As Paul Heyman said in his WWE Hall of Fame speech, the spirit of Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) lives on through today’s generation of performers. Despite closing its doors in 2001, fans still have an affinity for the brand and its legacy.
Bully Ray made his name within the Philadelphia-based promotion, and to at the present time, claims he still has people coming as much as him asking if ECW will ever be brought back. Fans will remember the short-lived, WWE-produced ECW reboot within the mid 2000s. And people memories, save CM Punk’s predominant roster debut, will not be fond to say the least.
Ray is a frequent co-host of “Busted Open Radio,” where he discussed the subject of probably reviving his former promotion.
“If someone got here to me, and offered me an ungodly sum of money, and said, hey let’s revive ECW, the reply could be no. It’s unattainable to revive it, you may’t do it again. Right guys, right time, right city, right environment, you may’t recreate that, it’s organic, it just happens. It’s like an F5 tornado. And an F5 tornado needs very specific conditions in mother nature to occur.”
The WWE Hall of Famer would go on to attempt to define the spirit of ECW.
“It wasn’t necessarily about what happened in the course of the ring. It was concerning the fight against the Big 2 [WWE and WCW]. We literally modified pro wrestling, and once I say we, I mean all of us, the entire company, as a unit, as a team.”
It’s actually not the primary time Bully Ray has waxed poetic about ECW. He also recently called it “The Real Revolution,” when fans began attributing that phrase to the rise of AEW.
In case you use any quotes from this text, please credit the “Busted Open Radio” podcast and supply a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for transcription.