JB
Mike the Goon
Posts: 28
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Post by JB on Sept 3, 2014 5:01:00 GMT -5
ECW didn't get much prominence in my group of friends til about 98-99 (we were apporx 11-12years old) when it was classed as the "real wrestling" compared to the scripted RAW/Nitro. It was very hard to get a hold of as it wasn't on any TV stations over here in the UK so what I seen at the time was very limited.
It was good for its time but I struggle to watch it now mostly due to the video quality. I quite like the production tbh especially for its time
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Professor Chaos
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Bringer of Destruction and Maker of Doom
Posts: 16,332
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Post by Professor Chaos on Sept 3, 2014 5:45:24 GMT -5
ECW on TNN sucked which is what I remember of first seeing the company. I got wrapped up in these ECW Hardcore TV episodes from 93-95 though and can't wait till they add more.
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Zach
Trap-Jaw
Posts: 368
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Post by Zach on Sept 3, 2014 7:03:45 GMT -5
I never thought it was that great to begin with. The TV show was decent, although it came on at 4am on Sunday where I lived, but even back then I remember the PPVs being horrible. I remember my dad and I ordered their first PPV and then called the cable company and said we "accidentally" purchased it so we could get the money back because it was so terrible!
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Glitch
King Koopa
Not Going To Die; Childs, we're goin' out to give Blair the test. If he tries to make it back here and we're not with him... burn him.
Watching you.
Posts: 12,716
Member is Online
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Post by Glitch on Sept 3, 2014 15:23:43 GMT -5
The attitude era didn't exactly age that well either. It was just as cartoonish as the previous eras of the wwf. Ecw had the excuse of being the first out of the gate. Attitude era was pretty much the rock n' wrestling era with upped violence and boobs layered on top. It felt more natural for ecw to do what they did. In the wwf it came off forced. Best example was five piece DX. If Ecw was a foul mouthed comedian, attitude era was a 14 year old telling his school yard friends obscenities.
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Post by SkullTrauma on Sept 4, 2014 3:13:33 GMT -5
Brass knuckles, two pieces of broken table, a chair shot, and two shots with the title belt = two counts Belly to Belly suplex = pinfall well...the belly to belly was his finisher at the time. finishers > crappy weapons like table pieces.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2014 3:30:03 GMT -5
Some ECW stuff is pretty great to look back on, but from what I've seen, it's by and far not the stuff from their PPVs or from Hardcore TV.
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DjZonk
Don Corleone
Where's my cat?
Posts: 1,325
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Post by DjZonk on Sept 4, 2014 8:11:55 GMT -5
Mike Awesome vs Masato Tanaka was basically the same match time after time, wasn't it...
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Sept 4, 2014 9:29:40 GMT -5
the end of Shane Douglas vs Pit Bull #2 from Barely Legal should be infuriating to almost anyone That's patently untrue, because I was just glad that f***ing awful marathon of a match was finally over.
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Post by tigermaskxxxvii on Sept 4, 2014 13:05:35 GMT -5
To me the only things about ECW that make me cringe in retrospect is some of the fashion choies of the wrestlers in the company's last two years when nu metal and backyard wrestling chic was all the rage (whole lotta wrestlers wearing jorts). One of my favorite parts of the Barbed Wire City documentary is that the cover art of the DVD is a barbed wire fence with a blue sky and white clouds in the background. Such a refreshing change of pace after seeing all of the black, red and white graphics on every piece of merchandise and promotional material. That and the fact that those shows were such sausage fests, and that's saying something when you say that a wrestling show is a sausage fest! Although, the ECW Arena of all places seemed to have the best male to female ratio of all the places they ran ("best", relatively speaking). I was actually watching the Rhino-Sandman match from Heatwave 2000 yesterday and as The Sandman is going through the crowd to the ring and Cyrus on commentary calls the crowd a bunch of troglodytes. I hear that and thought "Hey, wait a minute!....Actually he might have a point."
Other than that, loved ECW. It's fun to watch those old matches, trying to relive them in the present day with ECW revival after revival (what sense does it make to do a retread of a product that marketed itself as a "revolution"?) on the other hand.....
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Captain2
Don Corleone
Big Daddy Cool
Posts: 1,990
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Post by Captain2 on Sept 4, 2014 13:20:17 GMT -5
He also quite careful in never say ECW "died", merely that it "went away". Well its kind of true, you never see WCW tribute shows.
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Post by CATCH_US IS the Conversation on Sept 4, 2014 13:53:34 GMT -5
Don't even remember what happened other than Rick Rude and Brian Lee showing up. That what you mean? Or is it something else? Shane Douglas hits #2 with brass knuckles and breaks a piece of table over his head. Two count. Douglas hits him with a chair shot. Two count. Douglas hits him with the ring bell. Two count. Douglas breaks another piece of table over his head. Two count and Pit Bull throws Douglas up in the air on the kick out. Pit Bull gets in some offense, throws Douglas into the corner. Douglas grabs the TV title and hits Pit Bull with it twice. Shane attempts to get a chain out of his boot, gets caught from behind in a pumphandle slam. Two count. Pit Bull gets the chain out Shane's boot and uses it. Chris Candido distracts Pit Bull #2. Francine distracts him. Schoolboy roll up. Two count. Pit Bull hits a clothesline. Douglas is back up. Douglas ducks a clothesline and hits a lazy belly to belly suplex for the win. Brass knuckles, two pieces of broken table, a chair shot, and two shots with the title belt = two counts Belly to Belly suplex = pinfall In my mind, ECW guys are trained to hit each other with everything with the kitchen sink, but the moment someone does an actual "wrestling move", they're unprepared and it catches them off guard.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2014 11:52:45 GMT -5
ECW ages poorly because it was actually a current, cool product in it's day.
It's day was 20 years ago.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Sept 5, 2014 11:56:13 GMT -5
The constant revivals might be one of the reasons it hasn't aged that well...
the fact that it is very much a product of it's time (since in the late 90's everything had to be XTREME!!!!) doesn't help either.
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saintpat
El Dandy
Release the hounds!!!
Posts: 7,664
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Post by saintpat on Sept 5, 2014 13:08:34 GMT -5
Eye of the beholder and all that.
I remember still very vividly the first time I came home from working a night shift and I had just gotten DirecTV and I was flipping channels and saw "ECW Wrestling" listed -- I think it was on a Philly sports station or some such, pretty sure it was pre-MSG but not 100 percent sure -- and thinking, 'What the heck, I like wrestling, I'll see what this is all about.'
And I was absolutely, completely and totally shocked. I don't think I moved a muscle the entire episode. Sabu was using chairs and tables and it was complete and total chaos. Never seen anything like it, never had a wrestling experience since that grabbed me like that. You almost couldn't process it taking it in for the first time, it was so radically different from everything else.
Now looking back, and even then as I kept watching, I realized a lot of the 'wrestling' was garbage -- you had a few like Shane Douglas who could execute moves and carry on a real match, and you had a lot of guys who ... well, could not. It seemed like the DDT was everyone's finisher because even a guy off the street could execute that --- but that also made it cool, more like they had just created a roster from grabbing random semi-psycho badasses off the street or from bars (Sandman being a perfect example).
But what I do think endures and still works for me when I see it: everyone had a defined character, and those characters evolved. The feuds had a point, there was a reason two guys didn't like each other. And everyone was SO into their roles -- to this day, to me, Francine is the best female character ever in wrestling -- she was 100 percent devoted to 'her man' and every little thing she did projected that. Tommy Dream was 100 percent committed to being Tommy Dreamer, etc., etc.
So, yeah, I see what you're talking about ... but it's still real to me.
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