Extreme Legend debuts with ECW thoughts and reflections
WrestlersRamblings.com is pleased to introduce our newest family member to our faithful readers – ladies and gentlemen, in the corner to my left, introducing . . . Extreme Legend. Pining for a return to the promising days of early 2000 when ECW began their ill-fated national tour, here, Legend recalls his attending the ECW event in Jacksonville, Florida during this first column - along with his general distain for the current WWE product. But enough preamble – let’s get to the column already, as Legend takes us back in time almost seven years ago, to a time when Extreme Championship Wrestling tried in vain to turn a nation on to hardcore wrestling.
By Extreme Legend
Wrestlers Ramblings.com wrestling blog
ECW came to Jacksonville, Florida twice. The last time was February 2000, when a good friend and I attended after finding one of my buddies outside the arena scalping tickets for a decidedly-cheaper price than what most others were paying. Like a lot of the shows ECW was doing after the deal with TNN (now Spike TV) there was an inherent problem with the event: bringing ECW out of Philly and into previously-unexplored locales before acquiring a much-needed national fan-base was not only a waste of money, it was a waste of time. The first problem was that the travel was expensive and the payoff non-existent. Less than 2,000 people showed up for the show and - after seeing the poor attendance and the unappealing Morocco Shrine Auditorium – supposedly Tommy Dreamer and Paul Heyman decided that the show would not be televised. This however, was despite the fact that the show had been advertised as such, and because of that, the crowd was peppered with signs and visual gags that were forever fated to go unsung. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive them for depriving the world of a slew of “Cane Vince” signs.
The second problem was simple: the people who did show up were fans, but fans who only watched the show for a year or so and didn’t have the same connection or history with ECW that the fans in the ECW Arena could claim. The lack of connection made ECW fans who weren’t local even more heartless and hard to impress than those who helped make ECW a success in Philadelphia. The people in Jacksonville - like those all across the country - had seen amazing highlight reels, insane stunts and regarded the company to be the stuff of legend. Every match was expected to be as bloody as Terry Funk and Sabu committing barbwire suicide, or, Raven VS. Dreamer for sheer emotion and drama. If ECW had tried to live up to that in every match, pushing its wrestlers to go well beyond what any human being should have to go through in order to gain success like that of the WCW and WWE, people would have surely been crippled - not that people weren’t getting injured on a steady basis already.
I went to the show with high expectations. After all, I had been to the previous ECW show, and that had only been a house show - before ECW had gotten the deal with TNN. This time I was going to see some truly amazing things: Sandman was back, Raven was back and nothing could prevent this show from outdoing the amount of awesome that the house show had managed. ECW had given us Taz VS. Sabu in a non-sanctioned FTW match, Ian Rotten, New Jack and Balls Mahoney in a three-way dance and the chance to call Justin Credible and Lance Storm offensive slurs. Dawn Marie had actually suggested something me and my friends could do with our tickets after some of our verbal taunting and generally everyone had a good night . . . except Ian who got a fork stuck in his forehead by New Jack.
This show, however, ended up less than spectacular - unfortunately. The high spots were Spike Dudley and Mikey Whipwreck in a short but fast-paced match-up and Tajiri and Super Crazy in a Mexican Death Match that had everyone out of their seats. Aside from Sandman’s sing-a-long entrance to a Motorhead rendition of “Enter Sandman” the show was largely forgettable with Dusty Rhodes and Tommy Dreamer taking on none other than Steve Corino and Jack Victory as the main-event but - to be fair - we felt our tickets were well worth the price. Remember, ECW was going to make it big still, or so we all thought . . . six years later I have attended zero wrestling matches and - except for brief hints towards greatness in the WWE - watched virtually nothing of professional wrestling that didn’t come out of Japan or Mexico. I’ve scoured the independent scene via the internet and found glimpses of hope in Ring of Honor and Total Nonstop Action and been let down by well-meaning ECW and XPW wannabes like the boys in Combat Zone Wrestling who do their damndest to murder, maim and mutilate each other for less than twenty thousand dollars a year - and probably even less than that after the exorbitant amount of money that light tubes must cost when you buy them in such great numbers. Of course, I still don’t get the whole light tube thing no matter how hard I try to wrap my brain around that one.
I’ve come to the point in my fandom where sitting through bad wrestling and hokey plots to find that one diamond in the rough is no longer an option. With YouTube and the proliferation of online videos from various wrestling companies comes the ability to cut through the bull and find the one or two matches that somehow make so many people continue watching old men baring their asses in jam-packed arenas and letting their egos get the better of them. Nonetheless I’ll skip RAW and Smackdown and join the train of hopefuls who left just as the ECW bubble popped and take my tastes and sensibilities over to the new ECW pipedream of TNA and keep checking out the latest from Japan and Mexico. With any luck TNA will learn from the mistakes of those before them and force the competition to get better by necessity. Otherwise my re-instilled interest won’t last the end of this decade.
The 23-year-old Extreme Legend is married with a son, and is also currently working his own pipedream of finishing and publishing a novel. Check out deathtotheswiss.blogspot.com for non-wrestling articles and updates on the status of his in-the-works novel “Agent of Death”.