Pro Wrestling! (For Everything WWE, Impact, Indies, AEW, & Japan !) 2021

[BeastieRunner]

I got into ECW via tape trading. A lot of puro guys like Ultimo, Jericho, and more showed up there. I liked their pure wrestling matches they had more than the garbage matches.
Not saying all of it was garbage mind you but it wasn't my thing. I was more into WAR, CMLL, Stampede, GLOW, and All Japan in my tape trading days.

[JBatmanFan05]

I liked their pure wrestling matches they had more than the garbage matches.

Same with me. I remember my cousin mostly taking to their hardcore/garbage matches, while I more took to Guerrero vs Malenko and Rey vs Psychosis (Guerrero, Rey, etc were on ECW VHSs at this time despite being in WCW)(and those multi tag Taka Michinoku (Michu Pro) style matches).

(I would later get into puro around 2000/2001, I think my first exposures/loves were Liger and Benoit and Keiji Mutoh)

[Immortal Weapon]

A number of them kept working even when they realized Heyman wouldn't be able to pay them as crazy as it sounds. With the belief that the company would rebound and like usual Paul would save it all. Rob Van Dam I believe detailed that Paul E. owed him such an amount at one point he knew he would never get paid. But he told Heyman to just pay him for the one show he worked (I believe it was the last ECW PPV) and that would be fine. So he got paid for that one to just work.

A lot of those guys stayed because they realistically couldn't find work anywhere else. The average fed wouldn't book the type of guys ECW had on it's roster.

[BigLbo]

You know, it's funny, someone said ECW wouldn't have gotten away with music pirating if it was a "national phenomena"....well, I'm damn sure not from PA or Philly and somehow I got to watching ECW in 1997 or 1998. Somehow, ECW got out of its smaller market.

I was thinking about it and I'm not even certain how I even got into ECW at age 15/16, it damn sure wasn't WWF's crossovers that got me into ECW, I very probably got into it from my cousin (who I went to an ECW show with in 1998), who was into niche/underground skating videos (Tony Hawk and others). Maybe it was a VHS thing, I don't know, because I don't recall my cousin even being much of wrestling fan before ECW (whereas I grew up practically raised by WWF Coliseum Home Videos).

they had already hit ppv by that time. my friend used to tell me about ecw in like 95ish, his grandpa had one of those giant satellite dishes in the back yard. his grandpa was a big wrestling fan but hated ecw, he liked it though and made it sound cool to me. i started seeing some pics in magazines but it wasn't until heatwave 98 that a guy i used to work with gave me a tape that i actually watched. soon after that i got a "black box" where i could watch all the ppv for free. also around that time ecw hardcore tv started showing on a broadcast tv station late on saturday nights, same channel that would show nwa wildside.

A lot of those guys stayed because they realistically couldn't find work anywhere else. The average fed wouldn't book the type of guys ECW had on it's roster.

what do you mean, like they couldn't afford them??

[BeastieRunner]

The Acclaimed's "Goth Phase" diss track is trending. Hahaha ... Nice.

[BigLbo]

mox is going to wrestle homicide in gcw on the 23rd of this month. i'd xpect he should be back in aew before that.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

I discovered ECW in spring 1996. I had stopped watching wrestling by this point for like a year. It was just so....boring. WCW was intent on being the Hogan WWF era repeated. Then you had WWF which was absolute crap. This was the era of Nash vs Mabel and more awful. Then one spring night on a Friday on the dish we had , my sister yelled to me. That there was this weird wrestling promotion on. They had just played EPIC by Faith No More of some promotion of a card. So I came in at tail end.

Then I saw the voice of ECW , Joey Styles discuss things and we went right into a Tommy Dreamer match. Its the night he went through a stack of tables by Dick Dudley. It was raw , it was edgy and it really made me a fan. The people involved , the storylines and more was just what was needed to make me a fan again.

[BigLbo]

it's kind of weird but in a way the death of ecw was the best thing to happen to the independent wrestling scene.

[Immortal Weapon]

what do you mean, like they couldn't afford them??

They didn't want them. Guys like Spike Dudley, Roadkill, Blue Meanie, Sandman, Mikey Whipwreck wouldn't have been wanted by a wrestling promotion at the time.

[MacrossPlus]

I discovered ECW in spring 1996. I had stopped watching wrestling by this point for like a year. It was just so....boring. WCW was intent on being the Hogan WWF era repeated. Then you had WWF which was absolute crap. This was the era of Nash vs Mabel and more awful. Then one spring night on a Friday on the dish we had , my sister yelled to me. That there was this weird wrestling promotion on. They had just played EPIC by Faith No More of some promotion of a card. So I came in at tail end.

Then I saw the voice of ECW , Joey Styles discuss things and we went right into a Tommy Dreamer match. Its the night he went through a stack of tables by Dick Dudley. It was raw , it was edgy and it really made me a fan. The people involved , the storylines and more was just what was needed to make me a fan again.

I remember catching ECW on TNN and the first thing I saw was a guy getting put through a flaming table, I was hooked after that

[SUPERECWFAN1]

ECW going down was a major , major blow in the industry then. ECW was seen as "the farm league" of talent. Heyman cycled through so much that era he literally helped both companies compete. Losing a major farm league promotion was a blow. ECW going down 1st and then WCW weeks later hurt the industry a lot. Took years to recover as we saw. A fact Jeff Jarrett months ago on his podcast told Conrad how bleak things were then.

- No one in cable industry wanted a pro wrestling product now. Turner executives said f-ck no after WCW's failures , USA Network literally mocked the WWF on its exit as they were mad. There was no one willing to carry any pro wrestling product in that time.


- Ring of Honor and TNA/Impact formed around the same time at this bleak moment. Jarrett had to literally beg a PPV company to let TNA do the weekly PPV's because of lack of cable.


- The industry was in a state of rebirth more or less. They had to get what veterans they could (who weren't under WWE contracts) and go with a young group of guys.


- A number of people would in this span proclaim they had $$$ to form a promotion and get that cable deal. But it never could happen. A number of companies started and failed by the time ROH and TNA started then in 2002.


Now the industry is in the best spot its ever been. There are a number of companies where folks can work and AEW , MLW and more are around for everyone to work. Which is a radical change from that era.

[Deathstroke]

Deanna Booher, better known as Matilda The Hun in the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, has passed away.

[BigLbo]

They didn't want them. Guys like Spike Dudley, Roadkill, Blue Meanie, Sandman, Mikey Whipwreck wouldn't have been wanted by a wrestling promotion at the time.

i think you're mistaken. most of those guys found plenty of work after ecw shut down, they had more name value while still wrestling on tv.

[Immortal Weapon]

i think you're mistaken. most of those guys found plenty of work after ecw shut down, they had more name value while still wrestling on tv.

The guys themselves have said this in a couple of ECW documentaries.

[BigLbo]

The guys themselves have said this in a couple of ECW documentaries.

i'm going to have to call kayfabe, unless they were talking about the early days. for some reason i assumed we were talking towards the end.