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What’s the story?
Former ECW World Heavyweight Champion Raven recently sat down for an exclusive interview with Title Match Wrestling to discuss a host of topics, which included his career in WWE and ECW and the original plans for his character.
In case you didn’t know…
Following his departure from WWE in 1994, Scott Levy aka Raven started competing in ECW where he quickly adapted the “Raven” character which was initially inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven poem and Patrick Swayne’s Zen master of crime in a movie named Point Break.
During his tenure with Paul Heyman’s ECW promotion, Raven was engaged in a major storyline with Tommy Dreamer and in 1996, Raven defeated The Sandman in order to capture the ECW World Heavyweight Championship. However, within the next year, Raven eventually left ECW and rejoined WWE’s rival promotion WCW.
The heart of the matter
During his time with ECW, Raven became one of the most popular superstars in the company and played a major role in the company’s success during the 90s. However, apparently, the original plans for Raven’s gimmick were much more different as he recently explained, while speaking with Title Match Wrestling.
Raven claimed that the original plan for him was evidently to come into ECW for three months in order to get Tommy Dreamer over with the ECW audience. Raven stated, ECW owner Paul Heyman did not realize what Raven was initially doing in the company and thought that he was going to play a misfit grungy, but, a comedy character.
"But when he [Paul Heyman] saw it wasn't, that's when the wheels started turning, and I told Paul E. before we even moved forward [and] even realized that's what it was, I said look, if you want me to get him over quick, we need to have a back story. Because, if we have a backstory, there's already an emotional investment tied in, we can skip three months of programming, we can just jump into the meat of the programming if there's a backstory. So I came up with the backstory when he gave me Stevie [Richards]."
What’s next?
Raven, who is currently semi-retired from Pro Wrestling, has been performing on the independent scene where he has been working for various promotions while touring Europe as well for promotions such as Resistance Pro Wrestling and Busted Knuckle Pro Wrestling.
Author’s Take
The Raven character, in my opinion, was one of the best characters ever in Pro Wrestling history and I believe, Scott Levy’s portrayal of this gimmick was certainly on point.
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