ECW today

So I fully expect to have my arse handed to me for even DARING to suggest this, but…

I was a big ECW fan back in the day. That was pretty hard work here in the UK. Basically, in late ’98, we started getting half hour Hardcore TV shows from ’96. I was 13 years old and had read about ECW in PWI (again, we rarely got PWI and when we did, it was often 3-4 months old) and was really intrigued (as you can imagine).

Anyway, i’m not ashamed to say I still am a fan.

I checked out some ECW again a year or two back and was surprised how little enjoyment I got out of it compared to what I used to get. Then, I watched the fantastic Barbed Wire City independent documentary on ECW. I decided to give ECW another go, because the wrestling world has hardly been on fire recently.

I was surprised to find that it nearly had that same feel again. The spots seemed innovative again. The bumps were shocking again. The characters felt pretty refreshing, some even cutting edge. The promos and segments didn’t follow a rigid formula that we’re so used to seeing every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night (that in itself tells you a lot, doesn’t it?).

So, the question I put to you is this:

How do you feel about watching ECW now, considering the stale product we have today?

I know many of you weren’t even fans of the original product, but for anyone that didn’t mind it or God forbid was a fan, I suggest giving something like Hardcore Heaven ’99 a watch again (you can find it on the torre… yeh.), where Don ‘Cyrus’ Callis teams with Joey Styles on the commentary booth for the first time and set a prime example of what smark wrestling commentary should be (because that’s what we are, whether we like to admit it or not!). A fine duo. You also have a young Tajiri tearing it up with Super Crazy, and the Dudleys and Taz in some of their final ECW appearances.

It just feels like it’s 1995-6 all over again. Everything’s stale. All we mainly do is moan now, and we don’t WANT to do that. We want to have a cutting edge product which accentuates what we love about this sport.

For me, watching some ECW again felt like a breath of fresh air.

Over to you!

Cheers.