Eric: Can you tell my readers a little bit about yourself and a little bit about the book?
John: I've been a long-time fan of wrestling for about 15 years. I've written many articles over the last 14 years or so for various magazines fanzines, web sites and a couple of years working for PowerSlam, the only commercially produced newsstand magazine in Britain about wrestling. Earlier this year, I wrote Turning the Tables, which is the only published book about the history, both on screen and behind the scenes, of ECW.
Eric: Is that book, available everywhere or just on your web site?
John: It's available online, mainly through all the major online retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, Borders.com, and so on. It’s starting to show up in a few stores, particularly the areas where ECW was strongest; Philadelphia, Buffalo places like that. Online is the best place to go.
Eric: I was just wondering, as a fan of ECW, what was your favorite moment in the history of the company?
John: Probably two favorite moments. One had to be Barely Legal. Just because it was the holy grail for ECW the company. It was the equivalent of a wrestler winning the world title for the first time. After being built up to for years and years, they finally arrived on the big stage doing something, which seemed completely impossible considering that building. Running a PPV there was a sight I never imagined could have happened.
Another moment, speaking personally as a fan, was when I went to an ECW convention. At the question and answer session The Pitfalls and Shane Douglas both there. They both talked about the incident in the previous show, where Pitbull 1 had been injured by Shane Douglas. Douglas was talking about how he obviously didn't mean to injure him and it was an accident. They were making the best of it and while he was on screen, he had to act that he'll to try to get people to hate him in a way that contrasted to real life. The Pitbulls were talking about how they knew it wasn't Shane's fault. But it was something they had to do business with whatever tension. All these smart fans, Internet fans from around the world had been told all of this. I went to show two hours later with Pitbull 2 challenging Shane Douglas for the TV title, and it was the most passionate response I had ever seen in a live show. People were somewhere between suspending disbelief, and actually genuinely feeling and desperately wanting Pitbull 2 to win the title and take it away from Shane Douglas. It was just an amazing moment, and it shows how the myths pushed out by some people that ECW was just about appealing to the smart fan, destroying kayfabe, getting rid of faces and heels, and it was just for bloodthirsty people really didn't stand up. In some ways it was as though ECW was the last of the old-style territories, where the fans were treated with respect by the promoters. The fans knew how the business worked yet they still got a product that made sense and had logic as shown by moments like that.
Eric: Why do you think that ECW, despite never drawing a crowd of more than 10,000 people and being around for little less than a decade, why is it held in such reverence as opposed to the a AWA and parts of the NWA or WCW?
John: ECW was the first time that a promotion had actually had such a relationship with its fans. People were fans of the promotion more than the wrestlers in ECW. The big feud was always ECW, the plucky young heroic babyface, against the wrestling establishment who were the heels. They had to overcome all the struggles and really got the fans behind it. And supporting ECW, rather than just a wrestler, is something lots of promotions have tried, but never in such a groundbreaking way.
Eric: Was ECW programming available in London?
John: We got the television in around 1988 for about six months and that was a couple of years old. But back from 1994, The Night the Line was Crossed was very popular on the tape trading underground scene. The Night the Line was Crossed was the biggest selling tape and the one everyone had. It actually won the PowerSlam show of the year even though it has never been commercially released in this country, which is quite an amazing story.
