Former ECW Star On Why He Believes WWE “Isn’t Doing So Well At The Moment”
Former ECW TV and Tag Team Champion Gary Wolfe, a.k.a. Pitbull #1, was on a recent episode of The Wrestling Inc. Daily. In part two of their conversation, Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman asked Wolfe what it was like to meet Paul Heyman for the first time.
"It was pretty cool," Wolfe stated. "They told me to come in on a Friday, so I met him Friday. He says, 'Saturday night, come to the arena. We're gonna make you wrestle.' I actually came back from Japan. I had to get knee surgery. All I did was rehab and lift weights. By the time I went to ECW, I was freaking huge again, just blew right back up, and then every week, he would see me, and I'm getting bigger, and I'm getting bigger and I'm getting bigger.
"I remember the one night he came up to me, and he's like, 'Look, this is the last time I'm going to ask you to do me a favor.' And I was like, 'Okay, whatever. I'm working.' He's like, 'I want you to work Hawk, and then I got some plans for you.' I'm like, 'Okay.' I wasn't expecting much. As long as I had a job, I was happy because I really was just waiting for my partner to get back from Germany so then we can be a tag team again. That's really what I was doing, killing time. Come to find out he wanted to put the television title on me."
Wolfe would defeat JT Smith on an episode of Hardcore TV for the ECW TV Title. Wolfe recalled that part of his career.
"What happened was, at the time, I was the biggest cat in the in the locker room,. I'm not lying," Wolfe prefaced. "I may be short, but I was wide and thick. I was like 230, and he said, 'I want to put the television title on you. My promos, I could back that up. I could have a TV title because I could talk the talk."
Wolfe would later lose the title to Mikey Whipwreck on Hardcore TV. Wolfe discussed his thoughts on Heyman and noted why WWE has not been "doing so well" when discussing Heyman.
"Honestly, he's a genius when it comes to wrestling," Wolfe said. "Look at how he does angles. Me and Shane Douglas' angle was over a year and a half. Vince used to do that, and they stopped doing it. I think that's why they're not doing so well at the moment. The angle is the hook and the anchor of your show."
Wolfe explained his point further. He pointed out an observation he saw while watching WWE.
"FOX wants them to be more edgy, like ECW, more extreme, but they're not doing it. All they're doing is cursing a little bit here and there now, if you noticed," Wolfe pointed out. "That's really what they're doing. To them, they think that's edgy, cursing. I was watching a match, and one of the guys got bled by accident, and he's wiping it off.
"The referees telling him, 'Wipe the blood off. You can't have blood on TV.' I don't understand what they're doing. The Attitude Era saved WWF, and they wouldn't have had the Attitude Era if it wasn't for ECW because One Night Stand is when they saw this is the Attitude Era of wrestling right here."
Gary hosts the Barb Wire Bite podcast. Click HERE to subscribe and get every episode as it's released.
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