'%20x='0'%20y='0'%20height='100%25'%20width='100%25'%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20xlink%3Ahref='data:image/jpg;base64,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'%3E%3C/image%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW). Many of the newer generation of wrestling fans know it as the ill thought and short lived promotion under WWE. Looking further behind, even beyond the attitude era in WWE, we can find ECW to be the renegade and underground promotion that lit the fire that would become the best years in the history of wrestling industry.
The rise of ECW and the corresponding change in the landscape of wrestling industry can be widely considered to be the vision and hard work of one man – Paul Heyman. After being fired form WCW, Heyman joined the ECW (then Eastern Championship Wrestling) and his impact was quite clearly visible with the drastic and revolutionary change in direction of the company, as it moved away from the traditional rules and legacy of the wrestling industry, to a more adult oriented and hardcore style.
This split in ideals reached its pinnacle in the 1993 NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship tournament, where Shane Douglaus threw down the prestigious NWA title and declared himself as the ECW world heavyweight champion and proclaimed himself as ‘the man who ignites the new flame of the sport of professional wrestling’, distancing himself and ECW completely from the old school wrestling promotion and thus was born the Extreme Championship Wrestling.
What followed in the years to come was nothing short of a revolution within the wrestling industry. Gone were the days of the squeaky clean, bulked up baby faces fighting for the old fashioned values, and in came the more realistic and relatable characters wearing street clothes and sporting big bellies. The fighting style moved away from old school mat wrestling to more hardcore and bloody brawls all over the arena. The referees, though present, were largely irrelevant and use of weapons in the matches ranged from chairs to paddles to household utensils. It became a common sight to see bloody wrestlers falling through tables and onto the concrete and despite being as scripted as any other promotion, ECW matches looked, for all intents and purposes, like two guys genuinely trying to kill each other and drove the fans, especially in the 18-30 age demographic, into a frenzy.
ECW matches were different mainly due to two reasons – blood and violence.
The match between Terry Funk and Sabu at Born to be wired still remains one of the bloodiest matches in the wrestling history, with both man having to be cut out of barbed wires using wire cutters and suffering excessive blood loss and Sabu tearing a large chunk out of his bicep and taping it on his own to continue. Though this match was one of a kind, most of the matches did showcase bloodshed, violence and brawls all over the arena. Although the matches did have winners and losers, for the fans what mattered was the spectacle.
To say hardcore was all ECW was, would be unfair. With the Monday Night Wars between WCW and WWE (then WWF), these companies frequently looked into ECW for talent and, more often than not, found the gems they were searching for.
ECW contained some of the best and technically proficient wrestlers in their roster like Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Chris Benoit and the charismatic Chris Jericho. They also introduced luche libre into the United States with the likes of Rey Mysterio, Juvented Guerrera and La Parca. With all these elements together for the first time in the United States, ECW was able to concoct a different aura around the promotion.
But it was not just the matches that drew the fans to ECW. The interviews, promos and story lines blurred the line between real life and story line. The public secret of kayfabe (characters and storyline of the wrestlers) went out of the window, to be replaced by shoot interviews and controversial story lines that cut close to reality. ECW tore down the dressing room wall and showed the good and bad guys co-mingling, trying to help the ‘accidentally blinded’ Sandman and Tommy Dreamer apologizing for his unintentional mistake in blinding him. These actions were a big taboo in the industry.
The famous anti-hardcore promos by a delusional Mic Foley, the constant and sarcastic reference to WCW and the NWO, the funny and emotionally strong promos by Stone Cold Steve Austin against Bischoff and Hogan all garnered ECW attention, with even the WWE and WCW fans shifting their focus to the promotion that was counterculture and tearing down the wrestling tradition.
With the reputation of the company preceding itself, the violence started to look commonplace. The tolerance for blood and gore among the fans increased and the matches started to become more violent, story lines more controversial. The infamous ‘Mass Transit’ incident, which saw an underage wannabe wrestler fake his age and work a match against the always dangerous New Jack is a perfect example of excessive violence while ‘The Crucifixion of Sandman and the first ever ‘Lesbian angle’ between Beulah McGillicutty and Kimona was all signs of a company trying desperately to outdo the high standards that they had set up. By breaking away from the tradition, the company was finding it hard to sustain without the foundation and structure that supported the world of professional wrestling.
The success of ECW rightly belongs to the fans. Bloodthirsty as they maybe, they were the backbone of the company. No other promotion has had such a rabid and loyal fan base. The company for its part, did its best to include the fans in the action with bring your own weapons matches, where the crowd would give weapons to the wrestlers.
The famous chair throwing incident, when the fans threw hundreds of chairs into the ring on top of Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge while Mic Foley and Terry Funk ran for cover, and the Spike Dudley body surfing incident, where he was bodily thrown towards the fans who instead of moving away as they normally do, caught the wrestler and body surfed him around the arena, come to mind immediately here. Fan participation of this level was and is, to this day, unseen in any other promotion.
The fans were heavily invested in the story lines and the wrestlers as the biggest stars of ECW – Sandman, Dreamer, Douglas, Raven, Rob Van Dam, Taz, Sabu – all fought each other in long feuds with escalating violence, while others came in to kick start their careers or rediscover themselves (like Steve Austin) or on loan from bigger companies (like Mic Foley initially came in from WCW) or for a last swansong (like Terry Funk). With the unprecedented success of the company, WWF even incorporated them into the ‘Invasion Story line’ with ECW invading RAW.
Ironically, it was the success of the company that led to its demise. The attitude and violence in the show being its main drawing card, acted as a double-edged sword. While marketing the product to a specific group of the audience proved to be successful over a short term and to a specific level (ECW never reached the level of WWE or WCW), it was in many ways a small scale and largely regional promotion. With more and more mainstream attention, questions were asked about the extreme nature of the product. Though it did manage to land a TV spot in Spike channel, the larger fan base and draw of the WWE caused the channel to give WWE the deal in place of ECW and despite its best efforts, ECW was unable to get on another network. With financial troubles following the company, ECW finally filed for bankruptcy in 2001. Even though WWE launched their own ECW show (after they had won the Monday Night Wars and bought WCW and ECW), it was but a pale imitation of the once majestic promotion; the magic was gone.
The impact of ECW in professional wrestling was has been huge. The movement to more reality based characters rather than the over the top and comic characters that insulted the viewer’s intelligence sprung from ECW. ECW can also be considered as the reason for the attitude era. Without the Sandman, it’s hard to see a Stone Cold drinking beer and wrecking havoc and never caring.
Though purists will look at ECW as a renegade promotion showcasing garbage wrestling, the fact of the matter is that ECW, while violent, had its fair share of talented individuals who went on to be legends in the wrestling business. For a few years ECW was the heart and soul of the wrestling industry; amid the blood and guts, it provided a vision, a life, passion and redemption to the business that had fallen to a slumber in the late 90’s.Though the company died over a decade ago, it is hard not to see the ghosts of ECW in the wrestling industry to this day.
