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Everyone who is reading this knows who Tazz is. He's a man who uses his hands as his weapons, a man who will willingly and happily take the air from a man's lungs, and depending on the man's pride, make him tap out or black out. He's one of the most proficient pure wrestlers in an era of highspots and sports-entertainment. He's Tazz, the "Human Wrecking Machine."

He is just in his starting days as a Superstar for the the World Wrestling Federation. He's left the comfort of his old turf, Extreme Championship Wrestling. Before either called Tazz a member of their roster, Taz called another area home.

Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York.

Red Hook is a tough area. You don't look in the eyes of the neighborhood kids if you don't belong. You might offend them and end up with a baseball bat cracked over your skull. You might end up in someone's car trunk. You might end up not being seen again. In the midst of that scene, a young man emerged. A man who would go on to greater heights. Tazz.

"There's no gray areas, it's black or white. You get along on the street or you don't. You either survive or you don't survive. But it was tough, it was a tough upbringing but it built a lot of character, you know? I remember where I came from." Tazz reflected from his New York home, his infant son squealing with glee in the background as he played.

It was hardly an image one could envision. Tazz the father, but we'll get back to that later. As a child, Tazz soon found athletics being his out from the tough neighborhood, trying to keep himself right when so many of his friends went otherwise.

"Other guys and kids that I grew up with, they're either in jail, or not that good of jobs, or I hate to say it, not even alive anymore. For a lot of these kids, the route that my neighborhood was going, wasn't a good route. A lot of these kids went the wrong way."

Reflecting on High School, the thirty-two year old Tazz sighed as he thought back to victories from many a year ago. He was a long way from High School now.

"Football and wrestling I really excelled at. I played football from my freshman year through my senior year of college. I played inside linebacker and offensive guard all four years, and I also wrestled my last two years of school. I wrestled heavyweight. I've played judo since I was about nine years old at which isn't a school for, but there was a dojo by my house where I played when I was a young kid and I would say I did well."

Standing at 5'9" Tazz found that his height was both a problem and a blessing. He learned the hard way to face his problems head-on and not to skirt around the issues at hand.

"I was handed a lot of tough coaches. I was never taught to shortcut. At my size, I was undersized for playing football. I mean, I'm playing inside linebacker at 5'9"..that's unheard of and I was always very, very aggressive. I felt I couldn't control my height, that was something I was born with. Next to the average guy, I'm not short, I'm average height but 250 pounds at 5'9, that's an odd combo. I tried to apply myself to make the things stronger I could make stronger, my speed, my quickness, my cardiovascular, my strength, my muscularity, my attitude and my downright aggression and those are the things I was able to control and I grasped that and just dominated throughout my career as a young athlete up until a man on that."

The martial arts and the athletics of his youth proved to be two of many defining factors in Tazz's life. Another of those were the upbringing his parents gave him.

"You know, my parents were blue collar type people. I have an older brother, he's eight years older than me. He's not an athlete or anything. He kinda did his own thing and my Grandmother kinda helped raised me because my Mom and Dad worked. I never got into that whole bad kid thing, in the sense of robberies and muggings because was I scared of it. I figured my father or my Uncle or my brother would find out and beat the hell out of me. I was scared of that because I was younger. I remember how I was raised. I'm not gonna sit here and say that I knew what it was like to starve for a meal, you know, because I can't, because my parents worked their asses off to put food in the refrigerator and stuff. Because of that I can't say ‘Oh I starved, I lived in the street' I didn't do that, but I far from came from a plush upbringing. It wasn't plush at all."

As Tazz got older, he tried college, but it just wasn't for him.

"High School, I tried to apply myself to academics but I just couldn't. I was like a solid "C" average student. I just didn't do well scholastically as far as college. College was a rough time in my life. There was a lot of things going on personally in my life. I was at that age where I didn't know what I wanted to do. In college I tried to apply myself scholastically a little bit better, but you know, playing two sports, school was hard and I kind of dogged it a lot, in terms of class. I wanted to apply myself more scholastically, but being an athlete, it is hard, very very hard in college. It didn't last."

Taz moved on, until a chance comment by his Judo Sensei sent Tazz's life into a whole different direction.

"I decided to become a pro wrestler because I had a Mohawk. I was still competing in judo. My Sensei at the time said ‘You look like a pro wrestler.' At the time I weighed about 270 lbs. I mean, I was like, really, really big and, I looked really mean with the haircut, a tall Mohawk and tattoos and stuff. I said, ‘Ah, I don't want to that pro wrestling stuff, that's easy, there's nothing to that, it's not real, it's fake, blah blah blah blah. He said, ‘Nah, you could make money at it, it's gonna get popular again one day. So, I talked to my father about it, and he knew a guy that knew Johnny Rodz, a mutual friend. I said, ‘Oh, I heard of Johnny Rodz' because I followed wrestling a little bit growing up and he set up a meeting between me and Johnny Rodz."

Although signing years later with the World Wrestling Federation would provide incredible fanfare, the young man from Red Hook's first encounter in the wrestling industry would be as cold and hard as the Red Hook backstreets.

"We met up in East New York, Brooklyn, right near my High School, where I went to High School, right off a street called Jamaica Avenue. Anybody from New York who hears about this interview knows Jamaica Avenue. We met there and I'll never forget. It was cold, cold day around December and we met in the street. We didn't meet at his house, we didn't meet at the school. At the time he wasn't training guys in Gleason's Gym. He was training guys somewhere in Brooklyn, I can't remember where, maybe in Greenpoint"

When one hears of Tazz, the phrase "Paying your dues," comes to mind. Tazz started and never stopped. With tuition money lent to him by his future wife, Tazz went to Johnny Rodz' dojo.

"The ring had two ropes and you couldn't stand on the top rope without hitting your head on the ceiling, no running water in the dojo, like three light bulbs. It wasn't the "Unpredictable School of Wrestling" like he has now. It was me, Mondo Kleen, who wrestled as Damien Damento for the WWF and Big Dick Dudley, who at the time, wrestled as Alexander the Great. We were the three guys. It was rough. It was like, those are big dudes and I was the smallest. Then, newer guys would come in and they were huge, but anyway, I got into that with him, and it was hard as sh-t. The first night, I was like ‘Whoa, what's going on?' I was always a shooter, was always into heavy contact sports and this was like, I got in the ring with Johnny Rodz, a guy a lot older than me, it didn't matter the shape I was in, he beat the sh-t out of me. The guy beat me up!"

The first day of training was hardly glorious. In fact, it wasn't very impressive at all as far as Tazz was concerned.

"I was paying my dues from day one and the first thing I said was that I can't quit this now. My first day in, I didn't do well. I'm a firm believer in that if I'm not doing well, I don't bow out, I keep going. I love competition. I didn't care about the money at that point. I just wanted to show everyone in that school and Johnny Rodz that I could become a professional wrestler and succeed at it."

At the same time, Tazz's inner rage, a rage that would eventually fuel his success, would begin to harm his progress.

"I ended up getting kicked out of Johnny's school, because Johnny and I, many times, at the beginning of my career, I had a real bad attitude, I didn't believe in putting people over, I was stupid. I didn't get that it was a work. I was real cocky and angry, I had everyone around me being so negative. I was making maybe $50-$100 a month wrestling, so I was pissed off at the world, and I was one of Johnny's first students. All these other guys were coming to the dojo and Johnny would run independent shows, and I was putting these guys over. I was like, ‘Hey this is bullshit, I've been here longer, these guys should put me over.' but meanwhile I should have just kept my mouth shut and done what I was told. I was stupid, I was young."

Reflecting, a much more mature Tazz blames himself for the problem.

"My problems were immaturity and frustration. It was in that order. We all go through it at one point in our lives, whether you're an athlete or not, and I went through it. My problem was that I was very vocal about it. I would never hold back about it."

Tazz did return to the dojo however, and ended up meeting the man who would go on to become the best man in his wedding, Tommy Dreamer.

"Tommy showed up about four months later. Tommy Dreamer came in right around then. I ended up coming back to the dojo maybe three or four months into Tommy's training. Quick story, our first road trip that Tommy and I went on. Mondo Kleen got hooked up on some shows being run by Dick Woerhle. Woerhle at the time had a very good independent deal going on. I always wanted to get on it, but I didn't know Dick Woerhle. He liked Mondo, so Mondo was gonna wrestle Tommy Dreamer because Tommy was a pretty babyface, good body and Mondo was this big mean looking heel. What happened was that Mondo couldn't make one of the shows for Dick Woerhle and so he called me and said, ‘you wanna take my place?' and I said ‘Oh, you're damn right' and I met Tommy, and we drove there together. We wrestled each other, and we had a tremendous match, so every time I got...I was getting booked a lot, it was starting to pick up, I was starting to get booked a lot on the Indies, Tommy really wasn't. So I hooked up Tommy up everywhere I went, like when the Savoldis picked me up, and a lot of people knock the Savoldis, but I was very fortunate. They did some pretty cool stuff with me and I was able to get Tommy hooked up with the Savoldis and we were with the Savoldis for a couple of years. And we roomed together, and drove together, and just became tight."

Another person Tazz would soon meet working for the Savoldi's IWCCW, was the man who would go on to be credited with Extreme Championship Wrestling's concept's, Paul Heyman.

"I met Paul, the second time I worked for the Savoldis, Paul E. was booking. Yeah he brought me in, I wrestled Sonny Blaze in Kutcher's in the Catskills. Paul brought me in, I could tell he was like a maniac but we got along good. Then he went back to WCW, and we would talk on the phone, and we made friends, and while he was in Atlanta, I asked if he could try to get me in there, and he was trying. I think they had him submit a list, I don't know if it was Jim Herd or whoever was in charge, Kip Frye at the time, one of those guys. A top ten of Indie workers out there that he thought they should bring in, and he put me on the list, so he tried to help me out early in my career."

Even as his friendships with the men who would become synonymous with Extreme Championship Wrestling grew, so did Tazz's skills in the ring, his character. Looking back now over the evolution of his in-ring persona, Tazz has come a long way.

"First I wrestled as the Tasmanian Devil, before that I was Kid Crush. Everybody goes through, in the beginning of their career, a bunch of different gimmicks, unless you're fortunate and you get handed one on a silver platter..like a Goldberg. Again, I don't want anyone out there thinking I'm knocking the guy. I don't know the guy. I wish I was handed something like that so early...then again, no I don't because it built character in me, paying my dues. It's impossible to take from me what I earned. I went through the Kid Crush name, then the Tasmanian Devil. Then someone said, it might not be a good idea because of Warner Bros. Than I went to the Tasmaniac and it stuck for a while. Then in ECW, I said to Paul ‘Let me become just a wrestler, I want to drop this goofy gimmick and wrestle' so, I was Taz and that was it."

The Tazz name, though, was simple evolution. He claims there's no real story behind it.

"As I started as a pro wrestler, because I was shorter than everybody, stocky and dark-complexioned and I had a Tasmanian Devil tattoo on my arm, a small one. It just kinda came up, it's not one of those things where a guy came and nicknamed me. I don't have a cool story about it, it just sort of evolved."

Tazz was getting work on the independent circuits of the Northeast. He had try outs with the WWF and WCW. He traveled to Japan. Through it all, he was paying his dues and doing his best to support himself.

"I was still living at home. I worked for a railroad and I built railroad tracks. I bounced. I did some personal training in gyms, but for the most part it was construction work and laying railroad tracks. Paying my dues."

Still, the doubts would kick in, even as his relationship with his soon to be wife, a woman he had known since they were children, dated since she was a teenager, blossomed.

"For nine years, every five months. I wanted to quit so many times. I just couldn't. I knew..I just felt, that I could make it. I just didn't know how long it was going to take. I just felt it in my stomach that I could do a little more in the wrestling business than I was doing."

Again, Tazz saw his height as a factor, as well as where he was from.

"My height didn't help. It was a combination of my height and being from the Northeast, because at that time, all the guys that made it...I think Cactus Jack and Paul E. were the first ones ever from the Northeast to be successful. It was a southern, mid-west type deal because all the territories were in the South. In the Northeast, you worked Indies here and there, but it was hard to find work."

Tazz worked for a short time for Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and worked for New Japan Pro Wrestling in the Orient.

"I worked for New Japan. Before that, first time I went to Japan, I worked for W*ING. Kevin Sullivan got me booked there, and I worked there as Tasmaniac. I worked two tours for W*ING. Around ‘91 or ‘92, Brad Rheighans and I hooked up on the phone, and he got me booked in New Japan as the Tasmaniac for a couple of tours. One of the highlights of my career was that I wrestled {Jushin} Liger in his hometown on his birthday, so that was pretty cool. It was the main event. It was a great match, I'll never forget it."

Then, the phenomenon that would soon be known as Extreme Championship Wrestling began to build it's roots. A man by the name of Tod Gordon had formed it. An old friend by the name of Paul Heyman was booking. At the suggestion of a friend, Tazz made a fateful phone call, one that would eventually bring him to superstardom.

"I gave Paul Heyman a call, and he called me back. He said, ‘we have this guy Sabu, do you know who he is?' I said, ‘Yeah, I met him on an Indie show I did in Minneapolis.' He asked me if I could have a good match with him, and I said, ‘Yeah I definitely think I could.' He asked me if I would put him over, and I said, ‘Yeah, no problem' and he said ‘great.' I said, ‘Could I get a bunch of dates from you?' and he said, ‘I can only guarantee you three dates and I want you to put over Sabu on all three.' I said, ‘No problem, what are you going to pay me?' We worked out the money and boom, it ended up being a little more than three dates. We hit it off. We worked well with each other."

A mix of talent that should have been volatile when you looked at it on paper instead turned into the perfect chemistry to turn the pro wrestling industry on it's ear.

"It was so cool because we had a great crew of young hungry guys and a great crew of salty veterans that just all worked together. Guys like Don Muraco, Jimmy Snuka, Kevin Sullivan, Abdullah the Butcher, Terry Funk, Dory Funk, I mean...and the younger guys like myself, Sabu, Tommy Dreamer and Shane Douglas, the Pitbulls, and then it was like....Pat Tanaka and Paul Diamond were just towards the end of their peak and they were great guys to work with. The Bruise Brothers, I mean what a mix! What a friggin' mix. Paul Heyman, his ideas were fresh and he had fire in his eyes and all he did was book. Tod Gordon owned the company, and handled all the business crap. It was a great, great deal. It was a team effort, right away, you know...it was awesome."

Even in his new home, Tazz didn't stop paying his dues.

"It was hard. It was very hard to be over. The people were very smart. You'd be in the ring getting ready to wrestle, and they'd be yelling ‘take a bump, sell more.' That's what the people would be saying to you. It was hard. I was used to be working in front of kids on the Independent circuit it being so easy to get the pop."

He debuted in October 1993. He lost to Sabu. The feud would go on to become the most storied in Extreme Championship Wrestling history.

"Sabu and I always had really solid, solid matches because we'd just go in there and just go. I mean, it wasn't like, ‘No, I don't want to do this, I don't want to do that.' We're still like that to some extent. We're a little older and some stuff, we're like, "Eh, I don't know if I wanna take that,' you know? I always used to worry about screwing up, now I worry about getting hurt."

Although an injury would shadow his career, Tazz was still at the point where he was paying his dues in ECW, something most forget because of his current persona.

"People forget about the jobs I've done in ECW. I put Sabu over my first night. I put him over on a loop. I won the {ECW Television} belt on a TV taping...I won the TV belt from Sabu, and I lost it to JT Smith in the same day. I mean, I got pinned by Jason. I got back from my neck injury and I got pinned by Jason"

Tazz would become Sabu's tag team partner. They feuded with Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko. Tazz would continue paying dues. He also would be instrumental in helping ECW.

"I helped Benoit get in. (Laughs)Yeah, I got Benoit in. He might not remember it, but he called me from an airport somewhere, and he was going home from WCW, and he was miserable and he said, ‘What's this ECW deal like Taz?' In the tag team deal, I was the guy who did the jobs for the team. I didn't know I was gonna be. Sabu and me...it was always me doing the job."

Sabu soon left Extreme Championship Wrestling, missing an important event, and Tazz was on his own again.

TO SEE THE REST VISIT www.TAZMISSION.com THE OFFICIAL TAZZ SITE

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Page Updated Tue Aug 15, 2000 11:16pm EDT