The 10th Anniversary of ECW's Last Show Is Today

The man behind the madness
Photo Credit: Online World of Wrestling

Ten years ago today, the original ECW ran its final show in Pine Bluff, AR. I don't know what's more mind-blowing, that it's been 10 years already or that their last show was in Arkansas of all places. Weird. Any way, ECW was a big part of my adolescence, and it helped change a lot of things in wrestling, some for better, some for worse. People will remember that it helped popularize the "hardcore" style, but I always remembered it for the wrestling in the ring, be it the Gangstas coming to the ring with their shopping cart full of weapons or Dean Malenko and Eddie Guerrero having mat classics with little to no help from the standing no-DQ atmosphere that permeated the ECW Arena and other venues. Both were fun, and the best thing was that in its heyday, neither style dominated, no matter how much its naysayers would try to portray it as a garbage federation.

The meme nowadays is to poo-poo the influence that ECW had on the wrestling landscape. Granted, promotions such as WWE and especially TNA now do that legacy no favors by having ECW alums who have no business being on national TV in front of a wide audience. Yeah, Tommy Dreamer, the Dudley Boyz, Stevie Richards and Rob Van Dam all stayed in good enough shape to the point where they CAN appear on TV, but when I see Sandman, Sabu or Raven try to recreate the magic, it's just sad. Their influence can't be discounted though. For one, ECW was Attitude personified before the WWF had the idea to run with an edgier style. Without it, maybe there's no impetus to inject more grittiness into the product. Two, it had a major impact on the current indie scene. The two major in-ring components that I mentioned earlier distilled down into perhaps the two most famous indie feds of the '00s - CZW and ROH. Both feds still survive today, and I think both of them are in pretty good shape, ROH losing TV notwithstanding.

All the influence in the world won't bring it back though, which is the mistake that the WWE, TNA and promoters of any Hardcore Homecoming event AFTER the first one all made in trying to recapture the magic. I can see why people would want to try to recreate it blow for blow; ECW was an organic movement that evoked passion and devotion from its fans on a greater scale than anything else I remember in recent history. However, in their attempts to resurrect ECW, they made the same error in judgement that every promoter seems to make nowadays. They don't prod new ground to see where the next big thing is. They're foolishly in search of a fountain of youth that will magically take something specific that was big long ago and trying to make it huge again with a whole different audience that in most cases will not have the same resonation. ECW was huge not because it recycled a specific idea that was huge before, but because Paul Heyman broke new ground and ran with it when it got big.

That's how I hope that people in the biz will remember ECW, not for what it was, but for what it represented - innovation, the cutting edge. You can't go forward by looking back, but then again, that doesn't mean you can't look back at the past with fondness. Ten years after they performed their last show, I remember the wrestlers and announcers and staff of ECW with GREAT fondness. They still remain one of the most satisfying wrestling promotions I have ever watched, and I consider myself lucky to have been around for their run, as short as it was.

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