How many of you watched ECW during its run
 

I don't mean through the Network or WWECW. I mean through 92-2001. I've always got the sense that not alot of people here watched it

What were your impressions of it? Who were your favourites/wrestlers you hated. When did you start watching and did you ever stop watching? Ever attend a show?

I started watching around late 96/early 97, so at the peak of the company. My favourite wrestlers there were RVD, Sandman and Dreamer. Shane Douglas is my least favourite wrestler of all time. Justin Credible was the last wrestler I truly despised, especially during his feud with Dreamer . Lol I was so happy when Dreamer won the belt, and then a few minutes later that bitch Justin Credible won it and I was pissed.

I attended their only show in Canada which was August 2000. Main event was a Trippe threat match between Credible, Jerry Lynn and Steve Corino.

My guilty pleasure wrestlers were Simon Diamond and his entourage. Mitch the Bitch fucking killed me lol

I tried to get into when it was on TNN but I saw a "baldies" segment and got turned off from it.

Yeah the Baldies were pretty bad lol

They fought Balls and Chilly Willy at the show I went to in a boring brawl. The brawls through the crowd aren't remotely interesting when you're there live and they aren't in your section

I saw some pieces on TNN, and I had 1 VHS tape that I don't think I ever finished watching the whole way through.

It just seemed like not my type of thing. Too much profanity and "edgy" material for my sensibilities.

I just remember a backstage segment by them and thinking "this is really corny". Hard to find any thing of theirs on youtube, no wikipedia page either.

Juan used to put ECW up on Justin.tv some long cage match brawl and I thought it was boring.

The only match I remember being on the VHS was some sort of "Broken Glass Match" where they put their hands in glue and then in broken glass

Would randomly stumble upon Hardcore TV every once in a while, usually on around 1 am, on some random local channel. But didn't really know what was going on.

Tried to watch it weekly on TNN as much as I could. Didn't care enough to go out of my way and tape it, though.

Taipei Death Match

I taped Hardcore TV every week from like 97 till it ended. I missed 95-96 which was their best years

It was very hard to watch outside of Philly/New York. Had to have a satellite vs cable just to get the weekly show. I caught what I could over a few different friends houses who had satellites.

Mostly though it was tape trading and PPVs only. Luckily ECW was great at recapping a lot of what happened quickly, so you never fell too far behind missing 2 or 3 weeks.

Saw ECW live once, and it was a awesome show. Just pure chaos.

The Dudleys were everything, they had start a riot heat in ECW. Taz was there, didn't have a match but showed up in the crowd and cut an amazing f bomb filled promo.

They were my ECW faves, along with RVD and Al Snow

97-2001. Don't think we got it in Mass until around then on the Spanish channel WOOSTER/BOSTON!

Saw them live at the Palladium in Worcester around 2000 or so.

Saw ECWWE when it still had a lot of the originals in 2006 at a small community college gym.

I caught the back end of it. I liked it. I wish i would have been a fan from the beginning. But in hindsight. There were a lot of future racist, antifa motherfuckers in those crowds. I think Heyman got out of that shit when he needed to.

Hardcore TV was on like Friday nights at 1 AM here so I would watch it randomly sometimes, but didn't really get into it until like 1997 or 1998.

I went to like 5 or 6 shows. The most fun wrestling shows I've ever been to by far... Nothing else has ever come even close 2 the crowd atmosphere...

Favs were Sabu, Tajiri, Taz, RVD, Dudleys :-)

Feel like CW Anderson was freaking sweet and very underrated... Remember him almost always having a really great match

Never liked Shane Douglas and Justin Credible... Also tbh always kinda thought Tommy Dreamer was boring

Grew up in western NY, so I followed it religiously from like 96' til it ended.

Went to a few shows. Specifically remember seeing Taz vs RVD and Mike Awesome vs Masato Tanaka live.

Triple A is spot on. Atmosphere is unreal. Would be scary for a 16/17 year old kid like me if I weren't immediately caught up in the atmosphere and screaming my head off myself.

Only thing that has ever topped those shows was Wrestlemania X-8. And even then, just the Hogan vs Rock match.

Was legit terrified of Taz. Thought he would beat the shit out of me if I ever walked up to him.

I remember seeing USWA on some weird station once and thinking "this is shit" and never watching it again.

Never watched ECW. Was mostly a WCW kid and didnt really switch to WWF until around 1999. Didn't k iw about WCW until WWE started putting out the DVDs. WCaw really didn't acknowledge ECW.

I didnt watch that trash. Jerry Lawler was right. ECW stands for really crappy rasslin

When they got their primetime TV slot on TNN/SpikeTV, whatever it was back then, was when I watched.

It was amazing. Nothing out there that even came close to what it was.

I would have watched it as I loved reading about it in magazines as a kid, but I never had any access to it.

Oh wow, it didn't air in Toronto?

My dad used to take my friend and I to WWF/WCW shows, and I remember him saying after the ECW show that he's never doing this again lol. It was probably the Sandman pouring beer on a chick's chest who couldn't have been 17 years old and licking it off in the middle of the ring

oh my god there were some of the rattiest ring rats I've ever seen at those shows.

I very much enjoyed watching ECW back in the day. Loved the RVD/Jerry Lynn and Mike Awesome/Masato Tanaka series. I appreciated the insanity of the New Jack and Sandman and Sabu types but never really huge fans. Loved Taz, Tajiri, Lance Storm, Shane Douglas. So great.

Also loved their super springy ring.

Haha so true about the ring. I remember Roadkill Boss Man Slamming people and the two would just bounce off the impact

I caught some of Hardcore TV very late in it's run, Scotty Anton vs RVD was the big feud that I can remember. Tony Mamaluke vs the floor was another hot feud. Rhino was just absolutely killing everyone in sight. Steve Corino bleeding a lot. Remember guys like Guido, Tajiri, Whipreck, Jerry Lynn being featured a lot. Doring and Roadkill and Chilly Willy too but never really got into those guys. I liked it a lot actually. Was a big fan of the backstage promo style, like these characters were just grabbing a camera and chatting shit, really added to the chaotic nature of the shows.

Also shoutout to my boys Joey Styles and Joel Gertner.

I tape traded and got a lot of ECW shows. Because they were so much more aggressive than WWF & WCW I loved it. Now not so much. I thought RVD and Jerry Lynn were amazing. I loved the triangle of Tajiri, Guido and Super Crazy, as well as Mike Awesome and Tanaka. Loved the four way with Scorpio, Jericho, Pitbull and Douglas... liked seeing Funk and Foley work together... loved Sabu, Born to be Wired... Joey Styles was the glue that held it all together for me. Loved Dreamer too. Started watching when they went on TNN weekly because I never got Hardcore TV where I lived. The first time I saw ECW was hardcore TV on my grandparents direct tv. I never remembered the channel so I only saw it once but I loved it. I remember a tag match with FBI vs Balls and Axle with a ton of color on FBI. Grandma didn’t get it. Then after that I saw the first episode of South Park air.

Always hated Justin Creadible but I didn’t mind him as The Impact aplayers with Storm. That was a good team.

Oh dang totally forgot about the Tajiri/Super Crazy rivalry. That was so good.

The thing I notice about ECW now is just how highly edited it was to make it work. If it weren't clipped it would have come off like a total shit show, and a lot of the times it came off that way anyway. I cannot remember ever ordering an ECW PPV that was actually fulfilling except Heatwave 98 and Anarchy Rules 99. ECW for me was all hype. I grew up with a kid who had a brother who worked indies and he worked some ECW shows as a job guy. The kid hyped ECW to me as this brutal style with barbed wire bats and the like. That is was gave me this impression that it was "better" than WWF or WCW. Going back when I watch old ECW I really can't stand it, it's quite obnoxious tbh.

When I got into hardcore wrestling I was probably like 11/12 years old and I stuck with it for maybe 4 or 5 years. I got the classic BJPW and FMW tapes with some of the first big time death matches. And the thing that always stuck out to me was the lack of drama. One there was no commentary or Japanese commentary so there was no story being told to me. It's just brutal spot long break and setup for the next one, and usually there was a botch or two in there.

I do wish though that Heyman would've gotten Mr. Pogo to do a program with New Jack though.

empire sports (rip) and sometimes msg would have it, late as fuck at night. and then they would come here for shows.

Also want to comment on ECW's final year. It was really bad. They seemed to have a ton of steam with crowds, they were mostly full. They had a fan base no doubt. But all the stars were gone with only Dreamer, RVD, Lynn, Rhino, Sandman and Sabu to carry the ship which was being sunk by the pushes of Justin Creadible, Steve Corino and Cyrus. Corino had no business near the ECW Title.

Oh something good though, the Dreamer/CW Anderson matches were really good as far as I can remember. Especially the final PPV they had.

Funny enough that the death of ECW began with their biggest opportunity in debuting on TNN. The original episode was such a disappointment, just a recap episode. Sure they played one of the RVD/Lynn matches and it was great but at that time I NEEDED new fresh ECW programming and they killed it from the start.

I guess I could talk about ECW all day tbh. One of the best things about ECW was the evolution of hardcore. From gross out Axle and Ian in a glass fist match, which is a spectacle of gore to say the least to Foley/Funk/Sandman/Sabu barbed wire matches and crowd brawls to the final and best form, Tanaka vs Awesome. In those matches you had like five moves, punches, lariats, chair shots, dives and powerbombs, and they were by far and large the best hardcore matches of all time in ECW. I do think that Foley is the greatest hardcore wrestler ever but mostly because of his work in WCW and WWF. The shit he did in the big leagues was even more brutal than the ECW/IWA/Big Japan stuff. But nothing was more realistic than Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka no selling chair shots and taking powerbombs out of the ring through tables. Man that series was good. Also they did better matches in ECW together than they did in FMW, probably because they had Joey Styles calling, and the ECW environment which ate it up like crazy.

Nobody in ECW disappointed me more than The Sandman. I cannot remember ever feeling satisfied with any Sandman matches unless he was squashing someone. In particular I remember some tape trader selling November 2 Remember 97 to me as this amazing show with a crazy Tables and Ladders match between Sabu and Sandman. Truly one of the worst matches of all time. What a shit card that show was, I have no idea what Heyman was thinking with that one.

Also without a doubt the best match in ECW history is the Psicosis vs Rey Misterio 2/3 Falls. You could say Dean and Eddie but that shit with Psicosis and Rey was ground breaking, ECW forever tried to recreate that match.

2000 ECW was way better than 98-99 ECW imo

Oh man I think 98 is the best year by far. What do you like in 2000?

Actually my first exposure to ECW aside from that conversation I had with that kid who had a brother that worked for ECW, was the ECW invasion of Raw in 97. I bought magazine's too so I knew who they were and I had the internet by that point too. ECW was all hype for me. Just something edgier and cooler than the dorky Vince McMahon and the redneck WCW.