and took off his glasses, started rubbing his eyes and started crying. Guys went over and we all put our arms around him. The PPV, the production company, didn’t want him working by himself and Paul fought him and said, hey, he’s our guy. He’s going to do the play by play. With the exception of Tommy coming out for the main event, he called a nationally syndicated PPV by himself. That was the main memory of the show after all was said and done was the emotion of Joey Styles breaking down in tears in the locker room.”
Click below to check out the first episode of “That Was Extreme.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit “That Was Extreme” podcast with The Blue Meanie, Joel Gertner, and Josh Shernoff “ with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
