Eastern Championship Wrestling Debut with KB

[klunderbunker]

Eastern Championship Wrestling
Date: Sometime Between February and March 1993
Commentators: Terry Funk, Steven Jay, Eddie Gilbert

So back in the days of 1992-1993, ECW was part of the NWA. This is even pre-Paul Heyman. This is their debut on local television so I wouldn’t expect much. The opening video has guys like Neidhart, Muraco, Snuka, Volkoff and others from the previous era that mean more than almost anyone of the young stars in ECW. Like I said there’s no Heyman yet so the product is going to look weird to say the least. Let’s get to it.

We immediately open with Terry Funk being brought out as the third man in the booth. No word on who the first two are. There’s a basketball hoop behind them so you can see the high quality here. The other announcer is very annoying and can’t pronounce the N in Funk’s name. Oh it’s Eddie Gilbert. He would be the guy Heyman would replace. Funk is something resembling young here and looks very different than what you would be used to.

Funk hasn’t aged well to say the least. Then again given the life he’s led I can’t say I blame him. I’m assuming these guys are well established characters to the live crowd. This is a hardcore promotion apparently. Gilbert leaves and Funk addressed the crowd, talking about how this is a new company. This is already confusing. Gordon has a belt of some kind which isn’t referenced at all.

Tag Titles: Super Destroyers vs. Hell Riders

The Super Destroyers, the champions, are masked men that come out to the Halloween theme music. This throws me off on the date because the video says June 15, 1993 but their only title reign ended in April of 93 (not entirely true as they had another that lasted less than one day, as in they won them in the afternoon and lost them that night). That reign puts this sometime between June of 92 and April of 93. The Hell Riders are named EZ and HD.

We brawl early on and the match is clipped. There’s someone named Stevie on commentary too. Super Destroyer hits a front flip for the pin on EZ. This was maybe 45 seconds total. No rating due to a lack of content.

Funk goes to talk to the champions’ manager, Hunter Q. Robins III. Oh this is going to take awhile. Nothing at all is said.

We get a video on the Sandman, who is a surfer. Well where else do you think that name came from? He has sunglasses, a wetsuit and a surfboard. I’m kind of at a loss for words here. One of the clips is him beating up someone who appears to be Jerry Lawler. Yeah some of these clips are from the USWA, which is Lawler’s company. The video is looping now. It’s set to Big Shot by Billy Joel. End this please. And we’ll just throw in that he’s the ECW Champion, putting this video from somewhere between November 92 and April 93. Well we’re getting closer.

There is a TV Title Tournament going on. The seeds that I can see are as follows:

#4 Tommy Cairo
#5 Wildman Bellomo

#2 Eddie Gilbert
#7 JT Smith

#3 Glenn Osbourne
#6 Johnny Hotbody

The 1 and 8 seeds aren’t listed. Sure why not? Ah ok 1 is Jimmy Snuka and 2 is Larry Winters.

Salvatore Bellomo vs. Tommy Cairo

Cairo’s opponent doesn’t have a name yet. Funk goes up to talk to Cairo who is undefeated. Oh it’s a tournament match so that’s Wildman Bellomo. His manager is the Cosmic Commander. I wish I was making that up. Bellomo is in some weird outfit that is hard to describe. Funk points out that his mother is undefeated in ECW as well.

According to some research I found, Osbourne was champion and had to vacate it for no apparent reason in February 1993. This tournament would be won by Snuka on March 12 1993, putting this show somewhere between it, likely late February. I honestly don’t know who the announcers are other than Terry Funk. Speaking of Funk, he doesn’t want to wake up in bed with Bellomo.

There’s absolutely nothing special here at all. It’s as generic of a match as you could possibly ask for. Johnny Hotbody comes in and goes after Cairo but misses and puts Bellomo outside which is good for a count out. This ends the show.

Rating: D. Boring as hell match. Cairo would go on to feud with the no longer surfing Sandman about a year later. Bellomo was a WWF jobber for most of the 80s so the Cosmic Commander was a step up for him. This was completely uninteresting.

Overall Rating: D-. For a regular show, this is awful. For a debut show, this is atrocious. There is almost nothing about who these people are or why we should care in the slightest. We’re shown pictures of the champion. How about letting us know something about him? How about a full match for the opener? How about ANYTHING? This was awful, but Heyman was coming and we’ll get to his debut in a few weeks. Only historical appeal here.

 

[X]

The date for this show was actually April 5th, 1993, my birthday actually. Funny too because I just recently watched this show a few weeks ago as well as some of their other 1993 shows. Pretty much you can expect everything to suck massively aside from the Terry Funk-Eddie Gilbert feud, which resulted in a few very good matches, as well as some random good undercard matches, but those are very rare. Heyman didn't start booking for the company until September, so pretty much everything before then is really amateurish and just bad most of the time. If you continue watching some of the 1993 shows though man, definitely check out the debut of Sabu, I'm sure you hate Sabu and think he's a human botch machine, but his debut in 1993 was one of the coolest fucking debut characters I have ever seen in my life, the dude was FAR more frightening than the Undertaker and Kane combined, and he actually had some pretty good matches with a young Taz that fall.

Early ECW is very hit or miss, the company wouldn't really hit their stride until about 1995 but when they did there were some unforgettable angles and matches.