The extreme invasion happened in 1997. ECW was starting to really grow as a company and they needed a bit of a push. WWE was using ECW as somewhat of a developmental system and wants that relationship stronger. On the WWE side, only Vince McMahon and Bruce Prichard truly knew what was about to go down. On the ECW side, everyone kinda knew but no one knew the truth.
On Tommy Dreamers ‘House of Hardcore’ Podcast, he had an episode about angles that did not happen but were supposed to. In talking about his planned Summerslam tag team match that got scrapped. Tommy told a story about the original extreme invasion.
Then evil, evil politics stepped in. That is why I have a slogan for House of Hardcore. “No Politics, No B.S. Just Wrestling” because of stuff like this, and it doesn’t have to be this way. So we are doing the whole invasion and when I tell you, none of us in ECW knew Paul Heyman was in Vince’s pocket. We speculated, we thought about it, but man, we did not know.
The first time we invaded “In Your House” in Philadelphia, yes, we knew WWE knew about it. But, we didn’t think we had a working relationship. Because Paul was working all of us. So me and Sandman and Paul E. do that thing. A side bar about how the business was/ how we were. We had other ECW wrestlers in the crowd. We went and bought tickets. We snipered them in. We came in through the front doors. We had actual tickets to get us into the event, that Paul gave us, I don’t think he purchased them. But we got other wrestlers in, we had The Eliminators positioned one place, just in case a real fight went down. We had a… who else was there? Raven was there, Taz was there. WE had all these other wrestlers primed and ready. To attack and fight in case we were being set up. Think if ECW went out there to invade, and then we got our ass beat. We aren’t really the tough guys or rebels.
Tommy Dreamer on the House of Hardcore Podcast
It was a tension tension filled time. Paul is telling us one thing, I remember Raven and me talking on the side. Taz was like “It’s a shoot brother” The Eliminators were all amped up, when you get ready for a real fight, you get ready for a real fight. Paul is like “we are gonna do this and there are not a lot of people that know.” Paul was saying it was Bruce Prichard and Vince McMahon. Nothing is gonna happen, just a pull apart and all that stuff. We come in during the Savio Vega vs. Bradshaw match with Dutch Mantell in his corner. Even when Dutch and I talk about it, he knew nothing. When he went to the ring, JBL gave us a look and Dutch Mantell gave a look and JBL was hot and he gave a look like “I will kill you guys”. We are playing tough and he thinks we are intruding on his company during his match. He was pissed.
Here came Savio Vega. I asked Savio Vega about it, and Savio said right before his match, he was told to bring JBL towards the corner and pull him in and stuffs gonna go happen with The Sandman and don’t throw any punches. He was like okay. He didn’t tell JBL and he didn’t tell Dutch. Think of that, you’re wrestling with these people and you’re not telling them what’s gonna happen. When it all happens and we knew our spot. Sandman did the spit, boom, here came the WWE officials. I’ll never forget, we are pushing and shoving and Jerry Brisco, he had rage in his eyes. He wanted to murder myself, Paul E. and Sandman. I did not know Jerry Brisco, I knew of him and his amateur background. He had rage to kill in his eyes. I remember looking at Paul and being like “This guy doesn’t know what is going on.” One big security guy is like “You guys fucked up” and he is screaming at us. We are reacting cause we know we are on TV. We used to say “worked shoot” this was a worked shoot. I heard the guys in the back wanted to come out and start fighting us. There was Godwinn, Sid and Vader. They wanted to come kill us case we were invading on their show like how dare we do that.
On the most recent Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard, they talked about JBL’s career. Bruce backed up Tommy’s claims that only Vince and Bruce knew. Going as far as to say that Bruce barely wised Savio up as well, telling Savio “under no circumstances, do you throw a punch.” It was also Savio’s duty to hold JBL back from attacking the ECW wrestlers.
