ECW icon Tommy Dreamer is a man who isn’t afraid to tell you his opinion or what’s on his mind, like why he loves Roman Reigns or why he thinks Paul Heyman is a modern-day Shakespeare. He’s also keeping busy, as he runs the House of Hardcore promotion and helps Katie Nolan critique stupid football fans in between showing up half-nude on episodes of Edge and Christian’s WWE Network show.
But his latest bon mot is possibly his finest “WTF” to date. In an interview with the podcast The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling, Tommy Dreamer waxed analytical on how ECW in many ways (in his opinion) influenced the smash hit television show and cultural phenomenon The Walking Dead.
“I’m totally crazy, but I have — and I’m going to post it one day on my Facebook page — I have a huge analysis of how ECW was a precursor to The Walking Dead. People will talk about the Walking Dead television show for years because it is so good and they did a lot of things that we did with shock-value and amazing long story-lines and keeping every character pure to itself and when who were the bad guys and who were the good guys? At times we split it where you didn’t see stuff coming and I can relate that to when the whole season they are looking for that little girl and she wound up being in the barn as a zombie and I sat there watching it and cried.
“If you think about that, psychology-wise, they turned the biggest bad guy babyface. They turned the zombies babyface and stuff like that was so ground breaking and that is why ECW will be forever revered no matter what and even though we are still and I want to say WWE’s red headed step-child or bastard son because they’ll still play everything else or promote more stuff than they do still to this day of WCW but that is okay because we still have that underground feel to it and we always will.”
Yes … yes. They turned the zombies babyface. Just like … ECW? He then compared Paul Heyman to Herschel and himself to Rick Grimes. We all like being the hero of our own story. Hang on, let me see if there’s a way to sum up Dreamer’s thoughts on how ECW influenced The Walking Dead.
You can listen to the relevant Walking Dead portion of the Dreamer interview below. Have fun!
