ECW Sucked

[StormanReigns]

There I said it.

-Disgusting amounts of chair shots to the head
-A lot of bad wrestlers (for every Jerry Lynn there were 5 Balls Mahoney's)
-Terrible production
-Used women as sex objects
-Justin Credible
-They refused to use floor matts
-People complain about WWE treating their wrestlers terribly, but ECW failed to pay some (WCW probably treated their talent the best in this regard)

Okay it probably did not suck as a whole, but a lot of elements of it did (listed above). Why on earth is this brand fetishized so much? It was not THAT good. The ECW guys were too old in 2006, and then again in 2012 when TNA did, and even more so now.

Exchanging chair shots to the head for 15 minutes is NOT wrestling! It takes NO talent, there is no story in a match like that and it is so incredibly unsafe. I know the things with CTE are new, but for the love of god, this level of chair shots to a persons head was ALWAYS known to be unsafe. Concussions leading to brain damage is NOT a new concept!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But I am re-watching a lot of it, and for every Eddie vs Malenko 5 star match, there is a 10 matches with a guy like CW Anderson, that frankly are not that good.

Most of the ECW guys would not even crack today's ROH roster.

[suave]

Not 100 percent sure if this is bait, but I'll assume it's not for arguments sake.

ECW was great because it brought gritty, realistic wrestling back into the mainstream scene. Back in the 70s, wrestling was like boxing. A tough, somewhat shady looking profession, where people came to see a realistic looking brawl. Personally, I'm a big fan of that feel. However, sometime around 1984, wrestling got nationalized, and with that came a more homogeneous and family friendly product. By 1995, wrestling wasn't tough motherf***ers like Sammartino, Ernie Ladd, and Blackjack Mulligan slugging it out. It was Randy Savage selling you slim jims and Shawn Michaels acting like a stripper. ECW turned back to that old school grittiness (adding in various other styles of wrestling), forcing WWF and WCW to adapt in order to avoid losing the young male fanbase. If it weren't for ECW, the attitude era wouldn't have happened, because ECW brought "Attitude" back into mainstream wrestling.

[CATCH_US IS the Conversation]

"Even" crack today's ROH roster?

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

[Deleted]

Well your not wrong but good luck on this one lol

[Emmet Russell]

Man, I liked CW Anderson.

I kinda agree, because I feel ECW is very overrated, but I definitely wouldn't say it sucked. It just wasn't as good as people remember. When they hit PPV, they started going downhill, and near the end when they had virtually no talent or names left the shows were very hard to sit through.

People look at ECW with rose-tinted glasses way too often.

[Deleted]

Sucked? I would not go that far but when looking back on it what it was was that it is a product of its time.

But I still love it but not for the violence or sex but for the atmosphere it is absloutley infectous to look back at such a raucus crowd and just get pulled in and understand why it is still loved ECW knew its audience and gave them what they wanted in abundence and the crowd reacted in kind by being on fire for every show which makes watching those shows still so much fun IMO.

[Chuckie Finster]

I watched ECW as it happened. It wasn't the greatest thing ever, but when it was on, it convinced you it was. It was a mesmerizing product with the crowds, the insanity, the production, etc.

A lot of the criticisms (objectifying women, excessive carnage, chairshots to the head) are valid, but only in hindsight. At the time, that was the norm, for better or worse.

For the scumminess of not paying guys, those guys could have called the police or not wrestled because it's illegal, especially after PPV started as they had binding contracts.

ECW wasn't made to appease wrestling fans watching it on the WWE Network in 2015. It was made for the fans from 1993-2001 who wanted something other than WWF and WCW.

[StormanReigns]

I did say in my own post that not all of it was great, I am particularly going after the hardcore wrestling that I felt had no story, and the lack protection for the talent (pay and safety wise).

I am being facetious to make a point

[chazraps]

Dec 30, 2015 2:32:00 GMT -5 StormanReigns said:

Okay it probably did not suck as a whole,

That's where you lost.

When talking about a promotion in a blanket statement, you have to talk about it as a whole, as it originally presented itself to you.

The trouble with a post-DVD post-Network-edit culture is that you aren't really getting ECW, as a whole, to judge. ECW became the beloved promotion because it was consistently great one-hour television, that produced a live show that felt like consistently great parties and spawned consistently great special events/pay-per-views. When the network guts the music, the promos, the ads, the atmosphere, and just gives you truncated matches here and there which, as great as they might be, aren't in an of themselves indicative of what made ECW so great.

Sorry, but unless you track down those original Hardcore TV broadcasts, you're judging ECW erroneously.

[Can you afford to pay me, Gah]

Dec 30, 2015 2:32:00 GMT -5 StormanReigns said:

There I said it.

-Disgusting amounts of chair shots to the head
-A lot of bad wrestlers (for every Jerry Lynn there were 5 Balls Mahoney's)
-Terrible production
-Used women as sex objects
-Justin Credible
-They refused to use floor matts
-People complain about WWE treating their wrestlers terribly, but ECW failed to pay some (WCW probably treated their talent the best in this regard)

Okay it probably did not suck as a whole, but a lot of elements of it did (listed above). Why on earth is this brand fetishized so much? It was not THAT good. The ECW guys were too old in 2006, and then again in 2012 when TNA did, and even more so now.

Exchanging chair shots to the head for 15 minutes is NOT wrestling! It takes NO talent, there is no story in a match like that and it is so incredibly unsafe. I know the things with CTE are new, but for the love of god, this level of chair shots to a persons head was ALWAYS known to be unsafe. Concussions leading to brain damage is NOT a new concept!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But I am re-watching a lot of it, and for every Eddie vs Malenko 5 star match, there is a 10 matches with a guy like CW Anderson, that frankly are not that good.

Most of the ECW guys would not even crack today's ROH roster.

ECW wasn't about having high production values and they didn't want it to be (Plus wasn't in the payroll). They wanted the focus on the in ring action. All the videos by former talent all talked about it.

Using women as sex objects. How is that different from WWE in attitude era and before to the current PG time? Hell the NWA in the 80s had some questionable use of women. It nothing new. Your comparison to every good wrestler there was 10 bad? That can be said about EVERY wrestling company in history. Look at WWE 93 for example. You had Bret, Perfect, and Shawn but you had Booger,Skinner, and ext right with them.

Floor mats wasn't always used in wrestling period. NWA didn't for years as did most companys pre 80s. The chair shots to the head only became a bigger deal now and not back in the 90s. Royal Rumble 99 think about that for a second.

[The Dark Order Inferno]

Not a popular opinion, I think the legacy of ECW has been absolutely toxic to wrestling myself as it ripped up whatever remained of keyfabe and had guys that shouldn't be wrestling legitimately hurting oneanother without being paid. ECW devalued big spots in wrestling, weapon strikes became meaningless when they're used in ultimately meaningless matches and the people swinging them weren't really interested in whether their opponent would be hurt by it as long as it made a nice loud bang and got chants from the bloodthirsty people in the crowd.

If the company had somehow survived and found a sugardaddy that wasn't Vince, they would have spent the past 10 years being sued over and over and over by former workers who were coerced into taking weapon shots or dropping through tables without any consideration for what sort of shape they'd be in 10 years down the line.

[Ben Wyatt]

ECW didn't suck, but it sure as hell hasn't aged very well

[cabbageboy]

I haven't felt like watching much ECW on the network since if you take away the music you lose a lot of the show. Stuff like an RVD video package done to "Walk" is rendered incomprehensible when you replace the song with a generic riff. I'd urge the OP to check out some 1999 era ECW, where there was still some of the crazy violent stuff but also quite possibly the best put together wrestling roster in America. I think Rob Van Dam's leg injury in March 2000 was almost a "jump the shark" moment for the entire company since he was supposed to get the title from Mike Awesome at the next PPV, but the injury caused Heyman to do all that silly stuff like bringing back Taz for a night, then the Dreamer/Credible silliness. And thus we got 6 months of Justin Credible as champion.

There's still a place for violent brawls in wrestling however. Witness the recent 8 man tag on Raw between the Wyatts and the ECW crew. And really the ECW nuts at least usually sold the effects of the violence. It really wasn't until the post ECW indie goofs started doing crazed spots and stunts with no rhyme or reason that this would be a legit criticism.

[Stu]

In a nutshell, ECW deviated from the norm and was totally different from what we were used to at the time. New fans are likely desensitized to everything that made ECW stand out 20 years ago. That is exactly why ECW was a big deal and has a place in history.

[YAKMAN is ICHIBAN]

The energy though, you really had to be a fan at the time to get it. Hearing rumors from other fans about some wrestling show that was more "real", flipping through channels late at night and coming across ECW TV. It felt like being a part of some rebel movement.



Heatwave 98 is definitely in my top ten PPV's of all time.

[Milkman Norm]

I've been a fan since the late 80's when I was a little kid and honestly even at the time I was never a big ECW fan. It just wasn't my kind of thing. But I do think Paul Heyman knows how to promote and book a fine show and there is probably no one better at maximizing talents while minimizing the down side of his wrestlers. Still I'd personally take a promotion like Smokey Mountain over ECW any day of the week.

[celtics543]

I watched very little of the original ECW because I was young then, only 13 when it went out of business. It's tough to judge it though right now because you aren't watching it in the 90's. That was a completely different era and a completely different period in time. The world as a whole was more edgy and anti-authority. A hardcore, blood-thirsty, wrestling organization was just what the doctor ordered.

[paperbackhero]

It sure as hell was more exciting then what the WWF offered from 93 to 96.

Hindsight is 20/20, like stated above.

[YAKMAN is ICHIBAN]

Dec 30, 2015 11:16:28 GMT -5 Milkman Norm said:

I've been a fan since the late 80's when I was a little kid and honestly even at the time I was never a big ECW fan. It just wasn't my kind of thing. But I do think Paul Heyman knows how to promote and book a fine show and there is probably no one better at maximizing talents while minimizing the down side of his wrestlers. Still I'd personally take a promotion like Smokey Mountain over ECW any day of the week.

Any man who can find a proper use for 911 clearly excels at this.