Ten Years Ago Today

[Devon Malcolm]

Not specifically about the anniversary of its closing, but still about ECW, but Jasmine St Claire has just been inducted into the AVN Hall Of Fame. They let anyone in these days.

 

NSFW:-

 

http://business.avn.com/articles/video/AVN...rds-421782.html

[air_raid]

The thing that depresses me reading a "ten years ago" thread is that considering WWF/E and their competition, 2001 was an improvement on 1991, but 2011 feels like dogshit remembering 2001.

[lightningxlock]

Who were Sten Lee & Prodigy? Don't think I've ever heard of them before.

 

Prodigy was a guy by the name of Tom Marquez, and I think he was probably around from about '99 until the end. No idea who Stan Lee is

[Whiskey_Jim]

I actually agree with the guy who said that ECW was overrated but I'll actually explain why rather than being a douche. ECW was the promotion that is most responsible for the spotty/no real selling/no psychology trend that is so abundant in Indy wrestling. Its guys like Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka that made it apparently acceptable to just do dangerous OTT shit with no selling and kill all wrestling psychology, shite like JWF is spawned directly from this.

 

Because of wrestlers such as those two young wrestlers are doing more and more dangerous things rather than work a crowd to get over, so many 'wrestlers' these days think that doing more spots is the way to go as oppose to making what you do count for something in the eyes of the crowd.

[air_raid]

Because of wrestlers such as those two young wrestlers are doing more and more dangerous things rather than work a crowd to get over, so many 'wrestlers' these days think that doing more spots is the way to go as oppose to making what you do count for something in the eyes of the crowd.

 

Nothing to do with EcW, but I agree that there is some amazingly retarded shit going on in some indys. I recently saw someone KICK OUT of a moonsault Styles Clash. Utterly retarded. I dont even want to know what the finish ended up being.

[Devon Malcolm]

Its guys like Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka that made it apparently acceptable to just do dangerous OTT shit with no selling and kill all wrestling psychology

 

I was watching their match (from Heatwave 98? I can never remember the events or year) yesterday and it is just awful. Slow-motion, "go on it's your turn to hit a move, I'll stand here and wait for half an hour while you do it" shite. The worst spot is where Awesome stands next to the ring on that ramp and waits for Tanaka to walk all the way to the other end of the ramp so he can do a sprinting, weak-looking chair shot on him. Just terrible.

[mim731]

I actually agree with the guy who said that ECW was overrated but I'll actually explain why rather than being a douche. ECW was the promotion that is most responsible for the spotty/no real selling/no psychology trend that is so abundant in Indy wrestling. Its guys like Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka that made it apparently acceptable to just do dangerous OTT shit with no selling and kill all wrestling psychology, shite like JWF is spawned directly from this.

 

Because of wrestlers such as those two young wrestlers are doing more and more dangerous things rather than work a crowd to get over, so many 'wrestlers' these days think that doing more spots is the way to go as oppose to making what you do count for something in the eyes of the crowd.

 

I'm not saying i disagree on the example of Tanaka/Awesome helping to mold a trend amongst young indy wrestlers doing dangerous spotty matches without psychology, there is an element of that to ECW. But that's precisely the point, ECW had many elements, and Paul Heyman, for all his flaws, was clearly a big advocate of the three ring circus approach to promotion.

 

It would be untrue to claim that this particular element was the only thing ECW had to offer.

 

The introduction of luchadors to a relatively large american audience on a regular basis?

 

The shift in emphasis towards mostly realistic characters. and away from the more cartoon-ish elements of the big two promotions of the time? The move towards the more risque style of angle that would become de rigueur in the Attitude era?

 

Technical clinics between Guerrero and Malenko, and the introduction of Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Lance storm, and many others to a large American audience?

 

The pull apart brawls that later characterized some of the great fueds of the modern era, such Rock-Austin?

 

All ECW introductions.

 

It would be unfair to merely characterize ECW as a spotty hardcore promotion, they were much more. That is why the company is so revered, because much of what they did was groundbreaking for its time.

[Tommy!]

I know the Awesome Vs Tanaka matches are reckless and lack meaning behind a lot of stuff but I just fucking love them. I don't know why as it should be everything I drift off through based on other stuff I've watched but some how they just always have me on the edge of my seat.

[Dirty Eddie]

I actually agree with the guy who said that ECW was overrated but I'll actually explain why rather than being a douche. ECW was the promotion that is most responsible for the spotty/no real selling/no psychology trend that is so abundant in Indy wrestling. Its guys like Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka that made it apparently acceptable to just do dangerous OTT shit with no selling and kill all wrestling psychology, shite like JWF is spawned directly from this.

 

Because of wrestlers such as those two young wrestlers are doing more and more dangerous things rather than work a crowd to get over, so many 'wrestlers' these days think that doing more spots is the way to go as oppose to making what you do count for something in the eyes of the crowd.

 

I'm not saying i disagree on the example of Tanaka/Awesome helping to mold a trend amongst young indy wrestlers doing dangerous spotty matches without psychology, there is an element of that to ECW. But that's precisely the point, ECW had many elements, and Paul Heyman, for all his flaws, was clearly a big advocate of the three ring circus approach to promotion.

 

It would be untrue to claim that this particular element was the only thing ECW had to offer.

 

The introduction of luchadors to a relatively large american audience on a regular basis?

 

The shift in emphasis towards mostly realistic characters. and away from the more cartoon-ish elements of the big two promotions of the time? The move towards the more risque style of angle that would become de rigueur in the Attitude era?

 

Technical clinics between Guerrero and Malenko, and the introduction of Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Lance storm, and many others to a large American audience?

 

The pull apart brawls that later characterized some of the great fueds of the modern era, such Rock-Austin?

 

All ECW introductions.

 

It would be unfair to merely characterize ECW as a spotty hardcore promotion, they were much more. That is why the company is so revered, because much of what they did was groundbreaking for its time.

 

 

All of that is spot on.

 

I really think that the garbage that has 'influenced a millions backyarders and shitty Indy workers' was the stuff that followed on from ECW but missed all the points you made above. Namely CZW and XPW.

 

Watch a CZW show from the late 1990s or early 2000s to see some full on, no-selling, spot-crazy stupidity. They took the "Holy Shit" mentality of ECW and went seriously overboard. Same with their use of 'ultraviolent' weapons. Constant barbed-wire and glass matches made the ECW 'Gangsta's style' brawls seem tame in comparison.

 

Heyman's ECW had bits of everything. Well, everything for a slightly older audience anyway. There was little in the way of pandering towards kids or giving out family entertainment. The rip-off companies saw that as an excuse to promote spotty, super-violent shit, rather than a solid, all-around product.

 

The whole 'kicking out of a thousand finishers' thing wasn't something that started in ECW. I recall finishers being protected well, and the most common finishes were often over-booked, run-in-fests, certainly not 'so-and-so kicks out of ten piledrivers and 6 powerbombs before no-selling his way to victory' situations.

[Cobra1000]

The way they had an in-ring beer bash after the main event made it seem like they were saying farewell to the fans, knowing that was the end.

 

But then interviews I've seen with various people who were on the card that night all say the first they heard that ECW was finished was when Heyman appeared on Raw as a commentator in mid-February.

So they obviously knew it was almost the end, but nobody knew there would be no more shows.

 

The York & Matthews vs F.B.I. match was pretty good iirc.

 

It's a real shame that they didn't have time to prepare a Last Ever Show.

If they could have just hung on until the Living Dangerously ppv which was planned for March, if they could have spent 2 months promoting the final ECW show it could potentially have been a huge deal.

 

Its all abit conflicted, surely some of them must have known at the time, or else it was a big bunch of rumours. I'm sure a lot of people knew it may have been ending but they hoped it might be saved or whatever.

 

Here's Ryno on the subject (right at the very start)

[TheBigBoot]

how many of you actually watched ECW in its day? if half the people who say they watched ECW actually did they would not of gone out of business

 

Quite a lot. SOW (and later PowerSlam) used to praise it non-stop and, as Dirty Eddie referenced it was a favourite of the UK newsletters and the tape traders back at the very peak of the tape trading boom. It seemed to be PowerSlam's favourite promotion (and compared to the various U.S. mags at the time it seemed to get more coverage over here) but beyond that I think the fact guys like Whipwreck, Sabu and RVD worked shows here shows they had a hardcore following. I believe a lot of the British wrestling scene was influenced by ECW not just in the mid-90s but well into the 2000s. Someone who was part of it will know more than me on that, but that is the impression I've always gotten.

 

Not saying that was a deliberate master plan by ECW just that in some ways it was down to luck - had tape trading been more widespread in the UK a few years earlier it might have been Mid-South or WCCW that had that influence. Then in 1998 Bravo started showing old ECW from a couple of years before hand. That was before ECW even had National TV in the States, yet it was on a (fairly big but very well known) cable channel and digital over here. Less than a year after that Delta started bringing out official releases so you no longer had to order from tape traders you could just pop into your local HMV and buy a copy of the latest event.

 

Don't get me wrong there are some things from 'back in the day' I am suspicious of, like people who were only two at the time or whatever saying they remember remember WrestleMania IV/V/VI/VII/VIII/IX/X/whatever whenever WWE's biggest show comes around each year, but people watching doesn't surprise me. In some ways I'd say ECW was probably more 'over' here than it was in a lot of the States.

[Vamp]

I'm not saying i disagree on the example of Tanaka/Awesome helping to mold a trend amongst young indy wrestlers doing dangerous spotty matches without psychology, there is an element of that to ECW. But that's precisely the point, ECW had many elements, and Paul Heyman, for all his flaws, was clearly a big advocate of the three ring circus approach to promotion.

 

It would be untrue to claim that this particular element was the only thing ECW had to offer.

 

The introduction of luchadors to a relatively large american audience on a regular basis?

 

The shift in emphasis towards mostly realistic characters. and away from the more cartoon-ish elements of the big two promotions of the time? The move towards the more risque style of angle that would become de rigueur in the Attitude era?

 

Technical clinics between Guerrero and Malenko, and the introduction of Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Lance storm, and many others to a large American audience?

 

The pull apart brawls that later characterized some of the great fueds of the modern era, such Rock-Austin?

 

All ECW introductions.

 

It would be unfair to merely characterize ECW as a spotty hardcore promotion, they were much more. That is why the company is so revered, because much of what they did was groundbreaking for its time.

 

But how true is what you just said? I'm not an expert on such matters but hadn't pull apart brawls, technical matches, realistic characters and violent matches been done before? That's always been my take on it really. Most of the NWA wrestlers were pretty realistic, sure there were exceptions but not a lot. Same with other old school promotions really. Certainly the NWA had technical clinics. Then you had incidents like the spike in the immortal Steel Cage I Quit match and Ric Flair being piledriver through a table. Hell, wasn't there even an angle in Memphis where Jerry Lawler got run over? Violence, technical wrestling and realistic characters really wern't anything new, that's the main argument that I think can be made when it comes to the idea of Paul Heyman being a genius, he wasn't really innovating, but he made you think he was. I won't claim to be a fan of the time, and I imagine a lot that were probably did think that everythign that was happening in ECW was new, but now that we have You Tube its pretty clear that a lot of it wasn't. Sure, they might have taken things that little bit further, and Heyman was pretty much on when it came to picking up on culture at the time (music surely) played a massive part in creating the ECW underground image, but a lot of things that are credited to ECW arn't really them. There's an argument to be made I suppose that ECW took on guys that didn't look like your traditional wrestlers, but then Dusty Rhodes commented about how he didn't look like "athletes of the day were supposed to look" and was fighting in world title matches.

 

Of course all credit in the world goes to Heyman for repackaging aspects of wrestling and making people believe that they were original, and indeed there probably were truely some original ideas in ECW that still play a part today, but I do find myself looking at You Tube videos from the 80's and seeing angles, matches and characters that people give credit to later as Heyman's inventions.

[Chris B]

how many of you actually watched ECW in its day? if half the people who say they watched ECW actually did they would not of gone out of business

 

I watched it on Bravo when I could, and bought a couple of the VHS's that came out in the UK. There wasn't much of a way TO follow them in the UK that would have made them money right up until they ended.

 

I was first aware of them in about 1996, thanks to magazines and the RAW invasion (that was 1996 wasn't it? Thereabouts, anyway).

[Glen Quagmire]

Not specifically about the anniversary of its closing, but still about ECW, but Jasmine St Claire has just been inducted into the AVN Hall Of Fame. They let anyone in these days.

 

NSFW:-

 

http://business.avn.com/articles/video/AVN...rds-421782.html

In fairness, so has she for quite a while now.

[Happ Hazzard]

Heyman's ECW had bits of everything. Well, everything for a slightly older audience anyway. There was little in the way of pandering towards kids or giving out family entertainment. The rip-off companies saw that as an excuse to promote spotty, super-violent shit, rather than a solid, all-around product.

Don't agree with this at all. ECW was aimed at a far smaller audience than wrestling had been previously, and the influence of ECW largely helped to drive away any older wrestling fans, and female fans in general.