Paul Heyman Badly Wanted The Rock For ECW, But Vince McMahon Wouldn't Budge

Tommy Dreamer has been a producer of pro wrestling all the way back to his ECW days with Paul Heyman, and the "Innovator Of Violence" has revealed that those days once had the possibility of being "electrifying."

It was Dreamer and co-host Dave LaGreca steering the ship on Friday's edition of "Busted Open Radio," and the major topic of discussion was how talent has been utilized and sometimes under-utilized throughout the course of the 1990s into the 2000s. Dreamer laid out a timeline of his backstage work starting with ECW and eventually into WWE, and recalled when ECW initially made the alliance with WWE back in 1996 as a channel to help cultivate some of the unsung talent laying somewhat dormant on the WWE roster. Dreamer mentioned how they happened to take advantage of names like Doug Furnace, Phil Lafon, and perhaps most memorably, Al Snow. However, there was one name in the mix that Heyman immediately wanted to build, courtesy of Vince McMahon.

"Real, real cool revolutionary stuff," Dreamer said, referring to the ECW and WWE relationship. "I remember Paul [Heyman] being like, 'Give me that guy.' That guy was The Rock. They were doing nothing with him. Paul saw something with him, even back then, and Vince wouldn't let him go. Would that have been awesome to have The Rock under the ECW Original banner? Yes, but it didn't happen."

Dreamer did say that Rock was a big ECW fan too, but at that time, WWE didn't see it in "The People's Champion." Thankfully for everyone involved (except, of course, ECW) they eventually came to their senses.