Justin Credible v. Lance Storm at ECW Hardcore Heaven 2000 is discussed by Jason Mann and Joe Drilling. They talk about the merits of Credible’s reign as champion in the last year of ECW (not to mention the merits of his jorts and tights combo), Storm’s strong run in 2000 in ECW and WCW, Tommy Dreamer’s brutal attack on Francine, past and current misogyny in wrestling, and much more. 

Download this episode of Wrestlespective Radio. And check out Joe’s new wrestling podcast, What a Maneuver!, which looks back at every week of the WCW Nitro v. WWF Raw Monday Night War in 1996.

Shane Douglas v. Taz at ECW Guilty As Charged 1999 is discussed by Jason Mann and Tom Breihan of The Classical and Stereogum. They talk about whether ECW’s myth matches up to reality, Douglas as a weary villain, comparisons between the character of the Franchise and Triple H, Taz and others in ECW succeeding despite their limitations, and much more. Tom also discusses writing about and meeting Colt Cabana and CM Punk (who has a very nice condo).

Download this episode of Wrestlespective. And don’t forget to leave a note.

I miss ECW.

No, I don’t miss the seminal Philadelphia-based promotion that revolutionized what it meant to be an indie promotion and influenced the most profitable period in wrestling history. Don’t get me wrong, I loved that ECW, but it ran its course, something that I’m reminded of every time someone tries to dig up its corpse and parade it around like it’s still vibrant. I love the spirit of the promotion, but the people who like to grave rob the company think that having Sabu jab a screwdriver into Justin Credible’s head is how we should be paying tribute in 2012.

What I miss is WWE’s third brand, the one called ECW in name only, the one that the fanboys sneered at like it was anathema that someone dared take the name they held sacred and paraded something that wasn’t low rent under that banner. Heh, as if anything in wrestling is really worth holding sacred. I miss the show WWE put on every Tuesday night, the one that gave the world Sheamus and Zack Ryder, where old guys like Tommy Dreamer and William Regal got to do their thing unfettered by restraint. That show ruled.

It was as close to an old-school wrestling show as we got from WWE on regular television. It was a simple formula. They put on wrestling matches, had guys feud over simple issues and based it all around the old staples of wrestling heat building, things like promos and interview segments. Given that that alone doesn’t make a good wrestling show, the reason why it worked was because the cast of characters was usually able to deliver the goods.

The roster included at times but wasn’t limited to CM Punk, The Miz, Ryder, Regal, Dreamer, Christian, Jack Swagger, Sheamus, Yoshi Tatsu, Chavo Guerrero and Mark Henry. It had Tony Atlas laughing like fiend over the befuddled indignation of Abraham Washington. It featured Matt Striker before he became insufferable and Todd Grisham before he started making inappropriate analogies on SportsCenter. It featured a great match at least once a month, including a series between Christian and Swagger that might have been the best thing WWE had in the ring in 2009.

Even when RAW and Smackdown both stagnated, ECW felt like it was something different, something fresh. Right now, that’s what’s missing from WWE programming on regular TV. I’ve heard great things about NXT, but it’s hard to sit down in front of a computer and watch TV on the small screen, no matter how good it is. Watching readily available programming on an actual TV screen is taken for granted so much. Right now, it might not seem like that much, since both RAW and Smackdown have more good weeks than bad. However, there’s always room for a breath of fresh air, for a spotlight for guys who deserve the spotlight but who can’t always have it on the bigger shows.

That’s why ECW was important, nay, essential. That’s why it was such a crime that people overlooked it and ignored it because of the name. WWE did do it a major disservice by keeping the name, because unlike any other fanbase, the rabid ECW fanboys often are the most possessive of their memories and upon what the label can be placed. It was the breath of fresh air, and it was packaged like it was a retread. Talk about false advertising.

So yeah, I will shamelessly admit that I shed a single tear every time I think of the new ECW. I may be in the minority, but I’d be way, way, WAY more excited for a return to SyFy of the WWE’s “bastard” version of the brand than even one more Hardcore Homecoming.

TH writes The Wrestling Blog and broadcasts The Wrestling Podcast. You can find him on Twitter, or at various other spots around the Internet. He also loves Chikara, and quite frankly, thinks you should too.

Edited by Jason Mann.

There are cries from a few corners of the fandom that call for there to be more realism in the art, to make things look like a more legitimate form of fighting. I have to wonder whether those people have ever seen a real fight, i.e. a MMA match. Either they’re already MMA fans and miss the entire point about wrestling, they’re somehow brainwashed into thinking that mainstream acceptance (i.e. not being fake) will make it cool to be a wrestling fan in the eyes of others or they have some other perverse reason why they want wrestling to still be real to them, dammit₁.

That’s why I always find it funny when cries from those same fans come up reveling in calling out wrestlers for obvious botches, like they expect every move to look perfect and clean and crisp. That’s an awfully funny set of paradoxical standards. On one hand, everything’s supposed to look realistic, but on the other, if there’s any hint of a guy flubbing a move, it’s the end of the world. I mean, have these people ever watched someone fight for real? It’s the opposite of crisp and clean.

Granted, botches can look bad and be bad at times. I mean, it was a botched running powerbomb that sent Droz to an early retirement via wheelchair. Botched piledrivers led to Ricky Steamboat and Steve Austin ending their active careers. Those kinds of things are filed under “S” for “Shit Happens”, but they’re still the kinds of things that pro wrestling can do without. What happens when it’s something benign, like maybe slipping on a rope, or mistiming a move? Well, there’s no definitive answer to that hypothetical question. It all depends on how the botch is handled.

I’ll give you two examples of some pretty high-profile botches in WWE in calendar year 2011. The first is an example of the two wrestlers handling it right. The Miz was wrestling Daniel Bryan on RAW, back when both guys still had their respective Championships. Miz had Bryan in the electric chair position₂, and clearly, the intent was that the Awesome One would pull off some kind of offensive maneuver. However, there was a miscommunication (some online accused Miz of sandbagging Bryan, which I thought ludicrous, but whatever), and the move fell apart. Rather than making it look bad, they improvised, with Bryan segueing from being the victim to making it look like a clever counter into a rear naked choke. It turned a bad moment into something that really enhanced the match. Later on, Miz was able to hit the electric chair spot, and all was well with the world.

Contrast that with Sin Cara’s first WWE match against Primo. The finish was scheduled to be a Spanish Fly, or a top-rope backflip Rock Bottom, but before he could hit the move, Cara fell to the floor. We learned it was a botch, not because of the action of Cara falling from the top, but because of how they handled it afterwards. There was an awkward stoppage in action, with Cara and Primo looking at each other like something was wrong. Primo just sat there and waited for Cara to get back to the top to finish him off rather than improvising something to make it look like more of a planned spot. It totally killed the match, and it had people rightfully crying about a botch that really detracted from what turned out to be an otherwise decent tilt.

So, it’s not so much the act of botching itself, but it’s the handling of it that will make or break a wrestling match or even a promo. So why don’t some people look at the whole picture when analyzing this sort of thing? Do we blame our inner nature to point and laugh? Can we blame the mutants at the ECW Arena for starting the trend by chanting “YOU FUCKED UP! YOU FUCKED UP!” at obvious botches? Actually, I’m far less interested in assigning blame than I am at fixing the problem of our waiting-for-a-car-crash-at-NASCAR attitude towards it.

Believe me, handling a botch correctly adds far more of this mythical “realism” to the product than anything else. Besides, I’m not entirely sure that I want to watch a product where they don’t Irish whip people any more, or where body slams become more of a deadlift competition than a wrestling move. However, I will thoroughly enjoy it when guys like Bryan, Miz and others think on their feet and turn lemons into lemonade. That kind of “realism” is welcome in my wrestling any day.

1 - Point of reference, because this vid is never not funny.

2 - For those who aren’t familiar, the electric chair position is when one guy is sitting on the other guy’s shoulders, like if they’re getting ready to play “chicken”. This set-up is most commonly used for the Road Warriors’ Doomsday Device.

TH writes The Wrestling Blog and broadcasts The Wrestling Podcast. You can find him on Twitter, or at various other spots around the Internet. He also loves Chikara, and quite frankly, thinks you should too.

Edited by Jason Mann

David Bixenpan at Cageside Seats has a report on Sinclair’s stock tanking after their investors learned about their purchase of Ring of Honor. I wanted to make some notes for posterity, comparison, and to possibly shed some light on why Sinclair made this move. 

First off: 

… the purchase price was under $10 million.

You’d hope so. Vince McMahon purchased WCW, ECW, and the last 50 years’ worth of tape libraries from almost every major territory for far less than $10 million. 

Based on our conversations, investors are not comfortable with an acquisition outside of SBGI’s (or any TV company’s) ‘core business’ but we actually view ROH as a unique opportunity that could benefit SBGI’s primary operations (i.e. advertising)

Wrestling is still considered a deadzone of culture, less than garbage to typical advertisers and family-friendly companies. Sinclair’s major advertisers don’t particularly look kindly on it. But I don’t think Sinclair purchased ROH in order to promote professional wrestling. I doubt there are five people at the company who give a damn about the art form.

Wrestling tends to attract the hard-to-reach young male demographic, which is already a cornerstone of SBGI’s Fox, CW and MY Network stations.  SBGI is now a content owner, effectively controlling its own destiny and potentially generating additional revenue by syndicating this content to other distributors.

There we go. 

I don’t know any of this for a fact, but I’d bet there’s someone in Sinclair’s acquisition department who paid attention to Spike TV’s growth based on UFC. But how did Spike TV get UFC? Well, before a major rebranding, Spike was known as TNN, the channel that aired WWE Raw for the first part of the 21st century. Before they aired Raw, TNN aired this little program called ECW. It took TNN a while, but through clever deals, branding choices, and timing, they are now the major provider for one of the most exciting new sports. I wouldn’t be too surprised to find out that Sinclair is looking to test the waters for something like UFC (or, in a few years, UFC itself). They would essentially be using ROH in the same way TNN used ECW. 

What’s more plausible? A major media conglomerate airs a wrestling show in the hopes of attracting a demographic that appeals to star advertisers, which would lead to better shows, better demographics, and better advertising profits? Or a major media conglomerate purchases a wrestling company because their owner is a lifelong wrestling fan and he wants a show on his network? 

On second thought, I suppose both things have happened. 

It’s unlikely, but this may be history repeating itself in either the way ECW lived and died (quickly, painfully) on TNN, or the way WCW lived, thrived, and crashed and burned for Ted Turner. Most likely, this is something else entirely. Unlike Ted Turner, there doesn’t appear to be one person at the head of this decision. Unlike TNN, Sinclair doesn’t appear to be changing business models. 

So why did Sinclair purchase ROH? 

K Sawyer Paul is an author and publisher living in Toronto. He tweets and tumbls. In the wrestling world he is known for This is Sports Entertainment and Aggressive Art.

Edited by TH