For many years, Tommy Dreamer was always known as the guy that ‘never won the title’ and now he has a chance to finally win the big one at No Surrender on Saturday.
Dreamer was on IMPACT Wrestling’s recent Press Pass media call and talked about getting a World Championship match against Rich Swann for his 50th birthday. During the call, Dreamer mentioned his reputation of being the guy that never won a championship in ECW, or the guy that didn’t need to win the title.
As a follow-up question, WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard asked what changed since then, and why he could now accept being a champion when it seemed like something he didn’t want at the beginning of his career.
“During ECW it was, I didn’t need it and when I won it, I had immediately lost it. I feel a title is helped to make guys and I was already made and I didn’t need it. I also didn’t want people saying my relationship with Paul Heyman is why I was the champion,” Dreamer explained. “I don’t know if nepotism is the proper word, but favoritism, and if you go back and a lot of the bookers were the champions in professional wrestling, and I didn’t want people to say that about me.”
Dreamer did hold the ECW World Championship for a few minutes (at CyberSlam 2000) but he did end up winning the WWE-sanctioned version of the title nine years later, holding it for 49 days. He talked about building up to that title win and said he went to Vince McMahon with the idea of giving fans a good story as a real-life sendoff and explained
“In WWE, my contract was up for real. Every match that I was in was the highest-rated main events and I literally went to Vince McMahon and I said, ‘Hey, man. You’re supposed to be this great businessman? Here’s proof why you’re not,’ and I said, ‘My contract’s coming up. This is what I want to do. You don’t want to sign me? Cool. Then I’ll lose, but I’ll put my career up, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ It worked out and that night, I remember walking out there and seeing as many Tommy Dreamer signs as there were for John Cena and it was my personal vindication that I knew what I was doing and it was right,” Dreamer explained. “And now, there’s a whole lot of things going through my head, but it just means a lot, because of the times because of the world that we’re currently living in. I just want to go out there and have a good match, as well as to give people hope, because we all need hope nowadays and just be like, ‘Hey, if ‘Old Man Dreamer’ can do something, I think I can do something.’”
Dreamer went on to talk about how Diamond Dallas Page’s movie Relentless served as a bit of inspiration for him, and said it’s the perfect time to send a message of ‘why not me’ as a way of encouragement to people.
“DDP has this amazing movie on Amazon Prime and it’s just talking about people’s weight loss and I’m somebody who has dealt with my weight my whole life. It started with—there’s people who do like, one sit-up and then the next day they can do two and they just keep on keepin’ on. I’ve been on TV since I’m 21-years-old and have never been off of it and at 50 years old could be like, ‘Hey, if this guy can do something or can still live his dream, why can’t I?’ We’re all home doing nothing. How come people aren’t writing better movies, ’cause Netflix hasn’t been the best lately,” Dreamer said, “or how come you can’t write a book or how come you can’t do something that you have always wanted to do cause at times, all we have is time and nothing guaranteed for tomorrow. It really isn’t.”
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