Raven started out in Philadelphia, the son of a newspaper man, and wound his way around wrestling�s old territory system-stopping once in Stamford, Connecticut, and adopting the name Johnny Polo-before continuing his journey. As Raven-the name he made famous is ECW-he returned to the place of his birth at September�s Unforgiven pay-per-view. He had always planned to return to the World Wrestling Federation, but demons stood in his path. Now, finally sober-and, by his estimation, mentally sound-the man born as Scott Levy feels equipped to give back to the business that made him into a cult figure. �The Raven character is very cathartic to me,� he says. �All the childhood angst, all the anger I�ve carried can be released in the ring and on television. Its really very healthy, much healthier than beating up some guy in a bar.� More than ever before, he seems in touch with himself, and the role of Raven and his other personas have played in his life. �Art imitates life. All the names I have used in my career-Johnny Polo, Scotty the Body, Scotty Flamingo-came about because I craved attention, attention I never received as a child. I had to be loud, obnoxious and flamboyant in order to get people to look at me� His earliest memories of emptiness and longing are rooted in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the Levy family moved after Philadelphia. His father worked for National Enquirer, but according to Raven, appeared more interested in examining the lives of his interview subjects than those of his family members. �He was not an affectionate man,� claims Raven. �I think the first time he told me he loved me I was 23 or 24, and that was right after I wrote him a letter decrying my emotionless childhood. If we went out to dinner, he talked more to the people at the next table than he did to us. He was a reporter and wanted to know about the man on the street and what he thought about the world. But he drove me nuts, because he didn�t seem to care about what I thought. You know, What about me? What about Raven?� Like so many teens looking for an outlet for their frustrations, Levy lost himself in the world of sports entertainment. While studying criminal justice at the University of Delaware, he became smitten with the UWF. The broadcasts originated in Oklahoma, and featured Cowboy Bill Watts as the law-and-order promoter, Jim Ross as the announcers� table and the Fabulous Freebirds-featuring current Federation official Michael P.S Hayes-as the preeminent tag team. �He was the coolest,� Raven says. �I wanted to be just like P.S. He was a heel, but one with character in depth. I certainly didn�t want to be a standard white-meat babyface. There�s no flavor to that. Michael Hayes and the Freebirds were three-dimensional. They were more than wrestlers. They were an act� It was during this time that Levy returned to Florida to visit his family and decided to attend a Miami Dolphins football game with friends. The group made a gigantic sign on a sheet, planted themselves at a conspicuous spot in the stadium and waited for the TV cameras to zoom in on them. �I�m thinking to myself, Why am I trying this hard to be on TV?� Raven says. �Obviously, I�m missing something in my mental stability for me to need this kind of adulation, to feel that people I�ve never met before care, I thought about who I was, and the character of Raven rose from a phoenix from Johnny Polo�s ashes.� Raven was introduced to the wrestling public in ECW, which at the time was revolutionizing the business with outrageous stunts that most of sports entertainment had yet to try. Raven began his address to ECW fans by laundry-listing the names of his prior characters-breaking the long held prohibition of mentioning performers past identities. �I felt I couldn�t just come out and be a new character when the fans knew about all the other roles I played.� Raven recounts. �You knew me by these names, but this is who I really am.� Then I never brought up the subject again.� While ECW-which recorded most of it�s programming at a Philadelphia bingo parlor-didn�t command attention like the WWF did, the organization had a devoted following. The more unusual Raven behaved, the more he was appreciated by the ECW crowd. He soon found himself sharing a dressing room with Tazz, whose violent style of combat and consistent with what ECW�s audience demanded. �We actually hated each other in ECW,� Raven says. �Tazz thought he carried the promotion, when everyone knows that I did.� But as celebrated as Raven�s ECW tenure was, it was simply a long stop on his return to the World Wrestling Federation. He bounced back to WCW, heading a collection of outcasts labeled Raven�s Flock, followed by another run in ECW. Then-after a public feud with owner Paul Heyman-Raven decided to remedy a condition that could easily have turned him into another tragic statistic. �I was an alcoholic and pill addict,� he concedes. �And I cracked up. Everything that occurred in my childhood finally caught up with me. I kept pushing it away. Finally, I couldn�t push it away any longer, and it overwhelmed me, I ended up in rehab. I wasn�t ready to do it before. But I�d changed-I wanted to be sober. I cleared my head, and now I never want to go back. That�s why I know this is permanent.� Raven was finally ready for the WWF. But the Federation wasn�t sure if it was ready for him. �I was a recovering addict,� he says. �The quality of my work was never a question. But I had problems with Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff. So had a lot of the guys, but not the sort of problems I did. So the Federation asked around. They went to my friends like Benoit and Jericho, and questioned them. From what I understand, they said, �If he�s clean, you have to hire him. If he isn�t, don�t-because we won�t want to see him as a mess.� Frankly, I would have taken nothing. I�m just grateful to have the chance to really prove what I can do when I am sober and clean.� Last year, Raven made his comeback. The choice of venue was deliberate: the First Union Center in Philadelphia-the city of his birth, and the place he�d received his greatest acclaim in ECW. Tazz was tangling with Jerry �The King� Lawler in a four corners strap match at Unforgiven when Raven interfered, aiding his former ECW cohort by delivering an Evenflow DDT to the royal Tennessean. The crowd went wild, and Raven and Tazz became tag team partners for a while. But, just as fans were beginning to think of them as a unit, the two turned on each other. Today, Raven is at the top of his game, working for thew organization of his choosing, and temporarily just making up the numbers in the Alliance. �I like Tazz,� he confesses, �and, even when I�m not wrestling him, I enjoy watching him work. He�s a funny guy-for such a miserable bastard.� HOME |
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