"Pro Wrestling Illustrated", September 1996
I thought I was in hell. Men were brawling recklessly, chairs were crunching skulls, and garbage cans were pounding backs. One-by-one, more men kept joining the fray. The fans' screams of delight were drowned out by blaring rap music. I was there, yet I wasn't. Everyone was involved in some way or another. Battlers. Spectators. Sound men. Security guards. Not me. I was merely an observer. Close enough to sense the raw emotions of the event, but far enough away to feel protected from the sheer horror of it.
"____ you," one of the battlers screamed at a spectator who made the mistake of using the wrong finger to express his view that the battler was number one.
An image of Lou Thesz came into my head. I eliminated it quickly. He should not be exposed to this!
Then again, this isn't for everybody. That's what the promoters of Extreme Championship Wrestling keep warning us.
"ECW!...ECW!...ECW!" the spectators chanted in unison after seeing a sampling of extreme wrestling. These are not fans of wrestlers per se; they're fans of the concept that nothing is to be held back in an effort to bring them what they want. Ever.
Brutality? Almost always. Breathtaking aerial wrestilng? More than you'll see anywhere north of the Mexican border. Beautiful women? Hey, 95 percent of the audience is comprised of males between the ages of 18 and 35, and after being Dudleyed into submission, it's good for the eyes to look at Beulah McGillicutty for a few minutes.
My walk through hell occurred in the strangest of places. This was not even the official ECW hell hole—the ECW EWN on the mean streets of South Philly. This was auxilliary hell, in the quiet upper middle-class Philly suburb of Plymouth Meeting, in an all-purpose auditorium called Lu Lu Temple.
I was not there to cover wrestling matches on this evening. Bill Apter and Craig Peters were taking care of that. But Lu Lu (no relation to Ed Norton's deceased dog) is only a few miles up the road from out Ambler offices, so, with my Friday evening free, I went merely to record my thoughts of the big picture.
Randomly ...
ECW belongs in the family-oriented Lu Lu Temple like the Charleston Chiefs of Slap Shot fame belong in Madison Square Garden ... I love the fact that some of the wrestlers made themselves available to the fans before the matches began. Craig Peters might not agree. He was sitting on the stage behind the seats with Beulah, taking credit for her being on the cover of the June '96 edition of PWI, when a fan interrupted their conversation and said, "Hey, Beulah, you're in PWI." Only this was the July edition, and the article the fan was making reference to was Craig's "In Focus" column in which he rated some of the more prominent women of wrestling in various categories. This is great, I thought. More brownie points for Craig. Craig, however, knew he was in trouble. Beulah finished ninth on his list of 10! "Sex appeal—zero?" she shrieked. Craig responded sheepishly: "But look at the reason why. You're pregnant."
"Zero?!" she shrieked.
"But—"
"Zero?!" ...
As match time approached, I heard a fan yell, "ECW rules!" Talk about your classic oxymoron. I bet you could fit a copy of the ECW rulebook on one page of PWI—and still have room for pictures. There are no rules in hell. Referees? They have them, but they don't even make a pretense of couting to four when traditionally illegal acts take place. The fans booed both referees when they were introduced, but I don't see why. They do exactly what the fans want them to do—nothing ... I saw a young fan throw a flattened soda can toward the ring. The promoter also saw it. Acting swiftly a properly, he had the fan tossed ...
And, yes, there was wrestling at the Lu Lu Temple, too. In fact, I'd venture to say that the match between TV champion 2 Cold Scorpio and Sabu was one of the 20 best matches I have ever seen. Too bad the ECW fans didn't appreciate it. About a minute into the match, mant of the fans started with that ignorant "Boring!" chant. I suppose they just couldn't wait for the wrestlers to get past that feeling-out phase before really getting down to business. But get down to business they did; more accurately, I should say get up to business.
These two men performed aerial feats that rendered the term "high-risk" a gross understatement. In one memorable sequence, Scorpio had Sabu in trouble and mounted the turnbuckles. Sabu lifted himself off the canvas, ran across the ring, sprung off a chair that had been left near the ropes, and maneuvered his body so that he was able to grab Scorpio around the neck with his legs. Sabu then reversed his momentum and "Frankensteinered" Scorpio from the turnbuckles down to a table at ringside. When I was a young wrestling fan, a dropkick was a spectacular move. This was beyond belief! The fan were appreciative; they should have fallen out of their seats ...
I guess you can't give people too much because their natural inclination is to always want more. Ultimately, you'll have nothing more to give them, and one day you may even find them chanting "Boring!" rather than "ECW!"