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Jo$hua Lutz

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A LOOK BACK AT ECW

Hi, my name is jo$hua lutz, and I'll be making an attempt at recapping old ECW TV shows to bring those of you that didn't see them up to speed on the history of ECW, what with their upcoming National TV debut. Those of you that did see it, read and reminisce with me. And send me feedback telling me if I did a good job at explaining.

Now, to start off, a little information about what's going to happen next Friday. On August 27, 1999, at 8 PM EST, the WWF and WCW have a new little brother arriving on the National wrestling scene. TNN, The Nashville Network, has given the "upstart-indy-hardcore-call-it-whatever-you-will" Philadelphia based Extreme Championship Wrestling its chance at solidifying its spot as the third promotion in not only the United States, but all of North America, by way of the 8 PM slot on Friday nights. ECW can now be seen in 70+ million homes, putting them on roughly the same level as the WWF and WCW as far as possible viewership.

As a result of ECW's debut on TNN, what the future may hold for ECW has been much debated upon the Internet. But the future doesn't tell the story of Extreme Championship Wrestling's rise from an NWA affiliated regional promotion to a international promotion and PPV entity. The story began on August 27, 1994, exactly five years before ECW's TNN debut, when then-Eastern Championship Wrestling Heavyweight champ Shane Douglas won the NWA World Heavyweight Title in a tournament. Douglas gave a nice speech about it's heritage and then threw down the NWA belt and declared the Eastern Championship Wrestling Heavyweight title to be the EXTREME Championship Wrestling World Heavyweight title. Thus began THE REVOLUTION (not Douglas' current WCW stable, the ECW REVOLUTION).

Now, getting from August 27, 1994 to August 27, 1999 is a long story. Many shows have come and gone, and many stars have come and gone. I'm not going to recap them all. I don't have the time to do it. I pity anyone who would dare try. But what I can do is recap various shows. And I plan on doing a few, if all goes well.

We'll start with a show that aired sometime in 1996, probably in early July seeing as part of the show was taped in late June...so here we go!

Taped at the ECW Arena, a little Bingo Hall on the corner of Swanson and Ritner Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, it's another fantastic week of ECW TV, now to be referred to as their syndicated program, to differentiate it from the National show on TNN starting Friday, August 27, 1999.

Your host is none other that Jo-Jo Joey Styles, opening the show in the ring at Hardcore Heaven 1996, held Saturday, June 22nd. (This is pre-PPV era, where they had supercards every few months. Angles were built to and from these shows, just as WCW and WWF do for their PPVs, and as ECW does now, to some extent.)

The program begins with Jo-Jo interviewing Baron Von Stevie and Bluedust (w/Patrica). Baron Von Stevie and Bluedust are better known as Stevie Richards and the Blue Meanie, both of whom you might have seen on WCW and/or WWF TV. Stevie does an impersonation of Baron Von Raschke and manages to get in an announcement that he had found the dirtiest, nastiest woman in society to present to "his man" Raven. Bluedust does a little Goldust impersonation to freak Jo-Jo out...the segment ends and the show's intro begins...

To explain a bit more before moving on, Stevie, the Blue Meanie, and Supernova were the ECW's comic relief in this era. Stevie and Blue Meanie were the stable mates of Raven, who was the most "seriously devoid of a sense of humor" character ECW had, except maybe for TAZ, and that's a close call. Which makes it odd that they were the comic relief, but they were. Stevie and Meanie had knockoffs of numerous personalities and tag teams, such as "Heartburn Kid" and "Big Daddy Fool," obviously Shawn Michaels and Diesel, and "Lord Stevie" and the "Earl of Eating," the "Blue Meanie Bloods," portraying Steve Regal and Robert Eaton's "Blue Bloods." The most famous impersonation was an extenstion of Stevie's "Big Daddy Fool" into "Big Stevie Cool," while Blue Meanie became "The Blue Guy" and Supernova became "Hollywood" Bob Starr. The three together: the blue WORLD order. bWo 4 life, baby! Anyway, the three, with someone else, I forget who, even did a great impersonation of KISS once. The original KISS demons, I guess. Now, moving on...

Intro: NIN's "Closer" heartbeat leads into White Zombie's "Thunderkiss 65" while various clips play across the screen, all memorable moments in ECW history...

Jo-Jo's back in the "booth" as Joel "Pre-nifty nicknames" Gertner, in his old capacity as ring announcer, plays to the crowd and pisses off the Sandman, who gives Joel a cane shot to the back for his troubles. History lesson: who is the Sandman, you ask? The "King of Hardcore." Still don't know? Hak, of WCW fame. A four time ECW World Heavyweight champ and one time Tag champ with 2 Cold Scorpio. Now, back to the show: Sandman follows up with a few more cane shots to the downed Gertner and the crowd is hot. This is the ECW Arena, where the crowd always seems to be hot. They chant "One More Time" and Sandman obliges, and then hits Gertner again for measure. Sandy calls out "The Walking Riot" Missy Hyatt with "the guy who looks like the guy on top of the wedding cake," Bob Artese ,to do the ring announcing. Sandy gives Bob a choice: act like Gertner and wind up like Gertner, or do a good job. Missy gives Bob some tongue first, then Bob takes the ring duties to a chant of "he's hardcore" from the crowd.

Commercial break. ECW's TV show seemed to have the same two or three commercials every week, outside of their own T-shirt and house show ads. One was for a weight gain supplement, one was for fake Rolexes or something, and one was for a psychic hotline. There were a couple of others, as well. Those commercials always seemed like they were filmed by six year olds with Playschool cameras that recorded on normal audio cassette tapes. Remember those? But the ECW commercials were fairly entertaining. Here we see an ad for the new Brian Pillman T-shirt. The shirt can't be shown because they claim they'd be thrown off the air for it. I really don't know which Pillman shirt it was. The ones I've seen didn't look very bad. Popular music plays in the background as we see ads for upcoming shows. The best ads were for the old highlight tapes. Here we see Extreme Warfare Vol. 1, basically the ECW "Best Of" tape. See Chris Benoit break Sabu's neck with a botched knee lift...the Funker and Shane Douglas face Tommy Dreamer and Sandman...teh Gangstas face the Public Enemy...the Steiner Brothers (yes, Rick and Scott) return to the U.S. and Join The Revolution...Cactus Jack and Sandman battle in a barbed wire match...BEULAH and Francine CATFIGHT!!! Ok, it's over. Back to the show...

ECW fan cam shows us the "Franchise" Shane Douglas, current leader of WCW's Revolution Of Former ECW Champions, facing off against the man who was too hardcore for WCW, SABU. Paul E. Dangerously (Heyman) is at ringside pleading with Sabu to wear his neckbrace. Sabu has a history of neck problems, stemming from that broken neck at the hands of Chris Benoit that I mentioned in the last paragraph. This recent flare up can be attributed to attacks by none other than "Mr. Monday Night/PPV-The Whole Fucking" Show Rob Van Dam. Around this time, RVD and Sabu start a feud that would lead to a friendship and another feud, spanning three years, and seems to be coming to a head at the next ECW PPV, Anarchy Rulz (although the friendship looked to be ending a year ago when RVD was defending his TV title against Sabu at Wrestlepalooza).

Sabu puts the brace on, but it helps little as the Franchise works on Sabu's neck at every turn. We see some spots of Sabu flying into Shane from various places, such as the ropes and through tables. After RVD interferes, Douglas hits a brainbuster on Sabu and Sabu rides the stretcher out. TAZ looks on, showing pleasure in Sabu's pain, as Sabu is also in a feud with TAZ that winds up spanning around one year.

A quick explanation of the RVD/Sabu/TAZ feud here. Many moons ago, in 1995, TAZ and Sabu were the ECW Tag Team champs. Now one of two things happened here, I can't remember which it was: after losing the titles, Sabu decided he didn't care about ECW as much as he did Japan, missed some shows, leaving TAZ without a partner for a rematch, and was subsequently fired as a result. or Sabu's missing show left TAZ without a partner and he lost the tag belts by himself. WrestleLine's title histories don't mention TAZ losing the belts alone, so I assume it's door number one. Sabu tried his hand at WCW and it didn't work out well. His leaving WCW strained his relations with New Japan as well, so Sabu had a few choices, one of which was returning to ECW. He did return, to much fanfare, as he is a beloved fixture of ECW since he made them famous with the tables. TAZ started a campaign to face Sabu, but it appeared that Sabu was refusing to fight him. For almost a year, TAZ challenged Sabu with no response. TAZ finally broke the silence and told the fans that Paul E. wouldn't let him face Sabu. Paul E. responded and said that the only way that he would have brought Sabu back is if TAZ and Sabu agreed not to bring the Tag Team situation up, and to let it go. Both agreed, but TAZ broke his word. In the meantime, Sabu faced Rob Van Dam in a fucking hellacious match. At the end Sabu wanted to shake RVD's hand out of respect, as Sabu did with everyone at the time, and RVD refused. He had no respect for Sabu and thus their feud was born. To get an edge on Sabu, RVD got a little information about his neck condition from Bill Alphonzo, the manager of TAZ, who would know better than anyone about Sabu's neck problem. RVD tried taking out Sabu on many occasions, and aside from that, RVD and Sabu faced off many times, and RVD finally admitted respect for Sabu, which lead to their tagging together. Later on, Sabu and TAZ finally faced each other in the "Biggest Grudge Match Ever" at ECW's first PPV, "Barely Legal." In depth coverage of both feuds would be better suited for a time when some of their matches are reviewed.

Commercial break number two...ads for Hardcore Heaven '96 showing TAZ facing off against Ultimate Fighter Paul Varelans. Billed as a "shoot fight," the fight was, in reality, a worked match, with TAZ coming out on top with the Kaja H'ja'me (Kaja-hi-je-may) TAZmission. Choke. Whatever the damn thing is. Next, Lance Wright wants us to Experience the Difference between ECW and everyone else by buying the shirt. As a side note, Lance Wright later left ECW for the WWF and was the only announcer I know of to be jobbed out of a promotion, as he was viciously beaten up by Shane Douglas in his last appearance in ECW. Wright later returned to ECW as part of the WWF=ECW talent exchange, but I have no idea where he is now. Hey, it's the Psychic Solution commercial I spoke of...

Back to wrestling, we see Shane Douglas again, from Hardcore Heaven '96 I assume, where he is making his way to the ring to face Mikey Whipwreck. Mikey, currently a member of the deep, underused and much abused ex=ECW'ers on the talent (well, some of them are talented) roster of World Championship Wrestling, was ECW's first Triple Crown winner. The match begins as Douglas taunts the crowd for some heat, then hits the ring. Collar and elbow tie up, Mikey hits an arm drag. Douglas laughs it off and applauds Mikey. Mikey drags Shane around by the arm a bit, Douglas whips Mikey to the ropes and hits him with an elbow. Mikey crawls to the corner. Douglas stomps him a few times, then pulls him up to whip him to the opposite corner. Mikey reverses it and back drops Douglas as he bounces off the turnbuckles. Mikey with a pair of dropkicks and Douglas rolls out of the ring to catch his breath. Visibly upset, Douglas pushes ring announcer Bob Artese around. Douglas has words with a fan, then returns to the ring. Someone must have had this tape in the VCR during an episode of "Quantum Leap" because about a second of a frame of Scott Bakula appears on the screen, and the Sci-Fi Channel logo is barely visible if you pause the screen...but that's not part of the match...Douglas claims hair pulling by Mikey. Maybe Sam did it. Douglas grabs a side headlock and cinches in, then continues with a takeover. The fans chant "little dick," I think. Douglas releases the lock and hits a running kick to Mikey's head. Shit, I just remembered the load of clothes I started washing four hours ago. Ok, that's done. Back to the action. Douglas with a corkscrew vertical suplex, then he picks Mikey up just to kick him in the knee. Douglas then goes to the outside and wraps Mikey's knee around the bottom rope. Back inside, Douglas with a double leg takedown, leading to the Tejas Cloverleaf. Mikey is hanging on...Referee Jim Molineaux is asking Mikey for stock tips...Mikey drags himself to the ropes and Douglas must release the hold...he takes the four count. Mikey's on the ropes. Douglas pushes Mikey to the corner and gives him a few words before he whips him to the opposite. Mikey reverses and Douglas bounces out of the corner with a shoulder tackle directly to Mikey's knee. Jo-Jo asks "Mongo who?" Molineaux is asking Mikey about last night's dinner. Douglas with some more work on the knee...Douglas picks Mikey up, but Mikey uses leverage to fling Douglas out to the concrete, where there are none of those aesthetic blue mats for protection. Mikey goes after Douglas and tosses him across the guardrail into the fans' laps. Mikey pulls the guardrail back and returns to the ring to leap off of the top rope onto Douglas. Fans chant the obligatory "ECW" and Mikey slings Douglas into the steel railing, then places a boot to the throat. Mikey tosses Douglas over the rail and planchas (I think that's what that is, I forget...) across with an elbow to Douglas' general head area. Mikey proceeds to roll Douglas into the ring and follow with a slingshot rolling neck snap, as Joey calls it. Pinfall attempt, 2 count only as Douglas gets a foot on the rope. Douglas whipped into the ropes and grabs on...Mikey misses a dropkick. Douglas quickly capitalizes with a figure-four. Mikey endures and takes a two count before raking the eyes to break the hold. Douglas reverses an irish whip and Mikey pulls a little hang on of his own as Douglas misses a dropkick and Mikey follows with a headbutt to the nads. Mikey with his own figure-four. Molineaux asks Douglas if he's been flossing regularly. Douglas takes offense to the questioning of his dental hygene, so he punches Jim out. Still in the figure-four, Douglas tries to unlace his boot to take pressure off, but no avail. Molineaux recovers to count two while Douglas counts the ceiling tiles of the ECW Arena. Mikey tries to weaken Douglas with chest chops. Douglas' shoulders are on the mat, so Molineaux smacks the mat twice. Damn cockroaches. Douglas grabs the rope and Mikey releases at three. Mikey with a big left hand and an attempt at stomping that damn cockroach Molineaux was trying to get. Mikey backs Douglas into a corner and whips to the opposite, but Douglas can't stand up. Mikey covers the downed Franchise and Molineaux takes two more swats at the roaches. Mikey goes up top, and waits. Dropkick and Douglas is down, Mikey covers, no more roach jokes, two count only. Mikey whips, Douglas reverses, lowers head, Mikey DDTs, Douglas down, Mikey covers, Molineaux counts two. Who says we need anything more than nouns and verbs? Mikey tries to whip Douglas again, but Douglas reverses, as does Whipwreck, as does Shane, and Mikey is off the ropes and into Shane's belly to belly suplex. Shane covers and Molineaux kills three roaches. Wait, I said no more roach jokes. ECW time: 11:33, real time: 11:33. Holy shit. No exaggerated time. Well, damn. Killer match. Why doesn't WCW let them things like that on Nitro? Stupid question.

This match doesn't need much explanation, as Mikey was a top fan favorite, and Douglas was being built as a monster heel. Easy way to get a heel even more heat: have him attempt to decimate a top face. Douglas would continue on and eventually become the top heel through a feud with the Pitbulls. That should be covered later.

Commercial break number three. Time Life hocks their "Classical Thunder" music series. Lance Wright in "Hype Central" hocking ECW's upcoming shows. The Hardcore Heaven Tour '96 is plugged, and then ECW thanks a number of groups such as Tommy Boy and DCG "Home of Nirvana, the Sundays, Beck, that dog, and many other fine artists, excluding Hole and Nelson" Records. Now Cloris Leachman, better known as the voice of the old woman that befriended Beavis in "Beavis and Butthead Do America" tells me that what I am about to see shocked her. I expect it to cut to footage of Hulk Hogan doing a moonsault. That would shock me. I get a dirty Asian instead, who is shooting a tiger, while Cloris tells me about the slaughter of tigers. And the WWF is gonna stop it! The World Wildlife Fund, that is. And no one cares...so I fast forward to a commercial for the Phantom Fury...vaccuum cleaner. Yes, a wrestling fan watching ECW at 2 AM Friday Morning is gonna call an 800 number to find out about a vaccuum.

And ECW is back. Raven is walking! to the ring, followed by Stevie and Super(now known only as)Nova. The Offspring serenade them with "Keep 'Em Separated," a song that implores outcasts to kill the popular kids, more or less. Stevie and Nova do some weird shit in the ring as Raven sits in the corner. Stevie has a mic and explains that Raven sent him on a mission to find the slimiest, dirtiest, ugliest, expletive deleted, woman he could find. He brought him Miss Divine Brown of Hugh "I'm dating Liz Hurley but I need to get a hummer from a hooker" Grant fame, but Raven said she hadn't been with enough people. Stevie took Raven to the playground of his tortured childhood (where he was apparently picked on by others for being a "Rowdy" Roddy Piper fan, if WCW is to be believed) and offered him Bluedust, but he refused as he stated Bluedust was too feminine for him. So Stevie says that he's gonna present him with the worst he could find...Sandman's ex-wife (in story only), Peaches. Sandman hits the ring and takes the mic. He asks if it's supposed to piss him off, saying he's already pimped Peaches out to the whole locker room. The mic falters a bit and I miss his next line. Sandman tells Raven to pay his fucking bill when he's done. This attempt to get under Sandman's skin fails. Now, you might be asking, why is Raven trying to get under Sandman's skin? Simple. Raven is the current ECW World Heavyweight champ, and Sandman is the number one challenger. See, I told you it was simple.

"Commercials" Part Four. Heat Waves '94 and '95 are packaged together by ECW as a history lesson, and highlights include Tommy Dreamer in suspenders facing Stevie Richards for the very first time, Sabu and Taz teaming for the first time to face the Pitbulls, "Dueling Canes" as Tommy Cairo faces Sandman, the Franchise Shane Douglas faces Sabu in a battle for the future, the Funks (Dory, Jr. and Terry) face the Public Enemy in a barbed wire match which involved the fans throwing a lot of chairs into the ring at the request of Terry, then-ref Bill Alphonzo bans the fans from the ECW Arena, BEULAH and Francine meet for the first time, 2 Cold Flash Funk Scorpio and the Shooter Dean Malenko face Edde Guerrero and TAZ, BEULAH and Francine fight, the Gangstas face the Public Enemy in a weapons filled cage match, Stevie faces Luna Vachon in a "battle of the sexes," and Tommy Dreamer faces Raven and handcuffs him to the cage in a crucifixion like pose and hits his with "the chairshot heard 'round the world." It was great that you could learn more about the history of ECW during the commercials than you could any other time.

Back to the show.

Raven defends his title against the number one contender from Japan's IWA promotion: Terry "Bamm Bamm" Gordy. Gordy was a surprise, having not been announced to the fans and viewers until he walked through the the curtains. The crowd response was loud as they chanted "Terry." This match was probably the worst beating I ever saw applied to Raven, and the match was damn good. That's my memory of it, anyway. I'll watch it again and see if I was right. Collar and elbow, Terry powers Raven to the corner, pounds Raven, and then tosses him over the top rope. Terry follows and continues to pound Raven across the railing and into the crowd. Terry had Raven down and begins stomping him. Terry with a few chair shots, then drives Raven into some chairs. Terry takes Raven to the concession stand and limited camera work blocks the action. Raven is bloody already, and Gordy with chairshots as they return to view. Raven tries to escape to the Eagle's Nest of the arena, and Terry follows and continues to beat Raven with chairshots. Now Terry has a skillet and is whacking Raven with that. Total garbage wrestling, and it rocks. Raven is still in retreat and Terry with more chairshots. Raven is heading for the ring again, but gets caught in the aisle and takes some right hands from Terry. In the ring again, Terry off the ropes with a clotheline. Raven in the corner and Terry with more rights. Terry whips Raven to the opposite corner and follows with a clothesline. Terry jumps up and down excitedly and repeats the last spot, then he rinses and repeats again. Stevie runs interference, trying a Stevie-kick which Terry blocks. But the distraction allows Raven get in a low blow. Raven is very, very bloody. Raven drives Terry to the mat face first. Raven whips Terry into the ropes and tries to use previously obtained barbed wire as a lariat, but Terry ducks and hits a clothesline of his own. Gordy applies the thumb to the neck, I mean "Oriental Spike." Stevie and Nova try to pull Terry off, but it doesn't work, and Tommy Dreamer hits the ring to double DDT both men. He is followed in by "Prime Time" Brian Lee, who chokeslams Dreamer. Terry Gordy hits Lee with a powerbomb. The "ECW" chant from the fans is loud, and Terry has the barbed wire wrapped around Raven's forehead, driving Raven into the turnbuckle for ultra damage. Stevie breaks it up with a Stevie kick and Raven hits a DDT on Terry, for the pinfall victory. Total time: 6:25. I was right, it was a damn good match. Post match chaos begins immediately after the three count as Dreamer grabs Raven for a DDT, which is followed by Dreamer being chokeslammed onto a chair by Lee. Lee starts to work on Gordy as Stevie and Nova work on Dreamer. Sandman hits the ring and clears house with the Singapore cane. Sandman has Raven backing off, about to take a caning...but wait, there's more! Peaches returns to ringside with Sandman's 7 year old son, Tyler, and they form a human shield for Raven, who tells Sandman that he'll have to go through his own son to get to him. Tyler calls his father a drunk and says he's with Raven now. Sandman is visibly shaken, and Raven has words for Tommy and BEULAH, who happens to be Raven's ex. (I'll explain in a moment.) BEULAH challenges Peaches to a catfight right then, but Raven keeps Peaches at bay. Tommy and Terry stand in the ring taking in the fans' chants of "Terry" as Bluedust comes to the ring. Bluedust tells us that Raven has left the building. Kimona Wannalaya grabs him by the balls and BEULAH hits a DDT. The fans chant something and the show ends.

Now let me clear up some of this for ya. Raven and Tommy Dreamer are the main focus of ECW at this time. Raven and Tommy are childhood acquaintances that fought over the lovely BEULAH way back when. Raven came to ECW and brought BEULAH in to fuck with Tommy's head. It almost worked, but Tommy eventually gained a measure of revenge when he piledrove BEULAH in one of ECW's more memorable moments. Later on, Tommmy won over BEULAH and she left Raven for him, in a great incident where Tommy used a sign from the crowd that said "Use My Sign" that was actually a Stop sign. This was later ripped of by WCW in an angle that was booked by Raven, so he may have been using an idea that was his to begin with. That's neither here nor there, so I'll go on. Raven then brought in Kimona Wannalaya, who was stolen away by BEULAH in the "lesbian kiss" angle, which was sweet. Raven needed a new valet to fuck with current challenger, Sandman. Peaches, Sandy's real wife, ex-wife in story, is brought in, which as discussed earlier, didn't bother Sandy much, but the use of his son Tyler did. The Sandman/Raven feud would be better discussed around one of their matches, which should come later. Terry Gordy was introduced into ECW through this match, and Brian Lee was involved as Raven's personal "Bulldozer." He and Tommy Dreamer had a memorable feud with some of the major contibutions to Tommy's demolished spine coming during their matches.

Bell to bell action: 17:58. Just under 18 minutes for a 60 minute show. But the TV show was mainly a vehicle to sell T-shirts and tapes to audiences far away from the Northeast that were spellbound by the glaring superiority of ECW over anything else. It also advertised the live shows, which were and still are ECW's bread and butter. They probably will continue to be until ECW's National TV and PPV "feet" are completely under them. Now, before I go, I urge anyone that is a fan of any form of professional wrestling to watch the debut of ECW on TV. Workrate fans and story fans, garbage wrestling fans, any fan should tune in. Don't expect the blood and ultraviolence that you always heard about. That may not be there right now. Don't expect to see the suprise appearance of one of the other big show's main talents, that won't be happening right now. Just expect to see some of the hardest workers bust their asses to keep you entertained for 60 minutes. You will enjoy it. I promise.

Jo$hua lutz
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Guest column text copyright (C) 1999 by the individual author and used with permission