To the Extreme
As anyone who reads this blog or who knows me can tell you, I watch pro wrestling. I've been into it ever since I was a fat, little kid with not too many friends. I remember going to Cape Cod to visit my grandparents and we'd stop by the comic book store and drug store where I could pick up a batch of comics and a few wrestling magazines and I'd be set. Holed up in their motor home (they used to spend the summers down there at a campground...my grandparents didn't actually live in a trailer park...just to clarify) I would spend hours reading them.
When my parents got divorced my Dad would take my sister and I to the Boston Garden to see the matches. We'd stay over his house and then go downtown. We'd park in his special parking spot at one of the MBTA substations and head to the Garden. He always got us seats right at the front of the balcony, hanging over the ring. They'd announce next month's matches and my sister and I would get so excited and beg him to take us next month. He'd always say "we'll see" and then the next day head over to the Garden box office and pick up next month's tickets. It was a little ritual. Lather, rinse, repeat.
In the early 90's I was kind of losing interest in it as it had clearly become about merchandising cartoonish characters to little kids. I enjoyed the matches, the athleticism, the interviews but I couldn't really buy into Hulkamania and the Bushwackers. Even the beloved NWA and my personal favorites Roddy Piper and Ric Flair were falling by the wayside.
It was then that this little group that promoted shows out of a Bingo Hall in South Philly started gaining attention on the internet and in the "dirt sheets" (slang for the newsletters that printed the "truth" about pro wrestling and treated it like a business...that it wasn't a legit contest and finishes were predetermined...a truth fiercely guarded for years but now is just accepted as is). The group was Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) and they were doing things unheard of. They were adult, had kick ass theme music for the wrestlers (The Sandman came out to Enter Sandman, Raven came out to Offspring...etc), they were violent and had storylines unlike anything I'd ever seen. They had amazing athletic wrestling as well, showcasing workers that the bigger companies wouldn't touch because they couldn't be stuck in a high concept gimmick to sell tickets. They called out the bigger companies, insulted them. And then there were the fans...it was like Rocky Horror Picture Show with chairshots. You felt part of something.
I made one of my best friendships in life through this group. I was reading about this company and hoping they would take the show to Boston and I posted something on a newsboard. My friend Rich answered and said that he was originally from Philly and got the tapes of the show from his family back home. We traded tapes and got together for pay per views and it's a friendship I treasure and still hold onto today (we just spoke on the phone two days ago).
That's why I was excited and concerned that WWE was "relaunching" the ECW brand under their umbrella. ECW went out of business in 2000 and WWE bought the video library and rights. Paul Heyman, the creative force behind the original company, was still involved but it had Vince McMahon's fingerprints all over it. They held a ppv on Sunday night and it was a lot of fun, but even then you could see where it might be headed and that place didn't look too good.
This Tuesday the brand relaunch debuted on the Sci Fi Channel and it just wasn't good. Not good at all. It had nothing that seemed to build to the future and stripped away and watered down everything that was cool in the past.
Sometimes, things are better left dead.
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