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20 Years Ago - ECW Barely Legal


supersonic

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My first exposure to ECW. Ended up thinking all these guys were pretty awesome. I wondered for years what happened to the Eliminators as they looked like the greatest tag team ever, then I watched a 6-hour comp and realized that they weren't that good. Thought RVD was the real deal and really loved the Taz gimmick. I thought the Douglas/Pitbull match was too long even as a kid.

 

I still can remember lines from that show 20 years later, so you know it was a good one.

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A non WWF/WCW wrestling show getting major PPV exposure was a mind blowing occasion. It was supposed to be the springboard for ECW to get to the next level, and I guess for a brief period it was, but it ended up in retrospect being the blowoff show capping off 5 years of Paul E getting his company to the big time. Everything since seemed to be Paul chasing the dragon trying to get back to the level of this show.

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I loved this show even though everything except the Michinoku Pro match was terrible.

 

The pre-show had a Dudleys/Eliminators/House of Pain hype video that I remember being pretty great. (I found a version on YouTube, but it's not the right one. I'm very particular when it comes to forgotten House of Pain singles accompanied by wrestling highlights.)

 

One more fond memory: after Joel Gertner took a Total Elimination, they go back to Joey Styles, who says something like, "Someone call Joel Gertner's mother and tell her her little boy's not coming home . . . *looks away from the camera* *looks back at the camera* . . . EVER!"

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  • 2 weeks later...

My first exposure to ECW. Ended up thinking all these guys were pretty awesome. I wondered for years what happened to the Eliminators as they looked like the greatest tag team ever, then I watched a 6-hour comp and realized that they weren't that good. Thought RVD was the real deal and really loved the Taz gimmick. I thought the Douglas/Pitbull match was too long even as a kid.

 

I still can remember lines from that show 20 years later, so you know it was a good one.

Two things here: 1) there's a 6-hour Eliminators comp tape? and 2) you chose to watch it??

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  • 2 weeks later...

The thing about the Eliminators is that they weren't that good, but at the time they were presented as a legit bad ass tag team. Compared to the crap gimmicky teams in the big two at the time (Godwinns, New Rockers, American Males, etc) , it's easy to see how they got over as "the next great tag team", at least for a bit.

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At the time it was OH SHIT because it wasn't WCW or WWF and getting PPV seemed like some unthinkable thing even though there had been other non-WWF/WCW PPVs all throughout the 90s. Now it's fucking terrible like everything ECW related.

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Wrote a piece on this show a couple of years ago for a magazine, and I find it so weird. A show that felt like the beginning, the next step in ECW's exposure and ascension. In terms of business it probably was. But to me it's the end of ECW having a real impact on the wrestling world. If you're interested, have a read.

 

http://vulturehound.co.uk/2015/04/the-extreme-duality-of-ecw-barely-legal/

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