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ECW was great and it was awful as well.
BAD:
1. Yeah, most of the matches were the nonsensical spotfests that the x-division tries to be. No psychology.
2. Too much emphasis on extreme and not enough (if any) on making sense about of a match... I'll admit, most of those matches were just shit, but they swore and were super overtly sexual and were the opposite of what wwe or wcw were doing, in a time when we had wwe pushing guys like izaak yankem on us, and wcw was pushing 'lock ness.'
THE MIDDLE:
1. Styles actually NAMED THE MOVES that they were doing, not just 'what a maneuver.' (yeah, he did 'oh my gawd' too much). And he wasn't always solo, he split time with (can't think of his name, a fat, hairy, oily guy with a neckbrace.)
2. Some of these guys in ECW got cut from Vince's tv for a reason. Justin 'Aldo Montoya' Credible was World Champion? Please...
GOOD:
1. It was great in that it was the attitude era before there was an attitude era. SCSA was the rehash of Steve Austin's ECW 'I'm mad at WCW for firing me' character. They were edgy and pushing boundaries with shorelines and characters before wwe did it on a much, much, much larger audience. Yes, a lot of it was stolen from japan, but no one in america mainstream had seen that stuff.
2. It made it possible for 'smaller guys' to get a push. It was the 'land of misfit toys.' Anyone that Vince couldn't get a 'size' boner for, he just discarded, and there was no place to go for them to live their dream. Paul E gave smaller guys a chance to shine, and they did.
Good matches: ANY RVD vs Jerry Lynn. (just look away for a minute when RVD does that dumb-ass VanTerminator).
Thanks for the reply. Yeah there were a few matches with Styles on co-commentary with Cyrus, I think during the TNN run and he was just bashing them on air because of the way they were being treated. Joel Gertner is the guy you're thinking of, that might have been earlier.
I actually bought all of the ECW PPV's from a tape trader years ago but have never bothered to watch any. Whenever I watch a shoot interview with an ex ECW guy bigging up the product, I try to get hold of the footage. And if I do, its never as good as they're making it out. Just reading about via different opinions, I've heard by the time they got onto PPV they had jumped the shark. But when I look at it, post 97 looks a better product in terms of aesthetics and the talent they had.
I'll check out the Jerry Lynn/RVD matches. I want to see more of Candido, Tanaka, Awesome & maybe Rhyno.
Lynn/RVD matches were class. I have a few ECW DVDs (about 3 I think without looking for them), and they're all match collections, like best ofs. They had some great matches. Some real shit. Never saw the big deal in Sabu myself, but the guy can take a real beating.
They did some insane things during some matches as well. I'm sure one of the matches on one of the DVDs has a match where the two guys taped broken glass to their knuckles and beat the crap out of each other - there was blood everywhere. Was entertaining to watch, but only the once. And that right there is a problem with quite a few of the ECW matches. They were entertaining the first time, but not matches that I'd watch again. Now, an RVD/Lynn match I would watch again. Lynn in ECW was great, one of my favourites.
I've been watching a few of these ECW Unreleased sets and I'm perplexed on what was so great about the promotion. I get that it was different with so much hardcore wrestling. Hardly revolutionary because it was done in Japan before Heyman got hold. Did you have to be there in the moment to get the buzz? I don't think we got any ECW shows in the UK until late 2001 and they were cut down snippets of old matches.
Watching the old matches, what annoyed me was:
No psychology.
This was the major one. Very few matches, if any tell a concise story. A lot of them are obsessed with doing crazy spots to get the crowd excited rather than having the match make sense. There was a string of matches where a bunch of competitors seemed obsessed with jumping into the crowd. It turned into a running joke, even Shane Douglas was doing it. Furthermore the matches which were the "wrestling" ones, with guys like Super Crazy, Tajiri, Jerry Lynn all had brawling in the crowd. The hardcore stuff was what made them different, if you do it in every match, you're desensitised to it and it means nothing.
Joey "One Man Band" Styles on commentary.
I can't stand this nasally, whiny, fucker screaming "Oh My Gawd" when he sees something stupid. The solo colour guy didn't work very well because there was no-one to bounce off for the majority of the matches. Anyone can sit there and say what they see but this ain't Catchphrase and Styles' smarky comments about other promotions are mindbendingly dull after the last batch of verbiage.
Handicapped wrestlers.
He may be the homicidal, genocidal & suicidal Sabu. But if you need to use a chair to jump off stuff for the whole match, you might as well find a new act. He's also stupidly reckless. There was a match with him, Bigelow & Taz. A 30 minute brawling clusterfuck labelled by Joey Styles as the "best fight he had ever seen." They were all laying down, Sabu flings a steel chair in the air and it lands flat in Bigleow's face splitting his nose open. Completely pointless and there was no need to do something so dumb. Sandman, has he ever had a good match? If he didn't have a ciggie on, a can of beer and waved a cane around, no-one would have gave a shit. Before that, he carried a surfboard to the ring. The Rotten's, Balls Mahoney all used a chair to instil as much carnage as possible. Never drew a dime in ECW or anywhere else. The state of them now is probably their penance for lacking ability.
Someone point out what made ECW so great & recommend some matches.