Extreme Championship Wrestling: A Eulogy

On February 16^th, 2010, ECW died. Canceled by Vince McMahon in order to present a new show for SyFy (likely to be a reboot of the same show with a different name and revamped roster), the brand lasted for 15 (!) years in one form or another, however to those that remember the true product, ECW has long been dead and buried, a victim of a competition it could never win, and any repackaging of the name by McMahon ranged anywhere from a cruel tease to borderline sacrilege.

I’ve been a pro wrestling fan since its Silver Age in the mid-80s, and ECW – the true ECW, circa 1994-2001 – was something to behold. It was truly “lightning in a bottle”, with everything just in the right place at the right time. There are tons of stories about ECW and I’ve started to write several of them in the course of writing this article, but they would be best at another time, if the interest is there. For now, I’d like to just share my experiences with ECW during those years.

In the mid-90s, pro wrestling (I’m just going to say “wrestling” for the rest of this article – you know what I’m talking about) had become sanitized. The wrestling I had started on, with the blood and the revenge and the storylines, was gone. Vince McMahon had taken a lot of heat about marketing wrestling to kids and started to appeal to them with gimmicky characters, like garbage men, clowns, and models, and made the plotlines very basic to follow and with quick resolutions. McMahon also believed people who watched wrestling wanted to see physical freaks of nature, either by their muscle tone or by their physical size. These larger and less mobile wrestlers weren’t usually able to work long matches, nor could they perform a variety of moves. It had become stale, and while I still watched, I wasn’t going out of my way to see it.

ECW changed all that, and in that way completely changed the industry. While other smaller promotions were doing some similar things (like bringing back blood into matches), ECW did something completely innovative – yet in hindsight so simple – in the industry. Instead of dumbing things down for its fans, they put the best product they could out and let the fans catch up. In doing so, ECW ended up doing things that were unthinkable at the time for a wrestling promotion.

Hack Meyers vs. Taz - not necessarily worth staying up until 2AM.

I had heard about ECW from friends and finally found it, nestled in a 2AM Saturday night/Sunday morning timeslot on MSG. It was the last show that MSG showed that night before going to infomercials. Some weeks, it was on at 1AM. Some weeks it wouldn’t be on at all.  You weren’t always guaranteed a new show either; on occasion you’d excitedly find ECW and start the VCR, only to find it was the same show as the week previous (on occasion MSG or other channels that were showing ECW would object to the content that week and would refuse to show it). In that sense it felt special when you did get to see it – when it takes actual effort to watch a show, you learn to appreciate it more.

The shows were a mixed bag. Some weeks you’d get a hot Rey Misterio Jr. v. Psychosys 2 out of 3 falls match, some weeks you’d suffer through Axl Rotten taking on Pitbull #2. Some weeks Shane Douglas would talk for what seemed like 45 minutes straight. But you watched each week, because no matter how bad one week’s show was, you didn’t want to miss one of those “OH MY GOD!” moments.

Lovely.

Production-wise, they were made with two video cameras (one steady, one handheld) and a soundboard, almost always from the “ECW Arena” – a converted warehouse in South Philadelphia that hosted midnight bingo when it wasn’t hosting wrestling shows. When you pull up old ECW clips you might think “wow – what is this, a copy of a copy of a copy?” No, that’s how the shows were shown on MSG or whatever channel ECW was on in your area. It was a step above public access, full of commercials for ECW t-shirts and videos. The building was nothing much, but the fans inside of it made the shows and set ECW apart from other small promotions at that time.

See, when you’re holding a wrestling show in front of 15,000 people, you might get some silence or some boos, but the crowd is just noise. When that same show is in front of 500 people, even one smart-ass comment can echo through the whole building, and the South Philly crowd knew it. They started chants (almost always vulgar) about everything; wrestlers, managers, match quality, referees, the kid who swept up the ring – you name it, they did it. Watching from home, you wanted to be there, to be part of this crowd.

Ah yes. Good times.

Maybe that was some of the appeal. ECW was like a corner bar; it was fun, full of regulars (both workers and fans), not everybody knew about it, and you kept going back week after week. The more you watched, the more you got to know everyone who was part of ECW, and nowhere was that more evident than live at the Arena. I got to go several times – driving down with a few college friends for November to Remember ’96, and later taking several of the ECW “bus trips” down (ECW offered a charter bus package to monthly ECW Arena shows from Queens). While the actual surroundings were less to be desired (nighttime is that area of South Philly reminded me of The Warriors, the Arena is smaller than it looks on TV, and a good portion of the people who went to ECW shows – or any wrestling shows for that matter – are “special” people), the experience is one I will treasure.

As I watched ECW grow in popularity and see their talent get gobbled up by the competition, I knew eventually it would have to come to an end, but to Paul Heyman and ECW’s credit, every time you thought they were in trouble, they’d come back with something that made you think that they could legitimately compete with the “big two”. In fact, when Paul Heyman and ECW worked out a working “arrangement” with the WWF to cross-promote each other, you got the thought that ECW could be that legitimate third option that people thought of when they thought of wrestling.

However it was the desire to get to that point that would ultimately cause their demise. When Paul Heyman worked out that arrangement with Vince McMahon, it was McMahon’s WWF that had by far the most to gain. Running a distant second place to Turner’s WCW, McMahon could afford to take a risk associating with ECW and getting a little “edgier”. ECW’s cross-promotion to WWF brought the hardcore fans that WWF had lost before back to watching their programming, and also generated the buzz that brought viewers and fans over from WCW. WCW, in contrast, was simply buying the ECW talent (by signing them away from the promotion with guaranteed money, something ECW could not offer) and dropping them into the established WCW product, causing viewers that may have come aboard following their favorite worker over to WCW to grow frustrated with the company’s direction and seek alternatives.

Very very bad times.

ECW, however, would learn that their deal would provide a short term gain but a long term crippling loss. ECW got the mainstream exposure that they wanted, however their product was still not for everyone. Several angles and the violence in general caused numerous pay-per-view companies to not carry ECW’s first pay-per-view (which ECW played off by calling the PPV “Barely Legal”), and cable networks were reluctant to be associated with that kind of product. ECW was finally able to get on a national cable network (TNN, previously known as the Nashville Network) but a year later found themselves off the air when the network picked up WWF programming. With the debt accumulating from trying to put together a more “professional” product without the benefit of advertising revenue (TNN retained all but five minutes of advertising revenue per show), the cancellation crushed the promotion. Six months later, ECW was no more, its assets purchased by Vince McMahon after Heyman had declared bankruptcy.

I miss the excitement I used to get when I’d see ECW on the TV schedule. ECW’s effect on the pro wrestling industry was major, and as a result seeing “another ECW” is unlikely to happen. Promotions such as ROH carry on pro wrestling’s small promotion roots, but are still just a niche market, and promotions like McMahon’s WWE and Dixie Carter’s TNA are more aware of past mistakes to let the industry get to the point that it was in the mid-90s. Will my interest in pro wrestling come back around if/when my kids get an interest in it similar to the way my interest in comics has? Perhaps.

Just let me know if Paul Heyman’s running the show.

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