Sunday, June 12th, 2005 was a great night to be a wrestling fan once again. I often talk way too much about wrestling and with good reason with my former background as a wrestling journalist/news reporter but last Sunday brought out some emotions I haven’t felt about wrestling in a long time. While the WWE and NWA-TNA have both been adequate lately, the emotions that I felt while watching the ECW PPV last Sunday were emotions that I had been waiting to feel for a long time. For the first time in a long time, I was actually anticipating this PPV as were other faithful ECW fans.
To recap a bit of wrestling history, ECW was a small, independent wrestling federation from Philadelphia that started out as Eastern Championship Wrestling and later quit the NWA Alliance and changed its name to Extreme Championship Wrestling. It was an innovative wrestling federation that had little to do with story lines like the soap opera WWE of today and more to do with blood,sweat and hard work ethic from the wrestlers that wrestled in that very ring every night. It was the first American wrestling fed. to bring the Mexican ‘extreme lucha-libre- style into the United States as well as to feature matches that other federations wouldn’t dare to touch like the barbed wire wrestling match.ECW didn’t have the production values of a WCW or WWE so they had to settle on smaller venues with lower production values and poor lighting. What set ECW apart from the rest though was its connection with its fans. ECW had some of the craziest,most loyal fans that you could ever ask for and if they didn’t like you than they would tell you about it right to your face. The fans would often start chants up during the match that I wouldn’t dare to repeat in this blog due to their choice of language and they would also bring weapons to the shows to give to the wrestlers to use on each other.
Because ECW couldn’t afford to travel very often ; they would often hold their shows at the ECW Arena in Philadelphia which is now known as The Viking Arena. The fans would come from different areas of the North-Eastern United States to Philadelphia just to show their dedication to the product.ECW learned to create brand new characters and gimmicks and during their prime had some of the brightest wrestlers to come to the United States from all over the world. ECW was a victim of the Monday Night Ratings War between WCW/WWE at the time with both companies competing with one another and snatching up any rising star from ECW when the opportunity arose.
Eventually, ECW lost their cable TV deal and their owner, Paul Heyman , ran into some financial trouble. The company had to file for bankruptcy in 2001 and their assets were later bought by Vince Mcmahon who at one time was a financial backer of the company. The problem that started from all of this was that ECW never got a proper send off or a chance to thank their fans for all of their support. Some former ECW wrestlers and current WWE workers realized this and went to Vince Mcmahon himself with the idea of putting on an ECW Reunion show and Vince liked the idea so much that he decided to create the PPV.
So the date for the show was set for June 12th and the show ended up being a huge success. Almost all of the entire ECW roster was able to participate in the show with a few being unable to attend the show due to political and personal reasons.With the WWE’s footprints all over the event; many were pessimistic about the PPV and whether or not it would be able to deliver the same high caliber of wrestling that ECW produced before they shut down. I was happy to see upon watching the PPV that the wrestlers didn’t hold back and, in the case of a few wrestlers, gave even more than was asked of them.
I felt that the Jericho/Storm match could have been a bit longer but was still very good in the time that was given to them. The Rey. Jr. and Psychosis match could have been a bit more exciting as well based on the chemistry and number of times that those two men have wrestled each other in the past. The Benoit/Guerrero match was a strict mat wrestling styled match and was a nice change of pace compared to some of the other matches held during the night. The three way dance between Tajiri/Super Crazy/Little Guido was a fun match to watch with a nice spot by Super Crazy going up to the balcony and doing a moonsault on to the wrestlers below.The Dudley Boyz vs. Dreamer/Sandman match was a complete bloodfest to end the night with tons of surprises interfering and causing the match to be a complete chaos. The highlight match of the night was clearly Awesome/Tanaka which was a hot feud in ECW during its day and only continued its legacy on Sunday night. The spots in that match were amazing and certainly quieted any critics that felt that Awesome/Tanaka were washed up. There were also a few surprises throughout the night but I won’t give any away to anybody that hasn’t ordered or watched the PPV yet.
Overall, the PPV was a complete success and if ECW never comes back after this night then at least they went out with a bang. A big thanks goes out to all those wrestlers that participated in the event or had been a part of ECW back in the day. The company will never be forgotten and will always live on whenever something crazy happens and its fans chant out those famous words ‘E…C…DUB! E…C…DUB! E…C…DUB!’
ECW 1992-2001 ECW REUNION 2005 ECW REINCARNATION 2005-?
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