Shane Douglas, Tod Gordon, Paul Heyman and the birth of "Extreme"

[The Idiot]

For you long time wrestling fans you know what I'm talking about. The verbal tirade launched by Shane Douglas after winning the tournament to be crowned the NWA world champion. Some call it the birth of ECW, something only Douglas, Gordon and Heyman knew about. They were ECW - but known as Eastern Championship Wrestling, with the NWA as the governing body.

My question is....what caused the beef between NWA president Dennis Coraluzzo and Tod Gordon, for Tod, Heyman, and Douglas to do something like this without Coraluzzo's knowledge and did Coraluzzo ever make a statement about this after it happened? For Shane to throw the NWA belt down and proclaim it as a "dead promotion" only to pick up the ECW belt and proclaim himself the ECW champion.

We all know WCW had seceded from the NWA and quit using the NWA's champinoships....but what is the real story with ECW? Was it personal/business problems or did Heyman/Gordon want to follow suit of what WCW did and go on their own?

 

[Lowdown]

For you long time wrestling fans you know what I'm talking about. The verbal tirade launched by Shane Douglas after winning the tournament to be crowned the NWA world champion. Some call it the birth of ECW, something only Douglas, Gordon and Heyman knew about. They were ECW - but known as Eastern Championship Wrestling, with the NWA as the governing body.

My question is....what caused the beef between NWA president Dennis Coraluzzo and Tod Gordon, for Tod, Heyman, and Douglas to do something like this without Coraluzzo's knowledge and did Coraluzzo ever make a statement about this after it happened? For Shane to throw the NWA belt down and proclaim it as a "dead promotion" only to pick up the ECW belt and proclaim himself the ECW champion.

We all know WCW had seceded from the NWA and quit using the NWA's champinoships....but what is the real story with ECW? Was it personal/business problems or did Heyman/Gordon want to follow suit of what WCW did and go on their own?

Coraluzzo went on a tirade right after the incident went down. In fact its on the Rise and Fall of ECW DVD. Supposedly there was real issues between Coraluzzo and Tod Gordon as well as with Shane Douglas. Both Gordon and Heyman wanted to break away from the NWA umbrella and recruited Douglas to win the tourney specifically based on the history he had with Coraluzzo.

 

[ShinobiMusashi]

The Rise and Fall of the ECW left out a bunch of information about their rise.

The ECW's roots go back to the Tri States Wrestling Alliance, owned by Joel Goodhart. Many of the ECW's personalities worked for TSWA. TSWA was ECW before ECW was cool. They had wild brawl weapons matches, raunchy women, and violent matches with Cactus Jack, Abdullah the Butcher, and Sabu in the early 90's in Philly. Todd Gordon worked there for Goodhart, and eventually baught the company from him to change it to Eastern Championship Wrestling.

The heat goes back with Coraluzzo and Joel Goodhart. Coraluzzo ran a promotion that was a rival with TSWA. I can't remember the name of Coraluzzo's promotion, but it was a Memphis style promotion with "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert as one of his biggest stars. Gilbert left Coraluzzo's promotion to work for Goodhart's TSWA(in a classic fued against Cactus Jack).

Supposedly the heat carried over when Todd Gordon changed the name to ECW. Coraluzzo had even more heat with Gordon than he did with Goodhart(TSWA and Coraluzzo were able to co promote a few shows, where as Gordon just didn't want anything to do with him).

Things got hotter when Gordon brought in Eddie Gilbert has his head booker. Supposedly Coraluzzo was going out of his way to make things hard on the ECW, even going as far as calling the fire department on the Arena for too many people in attendance at several shows. Gilbert should be given much more credit for the ECW than he gets. He was responsible for bringing in Paul Heyman(even helped him get started in the booking), who was about to be out of wrestling. Gilbert had a falling out with Heyman, and Gordon, and eventually bowed out with class like a true gentleman. RIP.

I've heard rumors that the entire thing with Douglas throwing down the NWA title was a work with Coraluzzo involved. Gordon and Heyman fooled Coraluzzo into it in return for an ECW vs NWA co promotion angle. Coraluzzo was in on the whole thing, and you can tell from his interview after the match on the Rise and Fall dvd. That was a wrestling promo if I've ever seen one.

I've heard that Coralluzo knew about the whole thing from the beginning(so did the ring announcer Bob Artese, who was told to grab the belt as soon as Douglas threw it down.). He even considered not attending the event due to what was going to happen.

Gordon and Heyman never came through on their promise for an ECW vs NWA angle, and just used the whole thing to distance themselves from Coralluzo and the old school wrestling style in a big way.