Why do fans like to pretend that ECW was ROH?
I want to to start off by saying that I consider myself a huge ECW fan. I am only 24 and I only heard of ECW through WWE in 1997 (as well as through Pro Wrestling Illustrated magazine and others). As soon as my family got directv I made sure to tape their weekly show through sunshine netowrk and the MSG channel. I never got to see them live....I remember they were out here and I heard about the XPW incident. I can honestly say I don't respect XPW how they tried to market themselves as if they were ECW and blatantly use numerous former ECW talents and even steal their idea of showing up to ECW's ppv they way ECW did to WWE. I was very happy in 05 that they did those reunion shows (I wish WWE and TNA would have worked together to let both shows have all the available former ECW talent as well as let Hardcore Homecoming use the ecw name and logo officially). I think wwe's ECW was a glorified developmaent territory with national tv exposure. EV2 was a horrible disgraceful mess. I do not want to comment on whatever company Shane Douglas is running right now....but even as an ECW fan I feel people are being unrealistic and unfair about how they remember ECW.
I remember Joey Styles saying that Daniel Bryan and CM Punk represented everything that ECW was about. With CM punk...I admit he really does seem to be a Paul Heyman guy irl...if Punk was around in ECW's heday I am sure he would have made his way over there. I imagine he would have played a mick foley/steve corino like anti hardcore wrestler if he worked there and his straight edged character would be very antagonistic to the fans and talent of ECW. Bryan....Idk about him. I will say that I look at both Bryan and Punk as roh talents...even though I know a lot of wrestlers go to many promotions in the course of a career. Joey Styles himself seems to be a WWE kiss ass sellout. I remember him claiming the second one night stand would be far better than the first when it was nothing more than a glorified 2 hour version of the WWE vs ECW special we just saw weeks earlier. I remember Joey Styles saying that TNA is just WWE old school when all WWE does is push older talents such as rock, brock, taker, hhh, jericho....even cena and Orton have been there like 10 years. Joey also said that TNA would be classless to not allow Ric Flair to show up for WWE's hall of fame yet he had nothing to say back when WWE wouldn't allow Flair to show up to an NWA hall of fame cermony. IMO 4 Horsemen is apart of NWA's legacy not WWE's. I also remember in the real ECW Joey would open reference anything he wanted about what was currently going on at WCW or WWE yet @ one night stand the only tna reference was styles calling kid cash "mr total nonstop attitude".
I also remember on the rise and fall of ECW Paul heyman claiming you could find the best "wrestling" in the world at ECW. I kind of have to smh @ that. Yes he had Guererro for a little bit but he didn't really give him push. Benoit and Malenko didn't get all to far either they simply worked for Paul's poster boy Shane. Even RVD never got a shot @ Douglas or Taz or Awesome. WWE had to book benoit vs eddie. Wwe was the one that made those 2 world heavyweight champions not ECW...same thing with Van Dam same thing with mysterio. ECW just wanted rey wrestling psicosis and juventud as an exposition of lucha libre ...they never would push rey as a main event talent. CM punk wants to criticize WWE for pushing bigger talent. In ECW itself I vividly remember Awesome squashing mikey whipwreck and I don't exactly remember spike dudley getting a heaveyweight championship. I also remember Sid Vicious destroying everyone when he was there for a bried amount of time. I also remember Bam Bam Bigelow beating Taz and ending the momentum he had. Heyman himself in WWE I remember managing the likes of Big Show and Lesnar....punk wont call out heyman the way he would mcmahon or HHH. As innovative as someone like Nova was he is best remembered in ECW as being a comic releif character.
@ the second one night stand I remember fans chanting "you can't wrestle" to the likes of Cena and Orton. I don't see them saying that to someone like Tommy dreamer or Sandman. I also think people like forgetting that Tommy Dreamer himself was not liked all too much when he first came along.(the same way Cena haters liked to pretned that rock was not getting booed as a face multiple times in his career). When you say ECW I think of Dreamer, Sandman, Douglas, Awesome, Balls and Axel, Justin Credible, and others who were not not the best wrestlers in the world. You ask me who I feel the best wreslters were I remember I say people like Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, and Kurt Angle who never stepped foot in an ECW ring. I never remembered ECW having matches that rivaled the hbk ladder matches, the iron man matches, etc. I remember hearing styles say something to the affect of when the first 3 way dance occured that "professional wrestling returned to the United States". I admit that WCW was pretty much always a mess management wise but they used to have a great wrestling product. WWE was cartoonish and gimmick (a lot more so than the pg wwe that everyone wants to berate today) but there were still a few great wrestling talents there. ECW only had a few great wrestlers @ any given time. You would rarely see a 20 minute match go over the limit and take up the show...and it was probably always RVD. ECW fans also don't seem to want to admit that rvd also has "5 moves of death". ECW was a lot of tables, guitars, barbed wired, thumbtacks and ultra violent shock value.
In short ECW was not the mecca of wrestling that people pretend that is was. There is a lot of hypocracy going on.
