I’ve been watching Extreme Championship Wrestling on the WWE
Network lately—I tend to watch PPVs and events in chronological order because I
have a thing where I can’t watch or read anything
out of order—and it’s a product that doesn’t hold up over time.
It’s not exactly a new
sentiment. When I started going back over old school wrestling some years
back and watching the product and it was like “This isn’t all that interesting
anymore.” It’s all ECW either, Hardcore
TV between 1994-1995 and 1999-2000 were fun for two different reasons. It’s
that 1996-1998 period—where WWE started to bite off ECW and forge the Attitude
Era and when the pre-ROH-type talent raids started—that I just didn’t care for
overall and didn’t age well.
Taking 1994-1995, it was interesting because it was when the
company really stared form around its native talent and some newcomers who fit
what the company’s product and vibe. While it wasn’t the first time an American
company had wrestlers who weren’t exchangeable and truly a part of the company
(see USWA/Memphis/CWA or AWA or NWA), it was the first I’d seen a company with
wrestlers who bleed, sweated, and breathed their company. They didn’t have a
bunch talent who were interchangeable with WCW or WWE or ECW without the company
having a drastic product shift.
With 1999-2000, you had a company that was shifting its main
event focus more towards the Shane Douglas/2 Cold Scorpio-standard or the Taz-Sabu-standard (especially Taz who was the prototype for American strong style...which has to be another article) where you
had stories based around athletic workers and solid competitive-style matches. Rob
Van Dam, Jerry Lynn, Justin Credible, Super Crazy, Yoshihiro Tajiri, Rhino, and
Steve Corino became the focus—guys who could go extreme, but shined outside of
that.
If you look at that period in ECW and the first two years of
ROH, you can see where ROH is the successor of the company down to being formed
by former ECW production guys who were pupils of Heyman’s booking. While it was
time of decay for ECW, it is an interesting period to me seeing that change in
direction.
The 1996-1998 period was the opposite. It was when a more
soap opera approach to storylines was taken and there were longer promos—something
that sadly stuck around and was really what prompted the practice in WWE during
the late-New Generation period and beyond. That isn’t to say the period was
without good feuds—you had The Gangstas
vs. The Eliminators, The Dudleys against everyone, Taz vs. Sabu, Taz vs. The
Triple Threat, Raven vs. Sandman and Dreamer, and Funk’s “last run.”
The sour point for 1996-1998 is that it was ECW’s most
accessible period. Ideas were taken from ECW at this time and then talent was
snagged. It didn’t hurt ECW’s talent pool much early on as Heyman planned ahead
for talent leaving (just look at the tag teams, there was always an extremely
cohesive team in place when one team left).
Towards the end of that period into 1999 those departures
started to become more frequent and were hitting towards the top of the card.
Not only that, but it seemed that by 1999 people pretty much bounced on ECW
when there was some entertaining stuff bubbling up in the later end of the
year.
Going back to ECW not being a product that stood time, the
weight of that is on the content then there’s the disorganized nature of the
events and PPVs. While the latter is a selling point of ECW, sitting through
PPVs 16-21 years after they happened they’re very hard to sit through in their
entirety. It’s not a good blueprint on running major events anytime after 2001.
Sure enough every promotion that took the ECW formula to a “T”
eventually sunk. Pro Pain Pro Wrestling (3PW)? Out after two and a half to
three years. Xtreme Pro Wrestling? Dead after four years and a move from
California to Philly. Extreme Rising? Gone in around two and a half to three
years.
That list isn’t including a company like Dreamer’s House of
Hardcore which is still active and doesn’t go into full blown ECW territory
or promotions that adapted hardcore when
hardcore became popular like IPW Hardcore in Florida, USA Pro Wrestling on the
east coast, the early years of Jersey All Pro-Wrestling, IWA Puerto Rico, or
deathmatch promotions that popped up following the IWA Japan King of the
Deathmatch, Big Japan Pro Wrestling’s hottest period of the 90s, and Bad Breed’s
deathmatches in ECW.
Simply put, hardcore wrestling or rather extreme was very much
a product of the 90s like “Japanimation”, nu-metal, Mortal Kombat, Beavis &
Butthead, Savage Dragon, the
Spice Channel, Fox Kids, and Rob Liefeld’s artwork. While its influence launched many promotions stateside and helped WWE pick up business it's not a product that needs to return no matter how much a segment of wrestling fans say the business needs to go back.
