Love/Hatred for ECW

[Evenflow DDT]

Short and Simple...

It seems to me based on wrestling fans I know and work with if they were born before 1970 or after 1990 they have serious hatred for everything ECW and all other Extreme companies like XPW, CZW, W*ING and FMW. Have you noticed this? Why do you love or hate ECW?

 

[Planet_Velvet]

I love ECW because it was truly an alternative. They were who they were and proud of it. Older fans didn't care for it because it wasn't what they were used to and they couldn't adjust to the times changing.

 

[George Steele's Barber]

I fall between 70 and 90 and I wouldn't say I loved ECW, but when I first found it I got into it. The music was cool, the characters were different, the stunts were exciting, the women felt attainable, and the stories had an edge that didn't feel predictable. The problem was that while they were continuing to top WCW and WWF in certain ways, those ways were unsustainable. Blood is blood, violence is violence, by the time Steve Corino was walking around with a cheese grated forehead I had given up. ECW's shit got old fast for me and I didn't miss it all that much by the time it was gone. Great, Sandman is back with a beer, cigarette, and he's hitting himself with a kendo stick, "yeaaaa!".


But yes, ECW looked like it was reserved for people in the age range you describe. Most older folks in that time were too busy in their lives (over 25ish) to give ECW a try. How much wrestling could one person take in at that time?

They also spent a ton of time replaying the same promos over and over again. It was the greatest generic promo of all time but how many times could you run it?

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I'm pretty much with GSB in that I was into it when I first discovered it. It was different, a truly legitimate alternative to WCW and WWF at the time. ECW had more of an edge about them, much more of an edge if you want to be completely honest, and that's really one significant advantage of being a much smaller company. ECW wasn't nearly as mainstream or as large as the big two and, as a result, they were able to do things that the bigger companies probably couldn't have gotten away with.

However, after a little while, ECW started to get pretty stale to me. Even though I was in my teens at the time, I got bored with the mind-numbing, over the top violence. It struck me as a one trick pony and even though people will scream that there was more to ECW than just the hardcore stuff, I don't buy into it. Whenever an advertisement came on television for ECW or for advertising an upcoming ECW ppv, the footage show was ALWAYS of someone being powerbombed through a flaming table, smacked in the head with steel chairs, leaping off balconies, jumping off the ring apron & piledriving someone through a table, etc. ECW's legacy will always revolve around the over the top, hardcore violence because that's what it used to sell itself. After a while, I saw that the majority of the ECW roster needed this to get over because it's all they had. I've seen Sabu try to work matches without it being a hardcore spot fest and he just can't pull it off. He's like a fish out of water and it was like that for most of the ECW guys. Without the crazy spots, without the kendo sticks, tables, barbed wire & thumbtacks; a lot of them just flat out couldn't wrestle.

If we knew then what we know now as it concerns that wear & tear the business puts on wrestlers, I probably wouldn't have even given ECW a cursory view. At that time, many people didn't really understand or appreciate the kind of trauma that such an over the top, violent style onto wrestlers. After all, look at the various tragedies over the past decade or so with wrestlers dying while still young men, addicted to painkillers to cope with the trauma, being crippled, etc. I'm not saying that's all ECW's fault because it isn't, but the style embraced by ECW played a significant part. How could it not when wrestlers were wearing their bodies out in such spectacular, albeit crazy ways?

ECW was a victim of its own success really. It appealed to a cult following but it's over the top style in an industry known for being over the top limited its appeal. No major network would touch it without toning it down quite a bit. By doing that, you wind up taking away what made it unique in the first place.

 

[Maverick T Kenderson]

ECW had amazing wrestlers also. In my opinion Sabu is one of the all time greats. Even guys like Dreamer who were not the greatest had such passion its hard not to admire it. I watched a CZW event recently and it was just violent garbage. ECW had great workers and used "extreme" to get over.

 

[jpickens]

ECW while it did rely too much on ultraviolent stunts it did in fact have allot of great non hardcore matches such as Dean Malenko vs Eddie Guerreo, RVD vs Sabu, Taz vs Bam Bam Bigelo ect and was the source material for the attitude era and was an alternative to the Hogan/NWO show in WCW and WWF kind of what ROH is today minus the excessive violence.

 

[Slash-LN]

I didn't love or hate it. It was always just kind of there. I watched a few tapes that a friend let me borrow and liked some of what I saw. I was only really familiar with it because it was covered in World Of Wrestling magazine and I bought that every month. I have a few of the dvds that have come out since WWE took over it and honestly I don't feel like I missed a whole lot. I've since watched a few pay per views that I found online and while they are okay I don't think I would have paid to see them back then. That being said there are a few wrestlers that came out of there that I really liked.

 

[The Dragon Saga]

ECW was entertaining, it was the closest thing you will find to reality in wrestling, it was innovative, it was different and it left a legacy, or more-so Paul Heyman left a legacy of knowing who the next top star in the industry was.

But it was horrible. There is nothing good about hardcore or ultraviolent wrestling. It wasn't even wrestling for the most part, it was guys hurting each other for the enjoyment of a blood thirsty audience. ECW's revolution wasn't really a revolution, it was a flash in the pan that had to end somewhere and as said by Stevie Richards in Barbed Wire City, it seemed like at times the only way that audience would be happy is if someone died in the center of that ring.

ECW may have been entertaining but a majority of it was for the wrong reasons.

 

[laodaron]

ECW is pure garbage if you're looking back at it from 2013. Now, as a 15 year old kid in 1996, ECW VHS was possibly the greatest discovery since porn for me. I don't dislike ECW, and in fact, I even still like some of the guys. But the level of ability there was abysmal. It's about perspective.

I watched ECW as a kid. My friends and I would get the PPVs (not just ECW, but WWF and WCW) and then we would do moves on each other into pools and on trampolines and shit. We weren't real backyard wrestlers, but we loved it. We watched Foley dive off the HIAC. We watched Sabu and Terry Funk barbed wire fiascoes. I have also watched all of the major documentaries on ECW. I love watching shoots on Youtube, etc., to learn all I can about it. But the one singular theme that remains constant that I see as clear as day now is that the people that spent the longest in ECW weren't good enough wrestlers/sports entertainers to get out of ECW.

For example, everyone loved Balls Mahoney, but he wasn't skilled enough to actually have left ECW for one of the big two (although he could probably wrestle for TNA right now and be one of the more talented guys). So, instead of being able to leave the company, he embraced it with everything he had. And now, he is what he is, and its a very sad situation. But he's not alone, as many of the old ECW guys are either dead or ailing.

Paul Heyman, love him or hate him, never really had a long term vision. Almost all of the ECW alum are junkies or dead. It's horribly sad to discuss, but really, the style of entertainment that these guys gave us for just shy of a decade took away decades from their own lives.

There's nothing wrong with liking old school ECW. It was fun for us that were kids at the time. But to see the evil offspring that ECW spawned, such as XPW, CZW, IWA is really disturbing. I can't really watch any of that unless it's on a Botchamania.

If you haven't watched Barb Wire City, do it. Or Forever Hardcore. Or the one the WWE did. Watch them, watch some of the old matches. Some of them really aren't too bad, I mean, ECW at some point or another had Benoit, Malenko, Jericho, Foley, Austin, Mysterio Jr., Juvie, Tajiri, etc. Just don't expect to see a Meltzer 5 star match.

 

[ShinobiMusashi]

I was a pretty big Hitman fan growing up. ECW was always presented as this wrestling revolution that was rebelling against the two corporate machines that raided their talent, stole their ideas, and controlled the business. The same two corporate machines that screwed the Hitman over & buried his career. By 2000 I was a hardcore ECW cool aide drinker to say the least.

ECW just clicked with me for a couple of different reasons. Sure, if I were to compile a list of my 30 favorite matches of all time, the ECW matches would not be very high. It was flawed to hell and back, but everything about it was just me. It was all counterculture(other counterculture examples: George Carlin, Pantera, The American Football League of the 1960's). The music. The characters. It was gritty like an episode of the TV show "Cops", and at the same time it all had a "Pulp Fiction" swagger to it. Also loved the way they would break Kayfabe openly in a way that it would create another Kayfabe within itself(something that was lost on the bookers that tried emulating ECW's worked shoot style).

I still enjoy watching old ECW tapes more than any wrestling show that comes on TV today. There is still a lot of it I haven't seen. I just like the music and the overall distinct style that the show had. Like I said, it just fits me.

Something else about ECW that intrigues me is the way they made it as far as they did on such a shoestring, DIY operation. ECW was one of those little companies that stood up to the juggernaut, and even though they didn't have the firepower to do any damage, they still made a bit of an impact(both positive & negative). The USFL and Sega are two similar businesses that tell similar stories. Stories like that intrigue me. I like seeing how they did it.

 

[Tom]

I have a love hate for ECW. I loved how they brought so many new things into pro wrestling, but hate most the fans and how bad the stars were treated. Now Paul Heyman is nutorious for not paying stars, so when Mike Awesome left, it should have been understandable, shouldn't it? Joey Styles hated Awesome for leaving and I hated how unprofessional Styles was. I have many more reasons.

 

[Mighty NorCal]

I couldnt say it was "hate" that I felt for it, thats a much stronger emotion than ECW ever evoked from me. More sympathy, and eye rolling.

ECW, for the most part, was utter trash...However, it had some things about it that were very good, and that I wish some company would explore nowadays.

Foremost of these, is how varied the ECW cards were, and took pride in being. They were all for having a segment with luchadores or Japanese wrestlers, a segment with pure technicians, and the other segments of blood and gore. If anything is painful about WWE, its that so much of the show feels like it could be skipped, because its all the same paint-by-numbers fastfood wrestling bullshit.

I liked the varying characters. The heroes also had flaws, and had complexity to their character. It doesnt always have to be "white hat/black hat" especially with a show more centered towards adults. This said, I loved how heels were allowed to be TRULY scummy, and get REAL white hot heat. Watch some of Bubba Dudleys promos from the rise and fall dvd, you will see

It was nice that they went out of their way to be something different. Much of the time, "different" also equated to "sucky" and "hack" but the bright spots were refreshing.

 

[Limitless]

OMG I loved ECW to death, but I also Loved WCW and WWF at the Time. While WWE and WCW were edgy and had great production values, It was one of the reasons I hated them. ECW was edgy and gritty, and the production followed that. I loved the wrestlers because they felt real and actually looked like they were going to kill each other.

WWF and WCW had it's moments but ECW had wrestlers that felt real. Sandman could be a guy at the local bar and Sabu looked like a legitimate crazy guy with those scars. RVD was Athletic and he knew it and rubbed it in. Taz was a machine and made you believe he was killing people with those damn suplex's.

I will never forget watching it for the first time and watching Raven's Character. He was dark and reminded me of all the anti-social goth kids at my school who I could not stand. However he was and still is one of the most intriguing characters I have ever seen. The Women were HOT and the product felt Real. You had everything from technical wrestling, to hardcore wrestling to the beginning of Luchador Wrestling.

Was ECW Perfect? Hell No... but it is what made it fun. I miss it more now because WWE is so damn flashy and less real in terms of how it's all presented. The social media crap in WWE is driving me crazy as well as the lack of depth in characters... with a million hours of wrestling a week which kills it for me. ECW, you had to tape or borrow tapes from friends which also made it interesting because it wasn't all over the place.

I do not think ECW would have lasted even if A network like USA or Fox ... ect would have picked it up. However I miss it and would like to look at it as a childhood pastime that made me pretty happy to be a wrestling fan.

 

[Matty~!]

I'm personally a huge ECW fan I first saw it in late 1999 when I had been totally driven away from the WWF for the complete lack of interest in the angle heavy hyperbole and minimal emphasis on the matches in the Attitude Era.

Whilst ECW was hardly the classic wrestling promotion it had the values of a classic wrestling promotion in it's storyline process and it encapsulated things from outside wrestling in the TV shows and PPV's that as teenager I loved, from the women to the music and the bare faced brutality that the majority of matches contained.

I think if you grew up on the wrestling in the territory days unless the territories were built on a brawling style, ECW was probably a stretch to get into. On the opposite end of the spectrum I think as a modern fan if you've never seen the ECW Hardcore TV's week on week and just pop in any major show from the time period the shows can look like a total mess.

Heyman's genius was his cast of characters and how they inter played with each other from the bottom of the card to the main event. A prime example is the Dog Collar Tag Match from Gangstas Paradise in 1995 if you view it as a match by todays standards the match is terrible. However if you have seen the TV's leading up to it, the interaction from a whole cast of characters not just Raven and Stevie vs The Pitbulls you have Dreamer, 911, Bill Alfonso, Beaulah and even then I'm probably forgetting some. These were intricately woven plot points that had begun with Raven's introduction run through the spring and summer of 1995 and then carried on past Gangsta's Paradise in September 95 and into the November 2 Remember.

If you look back with today's eyes over the 8 or so year history of Eastern and Extreme there is probably only a dozen or so matches that would hang with today's standard. At the end of the day that's like any evolution of the business whether it being Bruno's WWWF in comparision to Hogan's WWF to Austin's WWF or Cena's WWE. Exactly the 1970's All Japan compred to 1990's All Japan.

 

[T2KFreeker]

LOVED ECW. My Friends and I were into Tape Trading back in the day, and I'm very happy that I was or else I might have missed out on ECW until it's later days. Mind you, a television station out here was pirating the signal in 1997, but I don't know if I would have bothered with it had I not seen the earlier tapes.

Point I can make, if you take all the backstage politics and the Bounced Checks and stuff like that out of the equasion, yes, ECW was a viable company. Heyman fought to the bitter end to keep the company afloat, and even with some of the violence that was going on, some classic stuff came from it. The whole feud between Raven and Tommy Dreamer comes to mind. I dare anyone to say it wasn't violent and gritty. Still, the two of them also had some classic matches and moments that anyone who saw the shole thing will never forget. Eddie Guererro and Dean Malenko feuding in ECW for the short period of time that went on was instant classic and also helped to bring heavy attention to the promotion. The early days of the fueds in the Tag Team division between Public Enemy, The Emininators, The Pitbulls, and the Dudleys were just classic. Even adding the Gangstas New Jack and Mustapha to that mix was classic. RVD and Jerry Lynn always tore the House down, and like him or Not, Sabu was actually quite a good wrestler, and far beyond me to say, he could go without a chair.

Then there is Taz. Yeah, people tend to forget his run in ECW. His feud with Shane Douglas was awesome as was his feud with Sabu. People forget about him because he's an announcer these days, but believe it or not, he really added credibility to the promotion and had some of the best matches there. His run in the WWF was good, but nowhere hear as good as it was in ECW. There were a whole slew of really good wrestlers that came through ECW and still are good today. They may be on the end of their careers due to age, but a large portion of their body of work was with ECW and it's worth checking out. People who love it are going to love it and those that hate it are going to hate. What can I say? No other Hardcore wrestling company has been as good as ECW was though, sorry. The thing that put them above companies like CZW, XPW or JCW was the fact that you had good announcing, and some good old fashioned wrestling matches mixed in with the Ultraviolence. These other companies seemed to have missed that.