It’s Saturday night maybe Sunday and there you were with a few friends up late, drinking drinks you shouldn’t have been drinking/ maybe doing things you shouldn’t have been doing and there you were glued to you viewing boxes watching people destroy their bodies week after week in some arena in South Philadelphia. It wasn’t WWF and it wasn’t WCW but what it was changed the way you looked at professional wrestling for the rest of your life and it’ll never revert back to that innocence of youth.
ECW was part carnival freak show and part stunt man extravaganza featuring people that you would never imagine fitting into the other two bigger promotions. There was blood and alcohol and violence and top-shelf athleticism and grand spectacle. It wasn’t just the boys either. The women were just as much a part of the drama as anyone else. Who remembers Beulah wrestling Bill Alfonzo?
Todd Gordon and Paul Heyman some how found themselves in the right place and the right time with the right talent and hit the nail on the pulse of a very angst fueled decade. Building a grassroots movement that claimed the whole east coast with a weekly broadcast, pay-per-views, video games and a short tenure on syndicated television. Even well known wrestlers jumped ship and joined the circus: Ravishing Rick Rude, Rey Mysterio, Steve Austen and more. All mixing it up with all-time favorites like The Franchise Sean Douglas, Sabu, Taz, Tommy Dreamer, The Sandman, Terry Funk, The Dudleys, The Gangsters, The Pitbulls, Chris Candido, Lance Storm, RVD and more more more.
Here is a documentary I’ve found in one of my late night insomnia driven journeys through the internet. An indepth documentary interviewing the people that made ECW what is was. An underground force that somehow stole attention away from two multi-million dollar wrestling entities and dictated the direction of the business for years to come. ECW is to wrestling what WU TANG CLAN is to HIP HOP.
