Social media is sometimes a great tool for businesses.
Current Advocate for WWE Champion Brock Lesnar and legendary pro wrestling executive, producer and manager Paul Heyman recently appeared on comedian Matt Mitchell's Casio's Cut podcast and admitted if ECW couldn't have utilized social media back in the day, they would've went out of business a lot faster than they already did.
“We would have exploited that, like every other opportunity and every other platform that we had," said Heyman. "I can’t tell you that it would have hurt ECW because if it would hurt ECW, then I wouldn't be doing my job understanding the parameters and the opportunities that are presented by any platform or any or any concept of distribution that was happening at the time, then again, you know, would it have helped, one would only hope. “People who sit there and they say, ‘Well, this ruined this industry.’ It means you couldn't keep up. You know, Blackberry couldn't keep up with smartphones, so BlackBerry went away. Vinyl records — though vinyl is making some sort of a comeback now, it's really more of a novelty. Vinyl Records couldn't keep up with CDs, CDs couldn't come up with streaming network television, television can't keep up with Netflix. So either you adapt to the distribution platforms that surround you, or you become obsolete. So would social media have helped ECW? It better have, because that would be the obligation and the onus would have been on us, or we would have gone out of business faster than we did anyway."
Heyman was the main player in ECW, being the promotion's CEO, main booker, and executive producer when they debuted as the rebranded 'Extreme Championship Wrestling' in 1994 before the company was shut down in 2001 before briefly being brought back as an alternate brand under the WWE banner from 2006 until 2010.
Paul Heyman understood how to best manipulate any situation for the betterment of his brand. There is, perhaps, no greater example of this than the way Paul Heyman would utilize any loophole to provide the best contract for extreme championship wrestling. Learn more about how that soundtrack was curated here.
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