Arena recap filed by Dave Scherer of pwinsider.com on October 28, 1995:
On this night, ECW totally dropped the ball.
The singularly most stupid series of events in wrestling history occurred. Raven and Cactus pulled out a chair that had towels affixed to it somehow. These towels were soaked in lighter fluid or some other flammable liquid and they used the branding iron to ignite the whole mess. As the flames rose off of the chair, the sickening feeling in my stomach worsened. Cactus winds up and hits Dreamer with the chair, and he catches on fire. The fans were stunned, and did not even pop. I said into my recorder, “Death must be the next bump.”
Cactus tries to pick up the chair, but it is flaming almost uncontrollably. He somehow picks it up and as he winds up, the towels that are burning are coming loose, which someone should have thought of as it is pretty hard for something that is burning to stay attached to a chair. He throws the chair at Funk, who is now laying on the floor near the ring barricade, and fire goes everywhere.
Funk is literally a man ablaze. As Funk is running around ringside, fans are trying to put him out. The towels are laying on the floor burning and the crowd starts to go nuts. A few people came over with the fire extinguishers and as the shoot the towels, they actually go into the crowd making matters worse. If one person, as I was told was the plan, had suffocated the fire, it would have gone out, instead it was shot across the Arena floor.
I was told that the whole fire gimmick was thought up by Funk and Cactus, and was not known to Paul Heyman beforehand. In any event, the buck stops with Heyman and it is ultimately his responsibility.
All of this was bad enough. People were scared and nervous, and undoubtedly some of the world’s true sick sons of bitches were actually enjoying all of this. And then the stupidest of all things happened. Off went the house lights. The big finale of this was to be an angle where Raven took Dreamer up to the crows nest and hung him up there and “crucified him.” To get him up there and set it up, they needed the lights out. For about 2 minutes.
But for the love of God, at this point in the show, given the fire was going astray, had just been extinguished, and that people were startled to run for, turning off the lights for the purpose of doing a f**king angle is ludicrous and should never have happened. The lights going off caused people to head for the doors, When the lights came back on, there was Raven licking and biting the blood of the crucified Dreamer.
What Paul Heyman was thinking while all of this was going on is a mystery to me, but this was the worst judgment he could have possibly shown. A major mistake was made.
At this point, I went outside and watched the people come out, helping anyone I could. People were coughing from getting sprayed with the fire extinguishers, people were bleeding from getting hurt in the melee (one guy broke his nose and I was told another broke a leg), and some people were actually burned.
Terry Funk and his wife came out and he was taken to the hospital with second degree burns on his right arm, from his bicep to his elbow. He returned later to the hotel in pretty good spirits and was said to be doing well. Before leaving, Funk went ballistic backstage and was throwing chairs, (one of the which that went through the wall) yelling at people, and even knocked over an enormous industrial fan as the guys were running from him. He was upset about now he would miss out on work because, as one witness put it “his arm looked like raw meat.” He had just spent 3 three months applying salve from burns he received in Japan and now the process will start all over again.
Tommy Dreamer also suffered a broken nose as well as burns on his back from during the match. Cactus Jack was distraught backstage, and felt very bad for what had happened.
A lot of fans were saying they were done with ECW. People said they felt that ECW had violated their safety and were pissed off. And, in the interest of fairness, there were a group of people who were chanting “ECW” and the show ended. It was a truly unnerving experience for me that crossed the line.
And people wonder why I hate ECW and don't think much of Paul Heyman...
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October 28, 2012
This Day In Wrestling History - ECW Goes Too Far
~ Kayfabe by Kaliqo~ at 1:53 PM
Labels: ECW, Mick Foley, Paul Heyman, Raven, Terry Funk, Tommy Dreamer, Wrestling History
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