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diversions
ECW vitals lack
signs of survival
Fans, just as soon
as I wrote a column about possible commentators who could succeed
Jerry Lawler, the World Wrestling Federation found its man:
Paul Heyman, owner of Extreme Championship Wrestling.
With Heyman now
on the WWF payroll, it is safe to say that any hopes of ECW
starting up again are somewhere between slim and none, heavily
leaning toward the latter.
The loss of ECW
would be a huge blow to professional wrestling. This small
federation reinvented and shaped wrestling as we know it today.
Wrestling's last
period of decline began in 1993. World Championship Wrestling,
much like now, was losing millions of dollars and came close
to bankruptcy. The WWF was plagued by a steroid distribution
scandal that could have destroyed all of professional wrestling.
Along with the troubles at the business end, both federations
fell into a creative abyss.
WWF's formula of
giving wrestlers silly but marketable gimmicks aimed at children
was wearing thin with fans. Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels were
now the WWF's standard bearers, but they did not garner mainstream
attention like Hulk Hogan. WCW, on the other hand, pinned
its recovery hopes on Hogan and several of his buddies, effectively
rebuilding the WWF of the 1980s. Since many of the ex-WWF
wrestlers deteriorated physically, fans loathed WCW's "senior
tour" superstars.
Meanwhile, millions
of people worldwide discovered the Internet. It was here that
fans began hearing about a wrestling organization out of Philadelphia
that featured the most brutal action in the United States.
That organization
was ECW. Paul Heyman, best known as former WCW manager Paul
E. Dangerously, began wrestling's hardcore revolution. He
incorporated several elements of Japanese wrestling and let
it play out in a testosterone-charged realm of vulgarity and
bloodshed.
ECW's matches were
all no disqualification, so there was no such thing as a foreign
object. Wrestlers could beat each other with chairs and baseball
bats, draw blood with cheese graters and pizza cutters and
routinely use weapons fans would bring with them in matches.
Sometimes, the ring ropes were replaced with barbed wire.
This style of brutal combat is common in Japan, where it was
referred to as "garbage" wrestling.
ECW was also responsible for many of the most cliché
elements of modern-day wrestling such as slamming opponents
through a wooden table or wrestler 911's choke slam.
Fans loved what
they saw because ECW offered an alternative to the inane circus
sideshows WWF and WCW offered. ECW was what wrestling was
supposed to be: bloody, athletic and aggressive.
WWF and WCW were
on to the surging popularity of Philadelphia's hardcore federation,
and they tried to make their wrestling look like ECW's. The
two federations felt threatened by an organization who had
very little television exposure and meager revenues but a
tremendous cult following. WWF and WCW began to make their
programs look more like ECW's, first by the style of wrestling,
then by actually acquiring ECW wrestlers.
WCW made the first
raids, mainly taking the technically gifted stars like Benoit,
Malenko and Jericho. WWF chose to rid itself of the family-friendly
circus sideshow image and become edgier and more adult-oriented.
ECW tried to go
mainstream itself through pay per views, then a one-year nationwide
television deal on TNN and a video game development with Acclaim.
It was too little,
too late. The thrill was gone, and ECW never achieved mass
appeal.
Until next week,
fans, keep watching.
Chris Ledermuller
is a print journalism major at Cal State Long Beach.
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