Category: ECW PPV Musings

Eastern Championship Wrestling held a show on February 5, 1994 – a night that would be dubbed “The Night The Line Was Crossed.” I don’t know what line was crossed that night, but I do know that this show was home to the promotion’s first three-way dance between reigning ECW Champion Shane Douglas, living legend Terry Funk, and the crazy man Sabu.

So, this is the Eastern Championship Wrestling days of ECW, which means a dimly lit bingo hall and a Joey Styles that has yet to be fully formed. Todd Gordon was still the owner and the one to greet us on this show, letting us know that ECW is not for everyone. And then we follow that with Mr. Hughes squashing some dude in quick fashion, which is no different from any other squash match I’ve seen since the dawn of time. Not for everyone, indeed, Mr. Gordon.

More after the break… or the line, if you dare cross it… that’s so lame…

Continue reading “ECW The Night The Line Was Crossed (February 1994)”

Ramblemania has been delayed again… because I still haven’t got around to seeing the entirety of the four-night “buy one, get one free at the buffet line” or whatever Punk called it months ago. However, I did see the first ECW PPV from 1997. Yeah, Barely Legal turns 25 this year and to celebrate the occasion for a show that I have no personal nostalgia for, I’d figure it’d be appropriate to give it a PPV musings of sorts.

Just so we’re clear on where this is coming from: my exposure to ECW was largely relegated to the occasion mentions in wrestling magazines and such until they started airing ECW PPVs in Canada in around 1999. By the point, ECW had a show on TNN, but most of its big stars were jumping ship to greener pastures in the WWF and WCW. Even during the twilight years of the promotion, I was fascinated by the more rough-around-the-edges style of production and wrestling that I made it a point to try and expose myself to as much ECW as possible, whether it’d be on the stray ECW VHS tape I’d find in stores or some of the later DVD compilations that WWE would put out.

So long story short; I wasn’t an ECW fan during its prime years, but I have a weird fascination with this promotion that I got some of their DVDs and stuff. So now I’m watching the first PPV they put out in 1997, which had its own interesting backstory.. that I’m not going to tell here because it’s been told better elsewhere.

Let’s just get this over with before I start rambling about other shit.

Continue reading “ECW Barely Legal (April 1997)”

A year ago, WWE brought back Extreme Championship Wrestling from the dead for one night only and produced a show worthy of the old Philly-based promotion. And people raved… and then there were rumors of an ECW revival; first as an internet-only show and then eventually a weekly television show on the Sci-Fi Channel… eventually, we’d know what happen, but that’s not for the here and now

ECW One Night Stand 2006 was partly a sequel to the first ONS, but it also served as a prelude to the new weekly ECW television show that would debut the following Tuesday.

Continue reading “ECW One Night Stand 2006”

The era of extreme is revived for one night only… well, two if you count the Hardcore Homecoming show that took place the night before, but that’s not the focus of today’s post.

No, we’re focusing on the show that became a thing because WWE had put out a Rise And Fall Of ECW DVD documentary that was highly regarded by fans and apparently, that prompted them to do their own little ECW reunion show. Even going so far as to book it at the Hammerstein Ballroom arena and giving it ECW-like graphics.

Continue reading “ECW One Night Stand 2005”

So it’s December… and it’s the holiday season… who’s up for an ECW PPV musing?

From December 2000, it’s ECW’s penultimate PPV extravaganza, Massacre On 34th Street. I have not seen this show back in the day; not sure why, but in any event, let’s give this one a shot and see if this would’ve been a better last hurrah than the actual last hurrah that came along the following year.

Continue reading “ECW Massacre On 34th Street (December 2000 PPV)”

So I thought we’d have a change of pace and watch an ECW PPV instead. I’ve decided to go with Anarchy Rulz 1999 for a couple reasons. The first and perhaps most significant reason is that this was the first ECW PPV to air in Canada and as such, the first time I had been exposed to that particular product. Up until that point, ECW was a thing that I read about in wrestling magazines (or as some would prefer to call them, the “Apter Mags”) and only knew the basic bits through third hand accounts. So this was a good starting point to jump on.

The other reason I went with this and one that is more relevant to today’s mentality is that I was curious to see how well a ECW show had aged between my initial (and possibly only) viewing and today. While I could go back and pick any of the so-called “better” ECW shows from the promotion’s prime years, those wouldn’t provide much of a context since, outside of maybe one or two shows, that would be new territory. Going back to ECW, I opted for the first ECW show I’ve watched and I’m genuinely curious to see if I could enjoy this now as much as I did back then… at least, I assume I enjoyed it back then since I do recall watching the subsequent PPVs before ECW’s eventual closure in 2001.

So let’s cause some ruling anarchy or something… I don’t know.

Continue reading “ECW Anarchy Rulz 1999”

This is the final PPV event produced by the original Extreme Championship Wrestling promotion before going bankrupt and left in relative obscurity until a DVD set revitalized interest in the brand… but that’s not part of this story. The story of ECW’s final woes is a sad one – no more television deal, no more PPVs, no more money, very few worthwhile talent remaining, even less exposure – and that’s the overall environment that we see ourselves in watching this show.

Now a disclaimer and a disclosure, if you will; the individual featured in the above image is the Zombie, a one-time gimmick featured in the first episode of WWE’s rebooted ECW series in 2006. While it might seem ill-fitting to feature an image from WWECW on a musing of an original ECW event, in another way, it’s perhaps the more fitting… as I will touch on later.

Let’s get on with it.

Continue reading “ECW Guilty As Charged 2001”