ECW November To Remember 2000

Extreme Championship Wrestling had expanded and flourished so rapidly for a number of different reasons- it was original and vibrant at a time when most mainstream US wrestling was not; it took chances and pushed the envelope shocking wrestling fans whose idea of professional wrestling came only from the cartoon world of WWE; its storylines and characters were engrossing, eschewing the one-dimensional heroes and villains of the main promotions at the time. It also created star, lots of them- from The Sandman to Tommy Dreamer, Taz, Rob Van Dam, Shane Douglas, The Dudley Boys, Sabu and others- Paul Heyman had a way of getting everybody on his roster over, to the point where he was even able to put the ECW World Heavyweight Title on Mikey Whipwreck. When Heyman was able to give his undivided attention to the product, ECW would thrive from a creative perspective and new stars were being born at an unheard of rate. As such, when the big boys came calling on a regular basis between 1995 and 1998, and the likes of The Public Enemy, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Juventud Guerrera, Chris Jericho, Mick Foley, Terry Funk, Raven, Stevie Richards and others left the company, there was always someone ready to step up into the position they filled.

ECW Anarchy Rulz 1999

What is the legacy of Extreme Championship Wrestling? Is it of a company that changed the face of professional wrestling, dragging it, kicking and screaming, into a new millennium? Or is it the temporarily hot, but always bound to fail bastard child of the industry, that left a trail of broken bodies and minds in its destructive wake? Is it possible that the truth is that both of these answers is in fact correct, and that far from being a force either completely for good, or completely for evil, that ECW sits somewhere in between like only a truly innovating force possibly can? One thing is for sure however, that by the time Anarchy Rulz 1999 rolled around in September of that year, both WWE and WCW had already raided the promotion of not only its talent but also its ideas. Despite being a leader of change and revolutionary movement during the mid 1990s (when most consider the company to have been at its creative peak) by the end of the decade, ECW were struggling to stand out from a content perspective, and had already been massively disadvantaged from an exposure standpoint.