This one seems to be a little tougher than most.

1999 was a rough year losing legends not only in the squared circle, but I lost a few legends in my personal life.

I had hope that the year 2000 would have a better start, but we're only 25 days in and already three tragic losses.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Gary Albright or Al Costello, but their deaths bothered me. The most recent news of a loss has me down.

Reason being that two of my greatest CyberSlam memories involve Bob Duncum, Jr.  I've been racking my brain all day as to how to do a column or how to re-tell the stories. I don't want my re-telling of these stories to be mis-interpreted as "getting myself over at the expense of someone's death" as was the case I had rumours about in the events in my personal life last March.

However, these are such special stories to me, I want to share them to perhaps allow someone to read them as they might be down and put a smile on their face, especially on such a brutal day weather wise on this January 25th.

We take you back to what many people call "the greatest fan weekend ever", Summer 1997. Back to the Extreme 1997, the "Hardcore Hat Trick". There was a great show in Warwick Twin Rinks in Bucks County, PA, the show that we now know as "Born to be Wired" and a great, unannounced party in my hotel room
on that Friday night.

Any of you that have attended a CyberSlam weekend and took the bus trip are always treated to 2 traditions. One of which is the classic Paul Heyman "lesbian story" from the 1996 winter fan weekend q/a session. The other is a little something I did by the pool at the Holiday Inn. I am doing the opening for the q/a tape and get interrupted by Rob Van Dam and just as I refer to myself as "Mr ECW", Rob (rightfully so) pushes me into the Holiday Inn pool.  What you don't get to see is after I leave the pool and go past Rob, there on the lounge chair next to him is Bob Duncum, Jr. Bob shakes my hand and says, "that was a nice bump, you took Tom". He was serious. I take that as quite a compliment coming from him and also acknowledging him as an up and coming star and a son of a legend.

Being the good host I try to be at a fan weekend at the hotel, I do my best to provide enough beverages for all. Well it was getting near 1:30am  and bars close in Pennsylvania at 2am. I had mentioned to some of  the wrestlers that I had a few beers in my room ( actually a bathtub full) and invited a couple up. Well, 2am rolls around and its no time until just about the entire company shows up. What a night. The Bob Duncum, Jr moment occurs when it turns out that the beer was ok- but something more was needed. Bob showed up with a rather large bottle of Jack Daniels. I was getting ribbed over the pool stunt earlier that day.  Well, as the boys in the room were enjoying the beer, Bob and I began sharing the JD. I learned a very hard lesson that night. Do not, repeat, do not try to keep up drinking with a Texan. Needless to say the next morning ( or later that morning) I was quite the mess, but made it through the q/a session relatively unscathed.

Writing those stories and then going back over the tape of the "pool incident" brought back those fond memories.

I was never quite sure why Bob wasn't able to stick in ECW. I was actually excited that he had a shot at WCW and was part of that angle with Curt Hennig. I felt he was a great talent, but apparently had his problems.

Another one lost too soon. My sincere condolences to the Duncum family during this time.

Now, onto other business, if I may.

The voting for the ECWNEWS.com 1999 fan awards <VOTE here>is going to shut down on Feb 9th. So far voting is going well, but it’s uneven. Please vote in every category. I'd like to thank you all for the support in the voting and also the webmasters of the wrestler's sites who ran a promo for us. Thanks. The winners will be announced here on ECWNEWS.com on Feb 10th. We're gonna do our best to get all the winners at CyberSlam 2000 to present awards. So, check back on Feb 10th for the winners and another huge announcement.