Who was the backbone of the original ECW?

[ShinobiMusashi]

Sabu was the backbone of ECW, and gave it it's edge.

New Jack was the balls, Shane Douglas was the dick, and Justin Credible was the asshole. Any questions?

Lance Storm was awesome in ECW.

 

[braveh]

You apparently haven't seen this match...

Also...
Everything he did in ECW in '99 was pretty awesome. Starting with the match he had against Jerry Lynn at November to Remember '98, and then stretching through '99 he was on fire as far as match quality. Especially his match with Credible against Lynn/RVD at Heatwave, and against Lynn again at Anarchy Rules. He also had a really good one with Edge in '01, and against Jericho at One Night Stand to name some other standouts.

That was like a good NJPW-match without the emotions and zero charisma. Lance Storm doesn't understand how to convey emotions. He doesn't get it. To be fair Daniel Bryan has improved tenfold in that regard since that match. He is pretty good at it these days.

 

[BaconBits]

You're all missing the boat. It wasn't any one wrestler who was the "backbone" of ECW, because, to be honest, none of them were all that spectacular.

The "backbone" was the crowd at the ECW arena. Long before the TNN deal, when they were on public access at 3:00 AM what made ECW special wasn't the wrestling, because more often than not, it was a total clusterfuck. It was how the fans reacted to that clusterfuck. They just had an energy that now other wrestling crowd in history had. They made you believe you were seeing the greatest thing ever.

I mean, those fans STILL chant ECW at events. Over a decade later.

 

[HBsam31]

You're all missing the boat. It wasn't any one wrestler who was the "backbone" of ECW, because, to be honest, none of them were all that spectacular.

The "backbone" was the crowd at the ECW arena. Long before the TNN deal, when they were on public access at 3:00 AM what made ECW special wasn't the wrestling, because more often than not, it was a total clusterfuck. It was how the fans reacted to that clusterfuck. They just had an energy that now other wrestling crowd in history had. They made you believe you were seeing the greatest thing ever.

I mean, those fans STILL chant ECW at events. Over a decade later.

I hve been looking at this thread for a few days now, and as a follower of ECW in its day I couldn't really put together what I thought was a good answer. Then I read this post. There were a lot of guys in ECW that held the promotion together. Sandman, Douglas, Sabu, Taz, to name a few. They were all big stars in the company, but to me one never really stuck out over the other. It took all the parts to make a good show. I totally agree with BaconBits that the ECW arena fans were the backbone of the company. Like he said, they were the ones that made every match, every show, every ppv look like it was the greastest thing ever on tv. The had passion. ROH fans are the only thing I could compare them to today. Without the fans I think ECW would have came off as just another run of the mill show. To this day they still chant for ECW. They were great fans, and indeed they were the backbone of the company.