Stevie Richards

Michael Manna (born October 9, 1971) is an American professional wrestler currently signed to WWE wrestling on its ECW brand. Best known by his ring name, Stevie Richards, Manna has previously worked for Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) and, briefly, World Championship Wrestling (WCW). He has held the WWE Hardcore Championship 22 times. He is also a two time ECW Tag Team Champion.

Stevie Richards was trained at Iron Mike Sharpe's wrestling school in Brick Township, New Jersey after being discovered by Dan Haney of the World Wide Wrestling Alliance based out of Colmar/Hatfield PA.

On February 25, 1992, Richards participated in the first ever ECW match, in a 20-minute time limit draw with Jimmy Jannetty.

Before the arrival of Raven in ECW, "Dancin'" Stevie Richards had a 'meta gimmick' of mockingly adopting the persona of other wrestlers.

ECW announcer/color commentator Joey Styles frequently described the Richards character as a "clueless putz".

When it was announced that Scott Levy, then known by relatively lightweight gimmicks (ie, Scotty 'the Body' Anthony, Scotty Flamingo, and Johnny Polo), was coming to ECW, Richards began adopting and mocking those gimmicks. One of the first things Levy did in ECW in his new gimmick as Raven was thrash "Stevie Flamingo" soundly.

From that point on, Richards acted as a flunkie for Raven in ECW, calling him "Boss".

While teaming with Raven, Richards won the ECW Tag Team Championship on two occasions.

After a dog collar match against The Pitbulls, which Richards lost, Stevie was thought of as a major superstar. Raven was in the locker room for most of that match.

Richards was also part of the bWo, a parody of the nWo.

At one point, he hinted that he was bringing the band KISS to perform. It ended up being the bWo in KISS regalia, lip-synching. This was quickly 'cleaned up' by The Sandman.

The highlight of his ECW career was perhaps participating in the main event of the first ECW pay-per-view, Barely Legal. He wrestled Terry Funk and The Sandman in a Three Way Dance to determine the number one contender to the ECW World Championship. It was during this match that Richards suffered a severe neck injury which has required numerous surgeries over the years to fix.

Richards would also do a telephone line for ECW under the name, Lloyd Van Buren. However, he would not wrestle under that name.

In May of 1997, Stevie suffered a neck injury so severe that he announced his retirement, before recovering and signing with WCW. Many people, especially Paul Heyman, debate the legitimacy of the injury to this day. Stevie wrestled briefly as a member of Raven's Flock but failed his physical exams and left WCW in October of the same year. Stevie commented on The Rise and Fall of ECW DVD that Raven had told him that he was only there to be his " lackey", and that he would get him fired if he pushed for more of a larger role, knowing both would suffer for demanding more than what was above their current status.



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