Paul Heyman Interview Mentioning Frank Shamrock To Take On Taz In ECW

After he changed from The Tasmaniac to "Taz in ECW, Taz was built up as a shoot fight style pro wrestler. This was the first pro wrestling angle to be developed and it was enhanced by ECW bringing in Paul Varleans - who had a background already competing in UFC at that time.

Earlier today, Phil Schneider on Yahoo Sports posted an interview with Paul Heyman. This revealed that Paul was considering bringing in Frank Shamrock from UFC and build up an angle with Taz:

https://sports.yahoo.com/wrestling/article/ecw-what-if-with-paul-heyman-the-night-mma-legend-frank-shamrock-became-the-one-that-got-away-140042619.html

Here are two quotes from that article:

“Before Taz became the ECW World Heavyweight Champion, I had a trajectory for the title, to where Frank Shamrock would be the one to beat Shane Douglas for the title,” Heyman says. "And we would build up to Frank Shamrock versus Taz for the title, and Taz would take the title off of Frank."

"He understood crowd psychology. Even in the shoot environment of a fight, he knew how to work a crowd. If anyone who never spent time in the genre of professional wrestling could have transitioned over into professional wrestling and been a No. 1 top star, it's Frank Shamrock."

Interestingly, Heyman mentions Chris Candido and Sunny for communicating with Frank Shamrock - and Paul believes that Tammy (Sunny) caused the deal to go off track. He is quoted as saying:

“At the time, Chris Candido was helping out a lot in several aspects behind the scenes, and Chris had a good relationship with Frank and was discussing it with him. And I believe [currently incarcerated wrestler and then-girlfriend of Candido] Tammy [Lynn Sytch] got involved a couple of times on the phone call and completely turned Frank off to any involvement in ECW, and it just all fell apart from there.

Finally, Missy Hyatt has been linked to the Taz-Paul Varleans match at the ECW Arena. Here are her words on the situation:

Here is more on the Taz-Varleans match situation