Tommy Dreamer, Tony Mamaluke and Nunzio dove into their time together in ECW together.
30-year veteran Tommy Dreamer has been candid throughout the years about how the concussions he suffered early in his career impacted him as the years went on. Dreamer was a part of the original ECW from the early 90s until the organization ceased operations.
He invited former ECW World Tag Team Champions Nunzio and Tony Mamaluke onto his House Of Hardcore podcast and they discussed their respective careers on top of their time together in ECW. Dreamer shared that he suffered a total of 16 concussions with ECW and recalled getting three of those in one week. One of those nights, Dreamer ended up driving around Philadelphia on autopilot and he took himself took a location that he would consistently go to after shows.
I think I probably had about 16 concussions in my ECW career. I remember I got three in one week, and that one time I woke up in — it was after a big match and I was bleeding and then I kept saying, ‘I just need air, I just need air’ and then I remember waking up in the Wawa by the Marriott by the airport and the girl there recognized me and she was like, ‘Tommy, you okay?’ And it’s like I woke up from a dream, like I was sleeping and there was two — do you remember the killer quick shakes? There was two on the floor that I guess was just drinking out of the refrigerator and she was like, ‘Were you in a car accident? Do you need help?’ I was still in my boots. I remember back in the day, they used to put those fishnets on your head to stop the bleeding and I was missing for like three-and-a-half hours that I have no clue where I was and drove around Philadelphia and then wound up eventually where I think my brain knew after I shows I’d go to Wawa. We’d always go, me and Paul E there, get a bunch of snacks and then, you know, we’d go back to the hotel.
Tony Mamaluke went on to share how he was recruited into WCW. His roommate, fellow wrestler Jeremy Lopez sent in a tape to the late Chris Kanyon that Tony was on. Tony caught Kanyon’s eye and ended up getting a call which eventually led to him joining WCW.
According to Mamaluke, Bischoff originally wanted to bring cruiserweights in for a separate show that would appeal to children.
Because Eric Bischoff had tasked Chris Kanyon with this concept show that was going to basically be like live action Power Rangers. Everyone was gonna have an over the top gimmick, it was gonna be a separate show from WCW’s normal programming. It was a child’s show. It was gonna be geared towards a young, young audience and so he had to find all these really — all the cruiserweights, all these smaller guys and I would’ve never got the position of even being thought about but AJ Styles was up for it, he declined because the money was too low. There was a couple other guys, Jimmy Yang was hired in that crew and so they were looking for wrestlers and [Dean] Malenko had reached out to one of my roommates Jeremy Lopez and said, ‘Send Chris Kanyon a tape.’ So he sent him a tape and I was on Jeremy’s highlight reel and he said, ‘Well I wanna talk to that guy.’ So, randomly I just get a call from Chris Kanyon out of the blue saying, ‘Hey, we were thinking about maybe hiring you for WCW.’
Tommy Dreamer is a member of the IMPACT Wrestling creative team and still wrestles for the company. Dreamer was a part of the recent Homecoming tournament and he and Rachael Ellering made it to the semi-finals. POST Wrestling’s Homecoming recap article can be found here.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the House Of Hardcore podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
