MR. TITO: Why Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) Mattered (Follow-Up to NXT Tribute Show)

This past Wednesday on 11/6/2024, NXT held their CW show at the infamous ECW Arena in Philadelphia, PA. The night before, Philly was the epicenter of the 2024 Election but on Wednesday Night, it was the home of MUCH NEEDED nostalgia and entertainment. The event featured ECW legends such as Dawn Marie, Rob Van Dam, Francine, Buh Buh Ray Dudley (became “Bubba” in WWE), Rhyno, and Little Guido (later renamed to Nunzio in WWE). They mixed it up with the NXT talent and either had fun with or put over their talent in various segments or matches. The ECW Arena provided a fun and unique atmosphere.

I give Triple H credit where it’s due… He was a big fan of the past wrestling product. His own wrestling character is a hybrid mix of Harley Race and “Nature Boy” Ric Flair while he took good care of Ric Flair with his Evolution group during the early to mid 2000s. He’s brought back older event names that were thought to have been lost forever, loves tag team wrestling, brought back War Games, among many other things. Vince McMahon, by contrast, HATED the ideas created by other promotions and wanted to morph wrestlers or angles/ideas from elsewhere into his own (like the NWO crap from 2002).

What NXT did on Wednesday night was VERY appreciated by longtime Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) fans, particularly the fans who LOVED the product from 1995-1999, the peak years of the promotion in my opinion.

The late 1990s were a total treat for wrestling fans. You had WCW and WWE battling on Monday Nights and then this 1 hour infomercial of pro wrestling would come on in many Eastern areas on LATE Friday or Saturday nights, often like at midnight or 1am. So, your wresting viewership was heavy on Monday Night and then you were free to do whatever you wanted for the rest of the week. What a great time! Then, you could go party, date women, attend high school sporting events, or do whatever you wanted on Friday or Saturday night and as you’re arriving home by 1am, YOU GOT EXTREME! After a wild night of drinking or getting laid, you came home and ECW kept you up for 1 more hour and it NEVER and I repeat NEVER let you down.

Why? Because Paul Heyman was in charge and knew how to not only write a wrestling show, but to BUILD CHARACTERS.

See, that’s the difference between ECW and all of the independent clones who have tried to imitate it, along with TNA and AEW trying to replicate ECW with “hardcore” matches.

Sure, ECW made going through tables, jumping off ladders, swinging chairs, cursing in promos, drinking beer or smoking cigs on television, or involving scantily clad women in storylines famous… BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT DREW YOU IN!

What drew you in were guys like the Sandman who did a 5-10 minute entrance to Metallica’s Enter Sandman while smashing at least 10 beer cans off of his forehead. Even before his matches even started, you knew who this guy was about. He was a party machine who LOVED HIS FANS, and in turn, the FANS LOVED HIM BACK. He’d go into that ring and either get the crap beat out of him, or he’d swing that Singapore Cane. It was FUN and that’s what all of these indy clones or TNA/AEW have never realized.

Let’s take Tommy Dreamer next… He looks like a regular guy, someone who is either making steel or working on your broken vehicle. But he’s built tough naturally and can fight. Better yet, the guy works hard and plays by the rules while there are others who don’t, such as Raven. Dreamer sticks up for his love interest Beulah McGillicutty and never stops fighting to defend her. Poor guy took an absolute BEATING defending her honor and getting revenge on Raven, but that was the beauty of his character. He fought for what was right and was 100% consistent in that effort, which the fans 100% bought.

Raven was awesome… Coming out to the Offspring song and he was just diabolical. WWE and WCW didn’t know what they had with Scotty, but Paul Heyman did and let him add his own personal touches to it. One of the BEST heels of all time and you just cheered for Tommy Dreamer, Sandman, or Stevie Richards to get revenge on him. True story, I was at a houseshow during Spring of 1997 just after their first Barely Legal 1997 Pay Per View and I actually got to see Stevie Richards get a clean victory over Raven. After seeing Stevie get bullied for YEARS, my eyes got to see him Steviekick Raven and pin him cleanly. Oh my, what amazing moment to witness.

If you watch Stevie Richards’s YouTube channel, you’ll hear how incredibly smart he is about wrestling and I believe he gained much of that knowledge while in ECW. Very talented wrestler and I believed he was a close Shawn Michaels replica, but I thought Stevie was a better babyface than Shawn. Stevie flourished with the Blue World Order gimmick and deserved more time to grow as a superstar. You wanted him to get revenge on Raven after being bullied for years, but he never got that chance on television. Instead, he jumped to WCW to remain Raven’s flunky. I was later glad that Richards got to show his talent with the Right to Censor stuff as a character because he was truly unique in ECW through 1997 and never truly got his due from that run.

Taz was a total badass in ECW… I wish that he never left, as WWE exposed his shorter size whereas ECW protected him. The “Human Suplex Machine” gave us an incredible ride through 1999 and was their BEST main eventer, in my opinion. Those feuds with Sabu, Shane Douglas, and Bam Bam Bigelow were legendary. Anyone who comes out to KISS’s War Machine song is a badass in my book.

I loved Shane Douglas in ECW because he could be himself and not shoved into some weird gimmick, such as the Dynamic Dudes or “Dean”, while also being in a nurturing environment like ECW rather than a declining one like WCW became during 2000. In my opinion, that entire storyline arc with Shane screwing over the Pitbulls to get Francine and then Rick Rude, under a mask, makes his return to pro wrestling, only to allow the injured Pitbull to make a comeback. Just pure fun, but then Rick Rude joined Shane so that they could “share” Francine. LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT! So happy to have Rick Rude back and ECW accomplished that feat.

Sabu was one of the must unique wrestlers of all time and sold himself as if he was legitimately crazy or dangerous. Completely fearless and made your eyes get glued to the television whenever he wrestled. I’m still baffled how WCW didn’t use him properly, but it was crowded over there. If you want a classic Sabu match, check out his barbed wire match with Terry Funk. That match from 1997, I believe, was utterly insane and gave Sabu the ECW Title. Just greatness and then I loved him tagging up with Rob Van Dam.

Rob Van Dam, what can I say? The version you see how is the more chill, laid back version of him but the ECW version, at first, was “Mr. Monday Night” as a cocky heel who acted like he was a desired free agent that both WWE and WCW were recruiting. That gimmick was so groundbreaking and the ECW fans ate it up… But then you’d see the guy wrestle with his kicks, flips, and amazing ability to sell moves like a champ (his DDT selling!!), and it was a real struggle to dislike him. RVD is one of those wrestlers who is impossible to dislike and he instantly became popular when he joined the WWE. I was SO PROUD of him for winning the WWE Title at ECW One Night Stand from 2006 in front of the ECW homecrowd. Easily, one of the best World Title victories of all time.

TOTAL ELIMINATION, yeah!!! TOTAL ELIMINATION, yeah!!! I loved me some Eliminators with Perry Saturn and John Kronus. Up to that point, I considered them the most talented tag team that I ever saw. Perry was an amazing in-ring technician who would also get acrobatic if he had to. Kronus was essentially a taller and thicker version of Rob Van Dam with his kicks and flips. I LOVED the Total Elimination finisher with Saturn sweeping the legs and Kronus hitting the helicopter kick. Perfect finisher… LOVED THESE GUYS and am forever amazed at Perry Saturn jumping off the top rope with a torn up knee that was in a walking boot.

Nunzio may have been on NXT this week, but he was Little Guido along with Tommy Rich and the late great Tracy Smothers for the Full Blooded Italians (FBI) stable. This stable was absolutely hilarious how they’d play up being “Italians” even though only Guido passed that test. Tracy Smothers would be announced as being from the “Nashville section of Italy” and he’d do his little Italian dance after that announcement. They had those FBI t-shirts and came out to the PERFECT entrance music with N-Trance’s hip hop mix of the Bee Gees’s Stayin’ Alive. It was just a total party when they came out and Tommy Rich was there to get the fans upset at ringside. FBI would live on through additional variations, but the Rich/Smothers/Guido iteration was, by far, the best and remains one of my favorite groups in wrestling.

Well, well, well… The quintessential studmuffin Joel Gertner was one-of-a-kind. His ring entrances were legendary, especially when he teamed with the Dudley Boys who could also cut vicious heel promos. Just go to YouTube and type in “Joel Gertner” to appreciate what that man did. Furthermore, he sold that neck injury forever, which is a testament to a great worker. I about lost it when I heard him say “harder than the tree that hit Sonny Bono”. Just rough!

Gertner helped manage the Dudley Boys, who consisted of Buh Buh Ray Dudley and D-Von Dudley. D-Von was the “black sheep” of the Dudley Boys stable, who had many members… But then one day, Buh Buh turned on his family to side with D’Von and they delivered the very first 3D finisher to poor Spike Dudley. In my opinion, they are the BEST tag team ever because they were great but they also made their opponents look tremendous. These guys drew mega heat as heels, but then sold like complete champs for their opponents. Then, they jump to WWE and become an even larger success… But both Dudleys were tremendous on the microphone and seriously almost caused many riots throughout the country with their heel promos that heavily insulted the fans.

When you heard that gun shot and Natural Born Killas by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube began playing, you knew TROUBLE was following it. Whether he was with the Gangstas or on his own, New Jack was beyond belief. He’d hurl an entire trashcan of weapons into the ring and just blast people with each weapon while Dre and Cube was blasting on the speakers. Then, New Jack would do those balcony dives and they would blow your mind because nobody dared to try that stuff through 1996-1997. Yes, he hurt many other wrestlers, but I’d argue each of those wrestlers knew what they were getting into. I didn’t see him injuring either Dudley or Eliminator when he wrestled them, did we? If you let Jack bully you in the ring, he’d take advantage of you and likely badly hurt you. But if he had competition who could keep him in check, it made for many entertaining matches.

Then you had guys like Al Snow and Justin Credible who struggled in places like the WWE and Paul Heyman would make them into stars. Gave a mannequin head to Al Snow and it got him over with “head”. The entire crowd had Styrofoam heads and loved everything of Prodigy’s Breathe blasting in the background. Aldo Montoya struggled to get over at all in WWE, but Paul renames him as “Justin Credible” and he matters in ECW.

Speaking of guys from other promotions, both Mick Foley and Steve Austin had ECW runs before they hit it big in WWE. For both, Heyman worked on their characters and promo cutting ability. He just gave the microphone to both guys and let them cut promos to find themselves as characters. Then, when opportunities came up in the WWE, both guys could unleash and become HUGE stars.

LOVED Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka. I could watch those two wrestle for hours and it would never get old. Shame what Mike Awesome did, though, but money talks and ECW had none of it during the year 2000. However, I still enjoy their 2005 match that they had at ECW One Night Stand. Both guys STILL HAD IT and put on the match of the night.

I remember thinking “WTF” when I saw Lance Storm acting as a fill-in wrestler for ECW’s Barely Legal match against RVD. Those chairshots were weak! But if you watch him in that match with RVD, Storm is perfectly selling all of RVD’s moves and making him look like a champ. Storm is an amazing worker and did his best to make any opponent he worked with look strong. As a heel, he’d stir up anger from the crowd with his “I’m from Calgary, Alberta, Canada” promo every time. Great teammate of Justin Credible for the Impact Players.

Though many of these guys would flesh out their characters later as they got older and with WCW or WWE, but damn ECW introduced you to Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Konnan, Juventud, Psychosis, and many others whom WCW raided to fill their roster for the 1996 boom. While ECW is somehow known for being “hardcore”, much of these guys stacked ECW cards with excellent technical matches.

And oh my, the ladies… Francine was a heel manager for “the Franchise” Shane Douglas and just taunted wrestling fans with her outfits yet she was a heel. When you have a crowd changing “she’s got herpes” at you, the job of generating heat as a heel has been successful. On top of that, you had Beulah McGillicutty who would get into fights with Francine and prompt Joey Styles to scream “CAT FIGHT! CAT FIGHT! CAT FIGHT!”. Dawn Marie, man… She still has it (so does Francine), but Dawn Marie would leave and have a great WWE career.

Joey Styles was the perfect manager for this chaotic adult themed adventure and he sold all of the characters’ actions and moves perfectly. “OH MY GOD”. Announcers matter when they can convey history and storytelling as they are calling the action.

There are probably MANY characters that I’m forgetting about and if you are one of those former ECW wrestlers that were hoping to get mentioned, I’m sorry… But know that what you did in ECW was LOVED and I enjoyed that 1-hour infomercial show on late Friday or Saturday nights (I think it was Saturday Night at 1am on a Pittsburgh UPN channel).

It’s NO SECRET that the WWE is thriving NOW because (a) they have Triple H in charge who appreciates what other promotions did and (b) they are letting Paul Heyman help with character development. Two very sharp brains are operating in WWE now and allowing wrestlers to “do more with less”. Roman Reigns BARELY has to wrestle, yet he’s more over than ever because he can convey his CHARACTER simply by talking on the microphone or shooting an angle. The entire WWE roster is getting over based on CHARACTER rather than high-risk stunts.

If you go back, there was once an ECW clone promotion called XPW and they pushed the violence even harder than ECW. Sure, it had some initial success, but with time, their fans became desensitized to the violence and they just didn’t have characters to fall back on. Same thing with CZW right now and to an extent, the many times both TNA and AEW tried to get violent. Ditto for WWE, who is guilty of pushing the violence with big table spots or falling off Hell in a Cell but nobody remembers the next day. Wrestling fans quickly get numb to guys getting through tables, falling off of cages, using ladders, swinging kendo sticks… IT GETS OLD.

LOOK AT WHAT I JUST WROTE… I wrote everything from memory because those ECW character made an impact on me!

And not just their characters, but the presentation… Honestly with ECW, the matches were actually irrelevant because the entrances pumped the crowd with pure electricity.

We talk about THEME MUSIC constantly and ECW nailed it… Granted, they weren’t paying for licensed music, but having real music was a treat. Just look at these bangers:

• Sandman: Enter Sandman by Metallica
• Tommy Dreamer: Man in a Box by Alice in Chains
• Terry Funk: Desperado by the Eagles
• Raven: Come Out and Play by the Offspring
• Mike Awesome: The Zoo by the Scorpions
• The Gangstas: Natural Born Killas by Dr. Dre & Ice Cube
• Full Blooded Italians: Stayin’ Alive by N-Trance
• Taz: War Machine by KISS
• Shane Douglas: Perfect Strangers by Deep Purple
• Rob Van Dam: Walk by Pantera

But then ECW would also use lesser known artists or have theme songs made. Sabu and the Blue World Order theme music kicks, folks.

You are WELCOME for an awesome playlist, by the way…

That’s what most newer wrestling fans MISS about Extreme Championship Wrestling… It was about character and presentation and for the first time back then, a wrestling promotion for grown-ups instead of the sanitary product that WWE and WCW presented before 1996.

The many, many ECW clones didn’t have that and neither did TNA or AEW for the most part. Characters draw, not the in-ring product. Fans buy tickets based on the HYPE of the match, not the match itself. And it’s usually the finish of the match that baits fans in to wanting more, not the entire match. ECW didn’t get that many “star” ratings, but it made a major long-term impact on the wrestling business and gave Paul Heyman much needed experience to later HELP the WWE grow again.

I really liked what NXT did on Wednesday night and speaking as a former ECW fan from the mid-to-late 1990s, I want to extend my “THANK YOU” to WWE for a great night of entertainment and nostalgia.

Imagine having a full-blown WCW appreciation night for NXT? That would be fun…

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