After ECW closed its doors in 2001, a lot of the corporate’s top stars would eventually wind up in WWE. Rob Van Dam, Tommy Dreamer, and naturally, the mastermind behind the complete operation, Paul Heyman, all ended up in WWE as Heyman would turn into the lead author of “WWE SmackDown” in 2002, and it was here where he was in a position to do a number of favors for some old friends.
One in every of those old friends was Nunzio, who wrestled in ECW as Little Guido and eventually became the WWE Cruiserweight Champion. He was a recent guest on the “Developmentally Speaking” podcast where he revealed that without Heyman, he probably would not have gotten a job in WWE.
“Paul put a great word in for me and was pushing to bring me in, and so they were going to begin doing the cruiserweight thing too,” Nunzio said. “So once I first began going there, I did dark matches for a few months slightly below Little Guido. Like I used to be just going on the market and so they weren’t putting me on TV. I used to be in any respect the matches and so they were using me loads in Recent York and stuff because I did the ECW thing. So I had, you understand, I had the ECW [chants] that pops 20,000 but you understand I still–regardless that I wasn’t on TV, but they were using me on all the home shows you understand? Just to make use of me, keep me working…I do not know in the event that they had an idea, but you understand, impulsively they got here to me with the FBI thing.”
Nunzio revealed that through the WWE’s version of the FBI stable that originated in ECW, he was in a position to mix it up with the likes of The Undertaker, Kurt Angle, and Brock Lesnar, and was very grateful when the corporate decided to present him the WWE Cruiserweight Championship in 2005.
Please credit “Developmentally Speaking” when using quotes from this text, and provides a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.