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Post by Judas Heyman on Apr 30, 2009 8:39:32 GMT -5
I never liked violent wrestling and thats the reason I have hardly followed ECW, as I am a WWE fan. My smarky friends keep on telling me that ECW was awesome and it made WWE and WCW wrestlers look like a bunch of crybabies. I saw some old ECW videos on Youtube and didnot find them great. My question is whether ECW was really a great company with great wrestlling and storylines or was it the Heyman cool aid which made people believe it was?
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Ace Baretta
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Post by Ace Baretta on Apr 30, 2009 8:57:43 GMT -5
It's somewhere in the middle.
I mean, really look at it this way, of ALL the talent ECW had, how many went on to MAJOR mainstream success?
Raven, The Dudleys, and....?
I mean, really, they were an indy level promotion that had some Japanese influenced wrestling that was innovative for it's time, but using talent that wasn't necessarily quite ready for Primetime.
It was a niche wrestling promotion and that much was made painfully obvious wen they tried to expand. They weren't a powerhouse, and they certainly weren't a threat to the other two.
In fact, I'd wonder if, at that specific point in time, they were even heard about outside the east coast. I was a major wrestling fan at the time and I hadn't heard of them down here in Tennessee.
So yeah, I don't think it's one or the other, but perhaps somewhere in the middle.
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Post by Lance Uppercut on Apr 30, 2009 9:13:23 GMT -5
I always enjoyed ECW because it was different. Violence aside, it was a great place to watch actual wrestling. That's such a misconception. In the course of five or six years you had Dean Malenko, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero, Shane Douglas, Too Cold Scorpio, Chris Candido, Rob Van Damn, Lance Storm, Tajiri and loads of others I'm forgetting. Granted most of the time it was bloody and violent and often garbage wrestling, but sometimes it would really surprise you. It was kind of nice watching indy wrestling on tv.
As far as the Kool Aid goes; yes. Paul Heyman took a small promotion that had problems and short comings but disguised them and made it seem like something crazier and badder than the big two.
Did WCW and WWE steal from ECW? Sure did.
Did ECW steal from Japanese promotions like FMW? Of course.
Point is, whether you liked it or not, we're still talking about it 8 years later. It may have not been a great company, but for a while it was a fun alternative.
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Ace Baretta
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Post by Ace Baretta on Apr 30, 2009 9:15:58 GMT -5
I always enjoyed ECW because it was different. Violence aside, it was a great place to watch actual wrestling. That's such a misconception. In the course of five or six years you had Dean Malenko, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero, Shane Douglas, Too Cold Scorpio, Chris Candido, Rob Van Damn, Lance Storm, Tajiri and loads of others I'm forgetting. Granted most of the time it was bloody and violent and often garbage wrestling, but sometimes it would really surprise you. It was kind of nice watching indy wrestling on tv. As far as the Kool Aid goes; yes. Paul Heyman took a small promotion that had problems and short comings but disguised them and made it seem like something crazier and badder than the big two. Did WCW and WWE steal from ECW? Sure did. Did ECW steal from Japanese promotions like FMW? Of course. Point is, whether you liked it or not, we're still talking about it 8 years later. It may have not been a great company, but for a while it was a fun alternative. Yikes, I forgot a bunch of those wrestlers. Aside from that part, I still stand by my original opinion.
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Post by Bobby Womack on Apr 30, 2009 9:44:30 GMT -5
it was both
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Post by Alucard on Apr 30, 2009 9:59:37 GMT -5
Most who find it overrated probably never watched it in the first place and are just going with the "lots of people liked this so I hate it." thing.
I agree with in the middle, it had it's fair share of iffyness going on, but it had some of the most amazing storytelling in pro wrestling which has seldom been seen since.
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Post by angryfan on Apr 30, 2009 10:30:40 GMT -5
Most who find it overrated probably never watched it in the first place and are just going with the "lots of people liked this so I hate it." thing. I agree with in the middle, it had it's fair share of iffyness going on, but it had some of the most amazing storytelling in pro wrestling which has seldom been seen since. Agreed, I'd say the best discription for ECW was "different". Maybe I'm old or just a wrestling junkie, but I watched from way back, like early 1995, and was hooked on the fact that I got to see guys doing something different. Yeah, the violence could be over the top sometimes, and there was some goofy crap going on, but there was a mixed bag where a fan of any style got something on the show. Throw in the fact that everybody didn't look like cardboard cut-outs, and it added to the attractiveness of the product. Taz could be booked as a badass even if he's only 5'10" because he had a psychotic Napoleon complex from hell, and it came across as believable. RVD was supposed to be an egomaniac douche, hence the whole thumbs thing, but the fans gravitated towards a guy that, even with botches, busted his ass for them. The BWO was goofy as hell, we all knew it, but it was ok, because they were so obviously having fun with it. Same with the early FBI and JT Smith. People harp on the "you f***ed up" chants, but most don't remember that it became a term of endearment for Smith. Hell, Hack God Damned Meyers got over in ECW, and that says something, doesn't it? I remember a buddy telling me he couldn't stand the show (Hardcore TV, the syndicated one) because "it doesn't have the same look in terms of pyro that WWF has" and tha always floored me. He would say that he enjoyed watching the matches, but it just didn't feel like "a real wrestling show" without all the flash. To me, though, the point of ECW was simply this. A guy shows up, no matter where else he's been, and is told "go out there, do what you do, and show us something". Having said that, has it become somewhat overrated since the fall? Yes, although much of that is a combination of rose-tinted glasses or viewing it only through the Rise and Fall DVD and sporatic matches from the 'net. I've been to a few wrestling shows in my life, for WWF, WCW, ECW, and one of my most vivid memories was at a freaking fairground down in Florida, watching the Dudleys nearly start a riot. It was so different becasue there were no kid gloves, it wasn't cheap "your sports teams all suck and you're hicks" heat. If the ECW crowd were all "smarks" as is so often thrown around, then how could they get worked so easily into nearly becoming violent against heels? It felt like the stories from the 60's where heels would literally need bodyguards because the fans wanted to hurt them. Like I said, what it boiled down to, in my eyes, was guys being able to be creative, improvise, and play off the moment. Sadly, I think the reason that they failed, money issues aside, can also come back to that willingness to let the boys just do their thing. Networks don't want spontenaity. They never have. They want to know what's coming, so they can then cover themselves if need be. No network anywhere would have let ECW do what they truly did best, which was draw an outline, a very basic one, and tell the individual "artists" to go in and do with their section of the canvas whatever they wanted.
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Post by Marky Mark...Mark on Apr 30, 2009 10:34:56 GMT -5
I watched the original ECW from around 97 to it's death, and while it was nice during the time, looking back on it it sucked. Sure there was some good technical wrestling, but most of the shows were garbage wrestling. Everyone always talks about the Dreamer/Raven feud being "epic" when it was literally the same match night in and night out. Raven made it good through his promos however and by use of the pyshology he had already figured out by then.
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Joekishi
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Post by Joekishi on Apr 30, 2009 11:34:31 GMT -5
Overrated, you want to talk about overbooked clustersmurfs, you're talking about ECW, where a singles match seemingly becomes a battle royal, that becomes a tag match, that then turns into a New Jack Beatdown.
I enjyoed it for it's craziness, but ECW got as stale as WWE and WCW.
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Post by Lance Uppercut on Apr 30, 2009 11:52:12 GMT -5
Overrated, you want to talk about overbooked clustersmurfs, you're talking about ECW, where a singles match seemingly becomes a battle royal, that becomes a tag match, that then turns into a New Jack Beatdown. I will whole-heartedly agree to this! As much I loved the old product, this sort of thing did get very stale.
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hollywood
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Post by hollywood on Apr 30, 2009 12:09:41 GMT -5
Awesome.
But that's strictly my opinion. Just like those who insist it was over-rated are strictly spouting their opinions. In the end, the only one who can say one way or the other is you.
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Post by Chuckie Finster on Apr 30, 2009 12:39:08 GMT -5
I watched it when it was alive and well and I watched every week. It wasn't the greatest thing ever but when it was on it convinced me it was the greatest thing ever.
Clusterf***s were an original idea back then and not viewed as badly as they are today. They also had a point to them.
People point out individual flaws with the product, but as a whole, it was great enough to want me wanting more every week. To me, nothing else has been like it since, although many have tried.
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jobber2thestars
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Post by jobber2thestars on Apr 30, 2009 13:49:28 GMT -5
In most ECW topics like this, people say that ECW hasn't held up over time. Although they say it as a bad thing, I actually see it as a positive. The world of professional wrestling has changed a lot since the high point of ECW, and much of that has to do with ECW. What ECW did really wasn'y all that groundbreaking, as it had been done before by other promotions, it just happen to come along at the right time.
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Post by i.Sarita.com on Apr 30, 2009 14:03:05 GMT -5
I thought the technical wrestling was awesome, but the storylines and the hardcore stuff wasn't. So I'd say it's a little of both.
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Muskrat
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Post by Muskrat on Apr 30, 2009 14:06:08 GMT -5
It wasn't the greatest thing ever but when it was on it convinced me it was the greatest thing ever. This right here. At the end of that hour every week you felt like you had just watched the greatest hour of pro wrestling ever. Every goddamned week I thought that
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Post by don on Apr 30, 2009 14:35:56 GMT -5
I absolutely hate the original ECW. Don't get me wrong; there were some good to great matches like RVD/Lynn and Guerrero/Mysterio. However, I think ECW gets the benefit of being more fondly remembered in death. For every one RVD/Lynn match, there was 1000 New Jack "matches." It befuddles me when people talk about how WWE should treat people like Tommy Dreamer better because they are "legends." First of all, Ric Flair, a true wrestling legend, has been beaten clean by everyone from Rico to Kenny Dykstra, and Tommy Dreamer is NO Ric Flair. The only thing Tommy did was stick around.
I think smarks have this knee-jerk reaction of "WWE - bad, WCW - horrible, and ECW - great!" Case in point, does anyone remember Eddie Guerrero's last WWE storyline where he revealed himself to be Dominic Mysterio's father? People were up in arms over the ridiculousness and how convoluted the whole thing was. Yet, many of those same fans will remember the Tyler/Sandman/Raven.
The same fans who chant "You can't wrestle" at John Cena are the ones who went crazy for New Jack and The Sandman. The same fans who said "Size doesn't matter in ECW!!! It's about talent " are the ones who gave Sid Vicious one of the largest reactions in ECW history.
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Post by Mayonnaise on Apr 30, 2009 14:45:55 GMT -5
Case in point, does anyone remember Eddie Guerrero's last WWE storyline where he revealed himself to be Dominic Mysterio's father? Actually, his last storyline was "Is Eddy Batista's friend or Batista's foe?" ECW was a little bit of everything. They put on some great matches but, also put on crap like New Jack/Baldies. The problem is, people will ignore the bad and remember the good 99% of the time. Misterio/Psycosis, Malenko/Guerrero, Jericho/Scorpio to name a few were all good to great matches and even toward the end, you had RVD/Lynn, Storm/RVD and the various talents returning for "one night only" or the Japanese imports who came over. When you see people saying ECW was only about the violence and hardcore stuff, they were not fans, same for those who same the hardcore stuff was only a small portion of the shows.
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Post by don on Apr 30, 2009 14:57:18 GMT -5
Case in point, does anyone remember Eddie Guerrero's last WWE storyline where he revealed himself to be Dominic Mysterio's father? Actually, his last storyline was "Is Eddy Batista's friend or Batista's foe?" Actually, I meant the last storyline that he got to finish all the way through. He died in the middle of the Batista one. I wish we would have gotten to see it finish, too, because it was different and had loads of possible outcomes including a double turn from Eddie and Batista.
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biafra
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Post by biafra on Apr 30, 2009 14:59:01 GMT -5
I loved everything about it and still miss it. I'll put Heatwave 98 and Anarchy Rulz 99 against any show from any company.
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Post by Janitor From Mars on Apr 30, 2009 15:02:33 GMT -5
Awesome.
No other word describes it.
I understand that the younger folks here don't think much of it. How many of them were actually old enough to watch it when it was in its' prime?
I won't shy away from being a mark for the original ECW. It re-sparked my interest in wrestling as a whole. Couldn't get enough of the Attitude era. Without ECW, I wouldn't even bother watching it. The ECW stars on RAW back in 1997 were a big deal to my brother and I. It meant that ECW had made it. We watched ECW Hardcore TV religiously too.
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