Notes From An ECW Fan

I haven't done a good wrestling post in a while, and I figure now is as good a time as any to do one.

WWE's revival of ECW is in full swing as we speak. The "WWE vs. ECW: Head To Head" show was last night, One Night Stand 2 is Sunday, and ECW's show on the Sci-Fi Channel debuts Tuesday night. But will the new ECW be everything the old one was? I hope so, because I've been an ECW fan for a long time. And I'll tell you why.

The year was 1995. I was an impressionable 13-year-old eighth grader, and I was a fan of what was then the World Wrestling Federation. The WWF's "New Generation" was beginning, and that was really all I knew about pro wrestling: goofy, cartoony gimmicks like garbagemen, hog farmers, hockey players, evil Santas, and fitness gurus. I was a devout reader of Pro Wrestling Illustrated at the time, and I'd read notes of this indy promotion in Pennsylvania that held baseball bat matches, and of some guy named Shane Douglas throwing down the NWA World Title. But I never really paid attention to this group, because if they weren't the WWF, WCW, SMW, or the USWA, I never got a chance to see them.

But after my family got a DirecTV system, I was flipping through the sports channels and stumbled upon this show called "Extreme Championship Wrestling." The name didn't register at first, but at the time, I figured that wrestling was wrestling, so why not watch a little? The first match lasted somewhere around 20 seconds, and featured ECW's behemoth 911 slaughtering former WCW jobber "Jungle" Jim Steele. The segment wasn't much, but the next one was the one that made me an ECW fan.

The match pitted the one and only Luna Vachon against Beulah McGillicutty. Having recognized Luna as Bam Bam Bigelow's "main squeeze" from the WWF circa 1993 and 1994, I quickly assumed that she'd make short work of the not-so-intimidating former Penthouse Pet. But then someone I'd come to know as Raven cracked Luna with a chair as soon as the bell rang, and a three-count later, Beulah was declared victorious. That may not sound like a lot, but it gets better.

Tommy Dreamer runs out and after a brawl, Raven snaps two of Dreamer's fingers. My initial reaction was "whoa!" I'd never seen that kind of viciousness in a wrestling ring before, and it was that moment that made me want to tune in next week and the week after that. I was an ECW fan for life.

What made ECW special was the fact that it felt like I'd discovered something that no one else had seen yet. I didn't know all that many wrestling fans back then, but the two or three I did know followed the more mainstream WWF. It was as if they'd never heard of you if you didn't work for Vince McMahon. Nitro was in its infancy and the NWO's birth was a year away, so WCW wasn't all that well-known in the circles I ran in. And if WCW was unheard-of, you can imagine how small the number of ECW devotees I knew was. (Truth be told, I didn't meet another ECW fan until my sophomore year of high school in 1998.)

ECW's special to me because when I became a fan, I felt like I knew something the rest of the world didn't. It's kinda like being a fan of a particular actor or musician before they hit the big time, then being able to brag you were there first once fame comes their way. That's how I felt about ECW. As a wrestling fan, these three letters are important to me because they represent everything I enjoy about the sport. Whether it be a couple of guys putting one another through tables or cracking skillets over their heads, cruiserweights diving into the third row, or a pair of technical wrestlers having a 20-minute classic, ECW made me proud to be a fan.

It is my sincere desire that WWE's new ECW is successful. Sure, it'll have the McMahon family's fingerprints all over it, but if it can capture the same atmosphere that made me love it eleven years ago, then I'll have no problem with WWE's ECW.