I would like to dedicate this blog post to my old friend Blaine Davis, who seemed to fall in and out of love with professional wrestling the same as me and my second favorite person to go to live matches with, the first is my wife, sorry Blaine. But you get it better than she does, man
This is about this ECW:
...not this 'ECW':
...but I digress...
I call this story, the time Lindsey took me to an ECW show and it Turned into a Riot, and it is one that I truly cherish whenever it comes to mind, and also one that captures us at a crazy moment in our lives, totally scary but after it's over we pretend like it was nothing major, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. I must start at the beginning. The very beginning.
As a child, I was obsessed with professional wrestling, the first time I really remember a storyline was when the WWF set up the feud with Don Muraco spitting on the Superfly, Jimmy Snuka. My little kid brain was convinced that spitting on someone was just about the most lowdown you got, and the Magnificent One had one coming. Security swarmed the Superfly, trying to hold him back so as to not maul his instant adversary. And sure, I can sit here now and think about watching that on the TV and being hypnotized by the event transfolding, but to me it was magic, magical battling and the eternal struggle of good and evil.
And I adored Mr. Snuka, and soon my whole family knew it because all of a sudden I had a Superfly poster in my bedroom and my brother-in-law Eric was taking me to wrestling matches at the Struthers Fieldhouse, where I watched all those warriors depict the Dramas of the Ages, even as I began to root more for the side of the heels.
So the majority of my lifetime at this point has consisted of an ebb and flow of watching wrestling and pretending it didn't exist anymore. I tuned in and out, for various eras and changes, and by the time my wife and I had moved with our friend Jay to New Jersey, leaving Ohio for the east, I had become a somewhat dedicated fan of the product that ECW was creating out of Philly. This was professional wrestling that had stirred the embers of my burnt out love with my childhood visions of the out of control and the reckless display. I was able to find on one of the local channels in the Kent/Akron area that played the ECW tv shows at two in the morning, purchased as infomercial timeslots but used to showcase the story lines and brutality of the independent federation. Then the guy I worked warehouse with at Gabriel Brothers taped the Barely Legal PPV and lent it to me. The Eliminators made quick work of the Dudleys, Taz is there, against Sabu in a grudge match I do not understand, and Terry Funk sacrificed his body and career to put over a whole gosh darn locker room of rebels and misfits and misunderstood workers who could reinvent themselves. It was so captivating and raw, it felt personal to me, the experience of feeling like a fan of this otherworldly product.
I never got a chance to see a live ECW event in Ohio. I think back then they may have passed through Cleveland but I either didn't know about it or didn't dare venture outwards. But we made the leap to NJ, into moving into a house of three others, plus my wife and I--and I kept taping the late night show because a channel on our cable carried it. But somewhere I found a flier that said they were going to do a house show in Elizabeth, NJ and my heart stopped and I started scheming.
I didn't scheme much. I told Lindsey and she told me she'd take me, so we had to go to Elizabeth to pick up the tickets in person for some reason, I guess it wasn't that kind of show. Had to pick them up in a record store down the street from the place where I saw my first real life pimp, leaning on his pimp mobile, like living the lifestyle or else doing a heck of an impersonation. It was that kind of place. Since then, I have noticed there is a prevalent smell that is exclusively Elizabethian in timbre, unforgettable but that day unnoticed due to the living breathing Diorama of a stereotypical ghetto, and we're just buying tickets on a Sunday night? You have to understand existence in Ohio was somewhat limiting in such otherworldly movie scenes. What I saw was the real thing, and we were going to come back to see ECW in a high school gymnasium. That was daunting. What was also daunting was ECW's penchant for turning the fans' seating areas into warzones, splattering across collapsed folding chairs and delighted fans, but I was not so worldly and didn't think that what I'd been watching could seem too real. I was well old enough to know by then wrestling was arranged, but that was when I realized what these guys put their bodies through to entertain their fans seemed a bit on the mideval side. But I loved it, and wanted to be a part of it like a little boy again, the kid who insisted on watching every Saturday afternoon and then with more and more frequency, hypnotized.
So, we know Elizabeth's kinda scary, but the area we go to is pretty uninhabited and kinda quiet and unlit. And we had to walk a ways to get from the car to the gym, so as we got closer it got louder and once we walked in the smell and the sound and the calibre of the people just about broke one under my nostril. The crowd seemed edgy, not just there to have a good time but there because they were there to see something chaotic and bloody and cathartic. We felt so young and out of place, like real outsiders, but no one seemed to take any notice of us. And then the show started, and everyone's attention was on the ring.
(Believe me, he used to be a serious badass, don't let this picture with Eric Young fool into believing otherwise.)
I can't remember the opening match, it was an obvious squash but still you were unable to take your eyes away. Taz wrestled second or third on the card, which was intense, when Taz was pushed as a badass worker you had to believe he was a cocky, arrogant badass, even though his opponents towered over him at times. I was buying it, at least.
So, my wife had purchased us second row seats to this thing. I guess general admission would have been all right by me, but she has a hard time seeing at events like this, so I think she wanted to get up close and enjoy it with me. Well, it may have been just a bit too close. I don't know how many rows were set up around the ring, but Dreamer had rolled to a stop at the second row, through tipped chairs and a tangle of legs and bodies of people who were too entranced to move out of the way. But he was fine, and they worked the finish, and I couldn't tell you who won. Honestly the whole spectacle of it all wiped that memory away.
I do remember, though, a tenseness passing through the crowd when they knew which match was left: the Dudleys versus the newly cobbled team of the Gangstanators, formed from the leftovers of two great teams whose missing members had moved on from the Philadelphia federation. I was not so naive to believe even then that this match would be anything but chaotic, but I guess I really didn't put myself fully into the situation.
The whole Dudley entourage came out and did their pre-match routine, taking turns on the microphone to bait the hot crowd ever further. I think at that time they were finally coming into a gimmick that seemed to veer from their comedy roles they had played in ECW and were becoming serious heels who drew heat. As much as I admire him now, I hated Joel Gertner and how smug and self-assured he was. He was an unheralded genius as the team's, what, personal announcer? He was great later on the product's commentary but he had that window to say such angering things. And they were so smug, so smug to make you boo them even harder, and then a sound blared over the PA system, a sound of breaking glass that was unmistakably the first few seconds of New Jack's entrance music.
Dre's sliding synth would kick in and you'd hear the approach before you saw New Jack
and John Kronus
coming down the entrance, through the exploding crowd.
It wasn't a wrestling match, in any sense of definition. It was World War Three, all in capital letters, the sensory overload of the men attacking each other with big swinging fists in every seeming direction as it spread from the ring to the floor, and from the ringside area it kicked over the barricade and entered the fans' space. And you had to move as the crowd surged, we were so tightly packed from the seats behind us that had gotten collapsed into the sea of chairs covering the gymnasium floor. We held our own the best we could, knowing it would have been somewhat unsafe attempting to weave through the crowd. Bodies would part and Big Dick Dudley was beating Kronus with his crutch, full overhead swings that went wild through people. More than one person was already bleeding, and there was blood on the floor, red on yellow, just feet before me.
And Natural Born Killaz kept playing, kept looping through the PA. It never stopped. It was the team's sole introduction and kept tensions high with electronic beats and shrill treble making everything vibrate. I looked to the ring and saw New Jack with what looked like was an X-Acto knife that he was using to carve the forehead of Bubba Dudley, forgoing any code of kayfabe and allowing the crowd to see the real bloodshed that disregarded any trade secret. He held him in the corner and worked at a wad of scar tissue until it flowed like a spigot. Things just seemed to be in the stages of collapse, and the crowd fed off the blood sacrifices on offer and became enraged, almost hostile as a form of worship. I began to fear for our safety. The security on hand were there in some unknown capacity, mainly to move the crowd out of the way when they would do their crowd spots, but in this melee, they seemed to be feeding. Less than an arm's length away a security guard had seized a kid, maybe 14 years old, and put him in a front facelock, similar to the chokehold Taz would use as his finish. But this kid's limbs were flailing and when I realized security had no intention of protecting the crowd, Lindsey and I seemed to agree telepathically, and then verbally confirmed, that leaving would probably be a good idea. Somehow we began weaving, desperate not to trip on a chair or a fallen wrestler. We cut back then across the gap between the crowd and the now empty bleachers. At the door of the gymnasium, I looked back, like Lot's wife, and while I did not turn into a pillar a salt I took a mental Polaroid of the chaotic carnage we were leaving behind. Natural Born Killaz was still playing and nothing could be seen but surging crowd.
Walking briskly back to the car, suddenly the shadowy streets of Elizabeth were not so easily fearful, even getting lost coming home did not phase me. But every time after that, I watched the shows and PPV's with a certain reverence, like I had shared in this thing they were fashioning for themselves, a kind of wrestling program that wasn't family friendly but rather an edgy alternative to staleness in the industry. They would go on, all of them, to change the business of wrestling in many ways, changes for the better and worse, but none so intense as the first time. There was a rise and fall to its history, and several attempted reinventions, but you have to deal with the law of diminishing returns here.
A few months later, I had heard of them doing a card in Woodbridge, a closer area to our home, a place we were somewhat familiar with, and we got tickets. In General Admission, for the better for everyone involved. In that short span of time the fire of ECW kept getting hotter, and the crowd was bigger but also a little younger, and just as vile and vulgar and just epic was the product. Maybe you gotta be up close to really feel the heat. All I remember is that New Jack had a singles match against Bam Bam Bigelow, and by that time he was the foreign object guy, something you could label and then so somehow contain it easier. But we still got up and sat in the back for the match. Lindsey wouldn't even look at the ring while New Jack was out there, just staring at her shoes.
Listen to the theme song from this story:
But all in all, the card was wild and crazy but didn't really push the envelope much until the second to the last match. It was a three way dance, with Sabu, the Franchise Shane Douglas, and Tommy Dreamer, who seemed to be replaying the role his mentor Terry Funk played a few years prior in a similar stipulation.
(Replace Funk with Tommy Dreamer and this is kinda what it looked like, and they did not do the triple sleeper routine in homage of that magical matchup.)
It was not that epic battle, no it was more of a smash and grab match of high spots and a down the stairs bump that Tommy Dreamer took down the bleachers, and landed at my feet. He slowly stood, and I asked him if he was all right. "Yeah," was all he said and he cut through the front row to reenter ringside.
(Bleachers like these->)
So, my wife had purchased us second row seats to this thing. I guess general admission would have been all right by me, but she has a hard time seeing at events like this, so I think she wanted to get up close and enjoy it with me. Well, it may have been just a bit too close. I don't know how many rows were set up around the ring, but Dreamer had rolled to a stop at the second row, through tipped chairs and a tangle of legs and bodies of people who were too entranced to move out of the way. But he was fine, and they worked the finish, and I couldn't tell you who won. Honestly the whole spectacle of it all wiped that memory away.
I do remember, though, a tenseness passing through the crowd when they knew which match was left: the Dudleys versus the newly cobbled team of the Gangstanators, formed from the leftovers of two great teams whose missing members had moved on from the Philadelphia federation. I was not so naive to believe even then that this match would be anything but chaotic, but I guess I really didn't put myself fully into the situation.
The whole Dudley entourage came out and did their pre-match routine, taking turns on the microphone to bait the hot crowd ever further. I think at that time they were finally coming into a gimmick that seemed to veer from their comedy roles they had played in ECW and were becoming serious heels who drew heat. As much as I admire him now, I hated Joel Gertner and how smug and self-assured he was. He was an unheralded genius as the team's, what, personal announcer? He was great later on the product's commentary but he had that window to say such angering things. And they were so smug, so smug to make you boo them even harder, and then a sound blared over the PA system, a sound of breaking glass that was unmistakably the first few seconds of New Jack's entrance music.
Dre's sliding synth would kick in and you'd hear the approach before you saw New Jack
and John Kronus
coming down the entrance, through the exploding crowd.
It wasn't a wrestling match, in any sense of definition. It was World War Three, all in capital letters, the sensory overload of the men attacking each other with big swinging fists in every seeming direction as it spread from the ring to the floor, and from the ringside area it kicked over the barricade and entered the fans' space. And you had to move as the crowd surged, we were so tightly packed from the seats behind us that had gotten collapsed into the sea of chairs covering the gymnasium floor. We held our own the best we could, knowing it would have been somewhat unsafe attempting to weave through the crowd. Bodies would part and Big Dick Dudley was beating Kronus with his crutch, full overhead swings that went wild through people. More than one person was already bleeding, and there was blood on the floor, red on yellow, just feet before me.
(Imagine blood all over this.)
And Natural Born Killaz kept playing, kept looping through the PA. It never stopped. It was the team's sole introduction and kept tensions high with electronic beats and shrill treble making everything vibrate. I looked to the ring and saw New Jack with what looked like was an X-Acto knife that he was using to carve the forehead of Bubba Dudley, forgoing any code of kayfabe and allowing the crowd to see the real bloodshed that disregarded any trade secret. He held him in the corner and worked at a wad of scar tissue until it flowed like a spigot. Things just seemed to be in the stages of collapse, and the crowd fed off the blood sacrifices on offer and became enraged, almost hostile as a form of worship. I began to fear for our safety. The security on hand were there in some unknown capacity, mainly to move the crowd out of the way when they would do their crowd spots, but in this melee, they seemed to be feeding. Less than an arm's length away a security guard had seized a kid, maybe 14 years old, and put him in a front facelock, similar to the chokehold Taz would use as his finish. But this kid's limbs were flailing and when I realized security had no intention of protecting the crowd, Lindsey and I seemed to agree telepathically, and then verbally confirmed, that leaving would probably be a good idea. Somehow we began weaving, desperate not to trip on a chair or a fallen wrestler. We cut back then across the gap between the crowd and the now empty bleachers. At the door of the gymnasium, I looked back, like Lot's wife, and while I did not turn into a pillar a salt I took a mental Polaroid of the chaotic carnage we were leaving behind. Natural Born Killaz was still playing and nothing could be seen but surging crowd.
Walking briskly back to the car, suddenly the shadowy streets of Elizabeth were not so easily fearful, even getting lost coming home did not phase me. But every time after that, I watched the shows and PPV's with a certain reverence, like I had shared in this thing they were fashioning for themselves, a kind of wrestling program that wasn't family friendly but rather an edgy alternative to staleness in the industry. They would go on, all of them, to change the business of wrestling in many ways, changes for the better and worse, but none so intense as the first time. There was a rise and fall to its history, and several attempted reinventions, but you have to deal with the law of diminishing returns here.
A few months later, I had heard of them doing a card in Woodbridge, a closer area to our home, a place we were somewhat familiar with, and we got tickets. In General Admission, for the better for everyone involved. In that short span of time the fire of ECW kept getting hotter, and the crowd was bigger but also a little younger, and just as vile and vulgar and just epic was the product. Maybe you gotta be up close to really feel the heat. All I remember is that New Jack had a singles match against Bam Bam Bigelow, and by that time he was the foreign object guy, something you could label and then so somehow contain it easier. But we still got up and sat in the back for the match. Lindsey wouldn't even look at the ring while New Jack was out there, just staring at her shoes.
This poor girl, I thought, I've scarred her forever. But she loved me enough to bring me back and even took me to a WWF show the next year, in stadium seating that was safely attached to the floor. And we've been to several Ring of Honor shows in Edison as well, I don't know if she realizes just how amazing the matches we saw were, but the first ROH she got us second row seats that happened to be on the rail on the entrance ramp, and she wanted to touch them as they walked by and got mad when Austin Aries punched her outstretched hand.
One show we went to, she had decided to get up and go out of the Inman Arena and moments later, American Dragon Brian Danielson pitched Samoa Joe into our section, and went back into the ring for a suicide flip straight into the mess of crowd with Joe at it's center. On his way down he full on kicked this girl in the head, who took it like a champ. There I was again, in a sea of broken chairs and overweight fans too lethargic to move, and instinctively I went to pull Lindsey from the melee and fight our way out, but I remembered she was out on adventure, so I gave in to the insanity of the moment and surrounded the fallen wrestlers and cheered and yelled when the match went to a 60 minute finish.
One show we went to, she had decided to get up and go out of the Inman Arena and moments later, American Dragon Brian Danielson pitched Samoa Joe into our section, and went back into the ring for a suicide flip straight into the mess of crowd with Joe at it's center. On his way down he full on kicked this girl in the head, who took it like a champ. There I was again, in a sea of broken chairs and overweight fans too lethargic to move, and instinctively I went to pull Lindsey from the melee and fight our way out, but I remembered she was out on adventure, so I gave in to the insanity of the moment and surrounded the fallen wrestlers and cheered and yelled when the match went to a 60 minute finish.
I found her afterwards. I think she met Prince Nana, she said, and when I told her she'd just missed one of the most amazing wrestling matches I'd ever witnessed, she kind of went on with her business (whatever business Lindseys take care of when they're bored at a wrestling match), and I basked in the afterglow alone all the way home.
Listen to the theme song from this story:
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