(EC-Fuckin'-W. In case you were wondering.)
I very vaguely remember watching pro wrestling for the first time in the late '70s. I was about five, which would've put the year at 1978 and my mom, my stepdad, and I were living with his parents (and daughter, who was three years older than me & fit the role of evil older sister & a son who had just gotten married, and his wife) until our trailer was ready. So yeah, I am basically the rasslin' stereotype: raised poor in an old trailer & grew up on wrestling, metal, and Marlboro Lights. Or Magnas when I was feeling cheap.
Anyway...
My aunt kept talking about Andre the Giant and how he was wrestling that night. At the time, the local syndicated station that would go on to play Comedy Classics and Saturday Night Shockers over the years was currently airing World Class Championship Wrestling (the Von Erich promotion) with the occasional report from overseas, usually Japan. It was one of those five-on-one matches Andre was famous for & it was impressive. But then, the Von Erichs came on.
Holy shit, that was incredible. It was Kerry & David (Rassle In Peace, boys) tagging. No idea who, but it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. They were the good guys, super heroes, and I loved super heroes and comic books & here those things were in live action. I would later be introduced to Ric Flair, the Freebirds, the Great Muta, Gentleman Chris Adams, Gary Hart, the Road Warriors, Bulldog Bob Brown, Dick the Bruiser, Gene Kiniski, King Kong Brody, Harley Race, Terry Funk, and all those incredible performers who were killing it before Vincent K. McMahon, Jr. changed the world.
I was sucked in by Hulk Hogan and the WWF like millions of others. I'm from a small town in Missouri of around 3,000 people. The nearest decent-sized town is Hannibal (the town of my birth...and that of Sam Clemons), and that's more than 30 minutes away. We were rural af, folks. WWF was the main event, but I still kept up on other federations, like WCW's Saturday night show on SuperStation WTBS (5:05 p.m. CT, every Saturday). I remember thinking how big the shows were then. Watching them now on YouTube? Pretty sure all of them could have fit in my living room. But to be fair, I do have a large living room.
I graduated high school in '91 & went directly to the Navy. By this time, WWF was starting to get really gimmicky & after the whole Papa Shango making people ooze that weird shit out of their scalps, I was done. WCW was in worse shape. So I gave up on wrestling. I was stationed at the base TV & radio station in Rota, Spain. One of the guys I was there with (who had the most amazing radio voice, but had no idea how to use it), was hardcore addicted to WWF. I was never one of the really REALLY solid followers. Like I said, when it got dumb, I stopped watching.
Moved on to the base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and then USS John F. Kennedy where I still hadn't been following wrestling at all. Then, Monday, June 10, 1996, I was honorably discharged from the US Navy. I jumped in my Thunderbird & headed north from Florida to my parents' house in Missouri. I spent my first night of freedom in a reasonable hotel in Atlanta. I turned the TV on and decided, 'You know what? I'm going to watch some rasslin'!'
I turned on RAW. I saw Goldust. Nope. Looked like the same nonsense I stopped watching in '92. Later, I would realize the Goldust/Dustin Runnels deal was pretty deep and pretty interesting. That night, though, I wasn't having it.
(It's not you, man; it's me.)
So I flipped over to TNT just in time for Scott Hall to introduce "The Big Man" as The Wolfpac was formed, later to become the New World Order (nWo), one of the greatest wrestling cliques in the industry's history. And I had just witnessed the beginning.
I eventually discovered WWF as their Attitude Era was forming and of course fell in love with it. Stone Cold, Degeneration X (with a still awesome Shawn Michaels bringing it), the Nation of Domination, all of it. I was watching live when Mick Foley took the dive off the Hell in the Cell. I was supposed to be at Badd Blood in St. Louis where Brian Pillman failed to make the bell due to a case of being deceased, Shawn Michaels took the first big bump off the cell, and my fellow Bowling Green High School alum, Glenn Jacobs, made his WWF debut as Kane. (True story: he was really good friends with a couple of my cousins and played football & basketball with them. Awesome dude.)
(I'm 6'2", two & a half bills. That's a large man.)
So around this time, I met, fell in love with, got engaged to, and married a pretty awesome woman who has put up with a tremendous amount of shenanigans over our 20+ years of wedded bliss. I moved in with her & we got satellite. Coming from small-town cable, real live satellite in 1998 was fucking incredible.
And that's how I found ECW.
I was scrolling through the channels around late fall, 1998. I was waiting for the Sunday night NFL game and was looking through all those weird sports channels no one ever watches and found an episode of ECW Hardcore TV. It was unreal. I was hooked immediately. It was an amazing time for the promotion as they were cranking out PPVs, doing work that is still being copied, and making it look fun. It was about a year before the TNN deal and it was just as I was getting familiar with the internet. It was an exciting time.
Over the years, I've loved ECW more and more. I've bought the DVDs and binged. Usually, once every couple years, I have a hardcore (Get it? Hardcore? Because ECW is--nevermind) urge to watch ECW. The first One Night Stand (June 12, 2005) was, to me, one of the top 3 wrestling PPVs of all time. It was the capper of a great day that happened to be my birthday. Went to a St. Louis Cardinals game with my wife & parents & watched them beat the Yankees, my friend Carl Edwards won the NASCAR Cup Series race in Pocono, and THEN I went home to watch the revival of the best wrestling fed ever with a list of some of the greatest performances in said fed's short but influential history.
I didn't watch the WWE version of ECW because it wasn't ECW. I get they share arenas and do a lot of the shows on the same day and whatnot, but how hard would it have been to rent out the local bingo hall to provide the real feel? Again, I'm sure insurance was a bitch and there were a lot of other factors, too. But still.
Haven't watched the TNA versions of the ECW comeback, either. Around 2010, I stopped watching wrestling again. RAW was turning into something dumb (those celebrity guest hosts did me in) and TNA got rid of the six-sided ring and became just another wrestling group. Although, I have been to a TNA PPV where I got to interview Christian (I'm a reporter/journalist/media type), who seemed a lot cooler than I expected. So I was a man without a federation. I just had DVDs and memories.
So I was fucking knocked on my heels when I found out the WWE Network had the entire ECW catalog, including all the PPVs, all the old Hardcore TVs, and all the TNN shows. That's all I've been doing for the last week; sitting on my couch, smoking a shit ton of weed with my friend Steve, and watching all these spectacular matches and promos. My wife is ready to crack me in the skull with a chair for reelz, but I can't stop watching. I had seen most of the PPVs or at least the main matches, but seeing them all in one place, in chronological order is insane.
(The WWE Network: Where every day is your birthday. Jackass.)
One of my favorite things is to get high & watch sports. Any sports. It seems to take the competitiveness and drama to a whole new level. Seeing old NFL games and wrestling matches on YouTube is awesome. But having the WWE Network (and I'm not being compensated in any way by WWE, ECW, or anyone else, but I'm more than willing to sell out; just DM me through my Twitter @MyECWMemories. Seriously, check that out) means DAYS of watching ECW and getting high. While doing this, I get all these great ideas and deep thoughts about ECW and what it did and what it represented to wrestling both at that time and now.
Hence, this blog.
This is my space to write about all the epitomes I have about Tommy Dreamer, all the compliments I have for Mike Awesome, my undying love for Joey Styles, and my drooling fanboy-like obsession with Beulah McGillicutty. So welcome. Thank you for stopping by. I'm always down to talk wrestling, so hit me up here or on Twitter.
#OHMYGOD
(Didn't mean that kind of hit. Whatever. ECW! ECW! ECW! Photo credit: Wrestling Observer)
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