In this day, if you were to say professional wrestling, the first thing that most people would say is World Wrestling Entertainment.

Besides Total Nonstop Action (TNA) and Ring of Honor (ROH), there is really no other promotion that is large enough to compete with the WWE.

Today, I will not be here to cry about the past and how we miss the Attitude Era, or all the fun segments that made us anticipate Raw so much more than we do now.

I am simply here to look back and celebrate the legacy of the most unique pro wrestling promotion of all time, Extreme Championship Wrestling.

To those who might be unaware, ECW had once been its own individual company which would feud with WWE and World Championship Wrestling (WCW).
Unfortunately, Vince McMahon had bought his competition out.

This was not the offical end of ECW, but it had now been owned by WWE. It is now the "C" show brand in WWE and I find that disrespectful to all that ECW stood for.

But once again, I remind myself that I am not here to weep over modern-day wrestling, but to look back in time at Extreme Championship Wrestling.

ECW had been founded in 1991 as part of the Tri-State Wrestling Alliance, but it was short-lived as the owner at the time, Joel Goodhart, sold a large share of his company to his business partner, Tod Gordon, who renamed the show ECW (Eastern Championship Wrestling).

Gordon had a vision for this show to be unique, as stated in an interview with ClubWW1.com:

"We try to give them a mixture of old school, new school, highspot kind of wrestling with a little psychology thrown in there, because somebody seems to have forgotten that that was an art form at one time, and there doesn't seem to be much anymore."

Due to financial issues, Gordon would have to showcase ECW in The Arena in South Philadelphia, which in fact was a former warehouse.

ECW's rough environment would become the home of the promotion all the way until it fell in 2001, and actually lent to the rustic charm of the promotion.

Gordon picks up the narrative again:

"The budget was definitely limited. Our studio in the beginning was some guy’s basement basically up in Paoli, Pa., where we did some of these great promos where his desk became my commissioner's desk.

“His bathrooms were where Tanaka and Diamond had their battles with Public Enemy. His parking lot is where Jason would get his new suits and drive off in his car.

"We did all this in one little place and it looked like we were in this giant, you know, we're all over the country when really we're in this one little basement. It's all…an illusion. It's about making people believe."

Eastern Championship Wrestling would later be absorbed into the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), where Gordon hired the legendary "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert, to lead the creative booking team.

He was shortly replaced as the head of booking by the eventual "Dictator of ECW," one Paul Heyman, who had just walked out on WCW.

Heyman bought into Gordon's original vision of being different, being special, and being...Extreme. Heyman then escorted ECW out of the NWA and into an era which would revolutionize professional wrestling as we know it.

Shortly after WCW had withdrawn from the NWA, taking the prestigious NWA title belt with them, ECW became the focal point of the NWA.

With it being the most successful NWA show at the time, ECW would garner much more attention from a televised audience as well as the privilege to hold the new NWA World Championship at the time.

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