Today The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling has the honor of sitting with both the “Godfather” of wrestling journalism Bill Apter and the colorful and always delightful member of the bWo, Brian Heffron aka The Blue Meanie. First up is Bill Apter to discuss his book “Is Wrestling Fixed?.. I Didn’t Know It Was Broken” and to tell stories of a simpler time in professional wrestling and discussing everything from is kayfabe dead to his highly publicized theory on the “Benoit murders”. Additionally John and Chad chat with the always comical and very insightful, Brian Heffron who discusses how ECW pulled off some amazing ahead of it’s time production on a “shoe-string” budget and how ECW continues to live on because of the passion of the fans.
Full Episode Download Link:
http://tmptow.podoma…T21_00_00-07_00
Blue Meanie Talks His Job Squad Role in WWF & Playing Bluedust:
Approaching the twenty year anniversary of the bWo:
Me, Nova and Stevie were just talking about that at Chikara and were like “can you believe this”? It’s just insane. When I happened to wrestle JBL on Smackdown in 2005 we were sitting in JBL’s limo about to come out and Nova just quipped and said that it’s like thirteen years later and the bWo is still around and the nWo is not. It’s a little bit of a funny thing between the three of us but he had a good point.
How did the bWo get so over with the ECW fans:
Todd (Gordon) and Paul (Heyman) saw the crowd reactions and I think they just saw dollar signs and realized they could make t-shirts. The crowd just took to it. The ECW crowd is kind of like A Night at the Apollo where you go out there and the crowd could make you or they could kill you. If they don’t like you, you will know in about five seconds. I was fortunate that that rabid ECW crowd took to us and I think that is because we weren’t trying to be like everybody else on the card. Stevie is super talented, Nova is super talented and I did the comedy stuff and I think we all brought a different element onto the show, we were a little bit light hearted.
Where does he draw the comedic elements from in the Blue Meanie:
My two loves growing up were wrestling and comedy. I loved Ricky Steamboat and I loved George Carlin. A lot of my facial mannerisms are an inspiration from George Carlin when he would overly sell a face.
Filming the infamous Christmas in Times Square vignette:
There’s this video going around where this guy made a hip hop video on like a $396 budget or something like that and they are showing how he put it all together and I’m thinking, I did that in ECW. In the movie business they call it “run and gun” where you go and film and leave to get around permits. The Santa Claus wasn’t a wrestler, he was just a street performer. We walked around all day just filming stuff and saying what should we do and this guy taps us on the shoulder wearing a Santa suit with a Spanish accent and said that he wanted to be on TV and the funny thing is about that Stevie-kick. That was second one he gave him. He did the Nestea-plunge on the concrete and we were selling it like is he getting up?
Being a part of recent WWE Network projects and ECW DVD releases:
I knew WWE was coming to town for Smackdown in October 2014 and I hadn’t been backstage in about ten years and I’ve got friends that still work there and I did the right thing and I got permission to stop by and I saw JBL. Even though we had our beef back in the day we are cool now and he included me on his web show. After, I was talking to a producer and said you guys have the network and you have these countdown shows so if you need somebody to talk about ECW, so I gave him my card. They called me the next afternoon and said they were doing an ECW DVD and it created another opportunity.
