Original subtitles

[crowd cheers]

- You are looking live at the Lincoln Financial Field

in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

- Of course, ECW gained prominence only a few miles

from this very stadium.

- What's really cool is that they are really celebrating

the Philadelphia experience.

As you see right here, ECW,

everyone knows that was started right here

in Philadelphia.

- It's Philly.

You took us in.

They made us their own.

They gave us a home.

They gave us a town to burn down.

[fireworks]

So here we are in 2024.

It's WrestleMania XL,

and we're in of all places, Philadelphia.

The birthplace of ECW.

And all the merchandise is "Wrestle F'N Mania."

What an interesting "F'N" concept.

This revolution did take place and we did change the industry.

- Shattered the table.

- It just took a while for it all to settle in.

- Through the table.

- And this WrestleMania is truly the validation

of everything we all worked so very hard for-

[crowd chants "ECW"]

- The story of Extreme Championship Wrestling is that

it was so real, real to a degree that this industry

has never seen before.

- EC [bleep] W.

- ECW was a place to put the misfits.

And in the '90s, we needed that.

- It was us against the entire wrestling business.

- Those are hard guys.

Authentic, hard individuals.

And that's the bottom line.

- There were branding irons, barbed wire,

someone set on fire.

- This is ECW, this is hardcore.

- Unless you've been to an ECW show,

you have not seen it all.

- We were born to crash and burn as a company.

But ECW changed the wrestling business forever.

- This is the ECW.

I love your shoes, babe, gotta go, okay.

Hey, I was out here before, and before-before we started

production today, and they said, "Paul E., what is your

definition of professional wrestling?

Is it the technique, the NCAA, the Olympic-style wrestlers?"

I said, "No, that's not it."

I said, "Excitement."

That's my game, excitement.

Paul E. Dangerously stands for excitement.

- In the mid-80s, Paul Heyman was known as Paul E. Dangerously

and was making a name for himself as an

incredible wrestling manager.

- The greatest professional wrestling manager

in the world today.

- Just this brash, smarter-than-you guy that would

walk to the ring in a suit that was too loud with a mullet and

that giant brick cell phone.

- With the million-dollar suits, with a telephone,

and I got a whole lot of surprises in store for you.

- Paul and I had bonded tremendously in WCW,

as he was my manager.

- Steve, you're the man.

- Paul E. was one of the people in my life

who was paramount as far as my success in this business.

- Fans like us saw Paul Heyman as this amazing manager, but he

also had this kind of rebellious wrestling brain that was

constantly trying to take the product that we saw

in a different direction.

- I don't like what wrestling is all about anymore.

I don't like the shape that wrestling is in.

At the time, both WWE and WCW

were really behind the times.

Everybody was a wrestling character stuck in the Hulk

Hogan era, and that era was ending.

- Doink and Dink.

[laughs]

Whoa.

Look out, a kick of the shins.

- Unbelievable.

- Dink's having a laugh.

- Paul had been around and-and-and had worked in

different promotions around the country, so he had a little bit

of this and a little bit of that.

And Paul wasn't afraid to look outside the box.

- You can't change the system from the outside bitching.

You can only change the system from the inside, implementing a

new vision, so I started building my reputation

behind the scenes.

- And it wasn't long before people started to take notice

of Paul Heyman's creativity.

- I started running the creative in the mid-1990s for a small

promotion that got a TV clearance called Eastern

Championship Wrestling, ECW.

- And it was just a natural fit at that particular time.

It was all Paul.

He was really running to take the ball and ran

with it completely.

- Tod was the owner.

Paul Heyman was the creative mind behind ECW.

- I was so ready to do something new and different

and innovative.

Almost 20 years after the movie Network

and Peter Finch was right.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore.

Professional wrestling needed to be taken to the extreme.

This ain't no freaking circus.

This is ECW.

[crowd cheers]

- The timing of ECW really coincided with this cultural

awakening that we saw in the early 90s.

We had the birth of grunge and a lot more attitude, and people

just kinda seemed to come out of their shell

collectively as a culture.

- This is extreme.

- Extreme was one of those words that was-was being--

Everything was extreme.

The X sports had just started getting, uh, a lot of exposure.

It was being thrown around a lot in-in the advertising world,

and everybody was calling everything they wanted

to get noticed extreme.

- We pull the trigger.

We go from Eastern to Extreme.

- Hello, everyone, and welcome

to Extreme Championship Wrestling.

This is Joey Styles in the eagle's nest,

high above the ECW arena.

And you are watching the wrestling promotion that's

changing the face of the sport today.

This is as extreme as it gets.

- ECW were the renegades.

They were the misfits.

- ECW.

- They were the group of wrestlers that

just did everything their own way.

- Well, ECW understood with Paul Heyman at the helm that you

could not out WWE WWE, and you could not out WCW WCW,

so they did not even try.

- These two have used everything in an attempt to destroy one

another, including, yes, the kitchen sink.

- Instead of having pyro and the glitz and the glamor,

we had Fight Club.

It's a guilty pleasure.

I'm not really supposed to watch this, but I'm gonna.

- Professional wrestling was more aimed at children

in the early 90s.

With ECW, that's one thing that really made it different.

- Hey, I'm Jenna Jameson and, you know, I've seen some really,

really extreme things in my lifetime, but nothing, nothing,

nothing compares to ECW.

- They were for sure aiming at adults.

- This is hardcore.

You wanna be a clown?

Take 95 back to Connecticut.

Up and down goes Doink the Clown.

- To the extreme, baby, right here.

- There was nobody that the 18 to 34 male demographic could

look at and say, "Oh, yeah, you know what, that's the new thing

that's out there.

Yeah, that's hip.

That's contemporary.

That's hot.

That's today.

That's even progressive.

That's tomorrow."

- ECW was such a small upstart that there was no national

television coverage.

When I finally found it, it was on MSG Network at one o'clock in

the morning, and you had to hope that you didn't fall asleep

before the show came on.

- When ECW was coming up, it was still in the era where

the internet wasn't as prevalent.

And there was tape trading going on, a lot of it had to be really

grassroots and word of mouth.

- This is a movement.

Like you felt like, "Hey, I'm a part of something from the

ground up."

It was everything that WCW and WWE wasn't at that time.

- EC [bleep] W.

[crowd cheers]

- They just sat about putting out a completely alternative

product than most anyone had ever seen.

- It's gonna be a hot time in ECW.

[crowd cheers]

- He's branding Cactus with a flaming branding iron.

- There were, uh, branding irons, barbed wire.

There were lots of cool ways to cause physical harm.

- I think that was a VCR.

- I'd probably been in ECW a couple of months at that point,

and I'm sitting there going,

"What the hell am I doing for a living?

I mean, this is nuts."

[crowd cheers]

- But the crowd was just so engrossed by it.

- This had become a society enthralled with violence.

The whole mindset of ECW was to be a cult, the cult of extreme.

The tribe of hardcore.

We as one would revolutionize professional wrestling.

- What in God's name are they doing?

They've got Balls Mahoney up.

Powerbomb through the thumbtacks and the fire.

The matchup is over.

Thank God.

- WCW was doing their thing, we were doing ours,

and then you've got this rogue outfit,

ECW, that's on the periphery there

kinda doing their own thing.

- Joey looks flustered and he sweats a little bit.

- Let's do it.

- You're talking about big blockbuster movies versus a

low-budget student film.

- These guys were literally working out

of the post production editor's parent's house.

- We didn't have production, we had Paul and two cameramen.

Paul didn't have an office.

Backstage was a table in the middle of the locker room.

I handled advertising for ECW.

I booked the buildings for ECW.

I handled everything that went on in that company that didn't

deal with the actual show.

- I used to say that ECW survived

on balls, [bleep] and bravado.

We didn't have the lighting, we didn't have the pyro.

Our bragging rights came from the fact that no one could do

what we were doing.

- Oh, no.

Oh, my God.

- If I'm gonna go somewhere and try to make it, this might be

the place I can start and try to make a name for myself here and

then possibly pursue somewhere else down the line.

- Paul Heyman likes to take chances on diamonds in the rough

and doesn't look at your outside as a limitation.

- Dude, you have no idea how many times I've been arrested in

a barroom brawl from the ages of, let's say, like,

18 to, like, 22.

Paul E. goes, "Just go be you."

- The Sandman is not a good wrestler.

He will sit here and tell you he is not a good wrestler.

I don't know who trained him.

I don't know if anyone trained him.

Sandman is a legit barroom brawler.

- Not someone you would think would be a typical role model,

but there at ECW, the fans loved him because

he represented one of them.

- ECW politically incorrect and damn proud of it.

- You want wholesome family entertainment?

You're watching the wrong promotion.

- The Sandman, pre-Stone Cold, was smashing beers

on his forehead.

- I said, "What, are you crazy?

You can't send a guy drinking and smoking into the ring."

Well, apparently you can.

- The Sandman was me.

I want to play a game of pool.

When I lose, I want to hit you over the head with a cane, take

the money, get in my car, and roll.

- We all loved ECW so much because we all got to be us.

- You're Steve Austin.

- You know, that's where you're wrong, Mean Joey.

Because Steve Austin doesn't have what it takes to get it

done in the ECW, brother.

I was out of a job, and the phone rings, it's Paul E.

Paul calls me, and he goes, "Kid," he goes, "I want you to

come over and start working for me, cutting promos."

And I said, "Man, what do you want me to talk about?"

And he goes, "Just talk about how you feel."

You people get up every morning, you throw a ham and cheese

sandwich in a metal lunch box, you punch a time clock, you let

some [bleep] yell at you for nine hours, then you punch out

and go back home to some hag.

I'll never do that, man.

That was the genesis of what Stone Cold would-

would come from.

- ECW was a beautiful place to grow because you were given

such freedom.

Without those moments, I don't think we see "Stone Cold" Steve

Austin explode on the scene.

- And that's the bottom line.

That God dang ECW arena which was a complete [bleep],

and I'm happy to be there, but to classify it other than what

it was, a [bleep], would be inaccurate.

This place is a bigger [bleep]

than Middletown, New York, was.

- It was a bingo hall, but it was also the Vikings clubhouse.

The Vikings were a string band.

I walked in there the first time, and I said,

"Oh, my God. What?

Look at this place.

It's-- You can't do a show here."

- It was a ring, guardrails and fans.

- You got it, baby.

- Nothing fancy, no big titantron.

Nothing.

It was just, "This is what you need to focus on, what happens

in the ring."

- I love the grunginess of it.

I love that it wasn't pristine, that it wasn't polished, that

anything could happen, anything was possible.

- Because it was rooted in Philly, people from New York

were coming down, people from D.C.

They kind of were in a nice spot where it was a go-to place.

- They wanna see the referee chokeslammed.

Only in Philadelphia.

- You wanted that badge of honor to say that you had seen these

stars live, and you wanted to say that you could see them at

the ECW arena, the bingo hall.

- Oh, my God.

- ECW Superstars were known for doing the most insane things

you'd ever seen in a Sports Entertainment program,

but ultimately, the same risks that they took that made them

stand out in the first place would be what held them back.

- The early 90's,

I think things needed to change.

And right here in Philadelphia was the perfect place.

- Where it all started, baby.

I love being right here, right in this spot.

Wow, the memories.

[crowd cheers]

You can almost hear the crowd.

[crowd chants "ECW"]

- I knew they were doing a lot of different things,

and they were really cutting edge with-with the things

that they were doing and their fan base.

If there was ever a definition of fanatical, their fans,

they were-- they were all of that.

They were part of the show.

[crowd chants "ECW"]

- The fans would sometimes hold a chair up.

I remember fans holding a chair, and 2 Cold Scorpio

smashing my head

[chuckles]

into the chair while the fan was holding it.

- Yeah, baby.

[laughs]

- The audience is as much part of the show as the show itself.

We're the cool ones.

We're extreme.

- This is ECW at its best.

The stands emptying.

- Public Enemy, they were dancing and they were

celebrating and they were inviting the crowd to join them

in this celebration.

These aren't WWE rings.

These are rings that some guy set up right before the show.

- Oh, my God.

They broke the ring.

- ECW just had this aura of fan inclusion, where fans were just

as much a part of the show as the superstars were.

- He's got Spike up.

Oh, my God.

- Oh, God bless the throw.

We're at the arena, people are right on top of you, and he

chucked me, and I landed in the third or fourth row, and they

caught me, and they surfed me around.

- We've got body surfing at the ECW arena.

- When you see the audience care about somebody, when you're

watching at home you're going to care more about them too.

ECW was the best at that.

Like, the crowd was a star of its own.

- Terry Funk versus Cactus Jack for the first time in history.

This one ought to be a classic.

- Terry and I had a match, and it was fairly short, ended with,

uh, a disqualification when the Public Enemy came running in,

and I said to the audience, give me a chair.

First there was one and there was two.

- Oh, my God.

- I'm not exaggerating when I say it was raining chairs.

- I turned around and catch one over there, and all of a sudden,

wham, one of them hit me right right in the back

and knocked me out.

Oh, just some crazy stuff in ECW.

That was a-- it was a good time.

- It's one of the most iconic moments in ECW history,

and it's one of the most dangerous things I've ever seen.

We encouraged audience participation, and we may have

encouraged it a little too much.

- Everybody in ECW played hurt.

There was no such thing as time off.

We were warriors to a degree that most wrestlers could never

say they were.

- They were custom-made for Extreme Championship Wrestling.

It's hard to imagine them wrestling anywhere else.

- We had a passion to be ECW Superstars.

We were gonna change the whole world.

So what do we care if we broke a finger?

What do we care if our necks hurt?

If our backs hurt?

It didn't matter because you know what?

We were making a difference.

- No way.

That balcony is way too high up in the air.

Oh, my God.

- Everybody that wasn't a part of ECW hated ECW.

They all had something to say about ECW.

- ECW, extremely crappy wrestling for those of you

who don't know.

The guys who were fans of that ECW hybrid, [bleep] garbage

wrestling, they cheered everybody.

They just wanted the car wreck and the carnage.

- I think there was a bit of arrogance, I think, on people's

view of-of ECW, but in that arrogance, there's probably a

certain amount of jealousy because they are getting to do

things that we didn't get to do.

- Now, we're setting an impossible physical standard

that the human body can't keep up to.

All that stuff that they were doing was ridiculous and was

gonna lead to the downfall of the business, and basically,

we hated the whole bunch of them.

- It's very popular to paint this picture.

That's fine, and I accept that criticism, but I-I could feel

the culture shift that was going on, and I wanted to bring

that to television.

- At a point, it kind of became clear that that extreme attitude

that brought them so much praise would also be what brought them

criticism, and that created some issues for the company.

- We ran into some really rough spells in ECW.

Of course, we did.

In 1995, we were desperate to get on pay-per-view

and couldn't get in.

There was a huge backlash against the UFC, and we got

lumped in with extreme fighting.

There was no way to convince anybody to let us on

pay-per-view.

If the goal was to be big, if the goal was to compete with WWE

and WCW, going to pay-per-view was the holy grail.

It was time for me to do something big, so I took over

ownership of the company.

[crowd cheers]

[crowd chants "ECW"]

- The demand for this product was so great,

but if you don't take advantage of that opportunity,

then you're not gonna get the end result,

which is all that money coming in

and the expansion of your product.

- There's this amazing show on at one o'clock in the morning.

Unfortunately, sponsors and corporations that maybe would've

worked with them thought that they were too risky.

- Every single day was a battle for survival,

and every single day that we survived was a miracle,

and it just zapped out Tod's budget.

Tod couldn't afford to keep up,

so I took over ownership of the company.

- Welcome to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

- In 1996, ECW and WWE started doing a cross-branded story.

The idea of ECW wrestlers now appearing on WWE Television.

- If we have an opportunity we're going to--

- Oh.

- Oh, my.

Hey, wait just a moment.

A local wrestling group here in Philadelphia, and obviously

trying to make a name for themselves at the expense of the

World Wrestling --.

- I think the WWE recognized that

"Boy, we're getting ECW chants at our shows.

"What is this company?

Let's see.

Let's find out.

Let's bring them in."

- The local Philadelphia wrestling outfit, uh,

they're here.

- I've had about-- just about all I wanna see of this

crap right here.

Do you understand that?

- Oh, yeah.

- Do you think for one minute that anybody knows anything

about these idiots, ECW?

- Well, there was no greater supporter of ECW

than Vince McMahon.

Vince thought we were good for the industry, if for nothing

else, but because we were a shop that could create new talent.

- I'll tell you what I'll do.

If you so good, if you're so tough, I'll make a personal

invitation to you.

Come right here on Raw next week.

Come on down here, and let's show-show us what you got.

- We're outside the Manhattan Center live,

we're coming to you, ladies and gentlemen, yes,

it's Monday Night Raw.

What is this?

Wait a minute.

Oh.

- Your challenge has been accepted.

ECW is in the house.

- ECW invasion, it helped WWE and it helped ECW.

It was the first time ECW had mainstream exposure and WWE

desperately needed an edge.

- Has this show sucked without ECW or what, huh?

[crowd cheers]

- Hopefully things aren't going to get out of hand here.

- Well, hopefully, they are.

That's what ECW is all about.

[crowd chants "ECW"]

- It's freaking huge for us.

You know what I mean?

You're getting recognized by a whole different world.

- The Sandman is in the Manhattan Center.

- To cross-promote there and have those guys come in, it was

kind of a shake up.

- Go ahead, come on.

- The walls come crumbling down with ECW.

- Because of your cards and your letters and your phone calls,

that show on April 13th will be carried live on pay-per-view.

The very first pay-per-view from ECW, Barely Legal.

- ECW finally reached their goal, and Paul Heyman gave the

credit to the fans.

- I wanted an audience that was going to be proud to be ECW

fans, and [bleep], I had that.

Tonight we have a chance to say, "Yeah, you're right.

We're too extreme.

We're too full of our own [bleep],"

or we have a chance to say, "Hey, [bleep] you.

You're wrong.

[bleep] you, we're right,

because you have all made it to the dance.

'cause, believe me, this is the dance.

Start the show.

- That was the dance.

It was us against the world.

It was ECW versus the entire wrestling business.

We were ready to go into battle because we were a part of

something special and we knew it.

[crowd chants "ECW"]

[crowd cheers]

- Being an advocate for ECW, once we got on pay-per-view, we

thought everything was going to change and

so we were really excited.

I was like, "Mmm, let's go."

- Air Van Dam.

- It felt like a real milestone that had been that thing that

they'd been chasing forever.

It was a really big accomplishment.

- This extreme not for everybody,

little engine that could had

accomplished the impossible.

- Inside cradle, small package.

[bell rings]

- It's over.

We've got a new champion.

We've got a new champion.

The emotion in this area is overwhelming.

- I'm happy.

- There were two pay-per-view carriers at the time, and we

were only carried on one, and despite that, we did 100,000

buys for Barely Legal.

And I have no doubt that a big part of that was the exposure we

got on WWE television.

- Things are moving along for ECW and then

they catch a huge break.

They got themselves a national weekly TV show.

- ECW wished for national TV and national TV killed ECW.

- Hello again, everyone, and welcome to WWE Raw

and we are live.

- In the late 90s, pro wrestling as an industry,

got super, super hot again.

WWE was doing unprecedented numbers.

It went from family-friendly cartoons come to life to edgy,

shocking stuff.

A lot of that was due to the influence that

they took from ECW.

- All hell is breaking loose in Madison Square Garden.

- Good God.

- And in 1999, ECW catches an incredible break by signing

their first major national cable television deal

with a network called TNN.

- Hello, everyone, I'm Joey Styles and we are getting set to

broadcast some of the most extreme wrestling matches

you have ever seen.

Moonsault over the bleacher.

Here it comes.

Awesome Bomb.

- TNN was a channel that wasn't popular.

I thought, well, automatically we're going to be the number one

rated to show on there, and I believed that this was going to

be our big break.

- Rob Van Dam here on the outside.

Oh, my God.

- I was a WWE guy, but I think I liked ECW better.

So I was like, "Oh, man, these guys are doing something

way different."

- Rhyno, this is not where he wants to be.

Oh, my God.

- What in the hell could possibly happen next on TNN?

- ECW wished for national TV and they got national TV and

national TV killed ECW.

- We signed a deal with TNN, which was very

favorable to them.

We didn't get paid any money.

To my knowledge, we were just getting exposure.

- The ECW never made money.

We paid to be everywhere.

We were paying to be on all those channels.

Those channels weren't paying us.

- TNN fought us every step of the way.

They did not like the way we did television, they wanted it to be

more polished like WWE.

- It was a startup company

whose entire presentation was counterculture.

That was a necessary, necessary component.

So, you're not going to get mainstream advertisers.

You're not going to get big name sponsorship.

It was just another battle

we were gonna have to pull a bunch of miracles for.

- You're sort of conflicted about it.

You're happy that you're finally getting some sort of national

exposure, um but at what cost?

- I don't know if Paul could have ever compromised himself

or the product enough.

Paul was too much of a rebel.

We all were.

- This was just another battle.

Because we were in such dire straits with the network,

the pay-per-view companies are holding back

our money they're just letting the money drift.

Our deal with TNN was falling apart horrifically.

- Paul Heyman isn't a guy known for holding his tongue.

Paul being unhappy with how the network was treating ECW decided

to air out TNN on TNN.

- We hate this stinking network.

We hate their guts for abandoning us,

we hate their guts for not supporting us,

we hate their guts for not advertising us.

- They never got behind us ever.

The only commercial that they ever showed for ECW ran during

the hour that we were on.

Meanwhile, TNN was planning on working out a different deal

with WWE to bring them in.

- You see, in just a few weeks, the network is going to give

$100 million to Vince McMahon like he needs it to replace us.

[WWE Raw's music plays]

- This is our inaugural broadcast for WWE Raw on TNN.

- Monday Night Raw starts to air on TNN, and a week later,

ECW is canceled.

- It's common knowledge how dire our situation is

so I have a meeting with Vince,

and he can relate to all of these problems

'cause he's been through it himself before.

He said "What can I do to help you?"

I said "Well, you can give me $500,000 right now so I can put

on my show in LA and get to my next pay-per-view."

And without blinking, five minutes later we were wired

$500,000 dollars as a loan

to shop around our TV show to more networks,

and keep on putting on pay-per-view's and hopefully

get our money out of the pay-per-view distributors.

That bought us some time.

- There were so many financial problems in ECW

that it just became unsustainable for him.

- When the ECW wrestlers were leaving for greener pastures,

I'd probably try to talk every one of them out of it.

It hurt.

- Wait a minute.

- What's this?

[bell rings]

- King, oh man.

King, The Dudley Boys.

The Dudley Boys.

Former ECW Tag Team Champions.

- I worked so close with Paul, Tazz worked so close with Paul.

- Man, what an impact for Tazz.

His first night in the WWE.

- The rest of the guys knew, if these guys are leaving,

something must be wrong.

[crowd chants "ECW"]

- Hello, everyone,

and welcome to Guilty as Charged.

- I wrestled that last pay-per-view

and-and under special conditions,

you know, I told Paul that I needed get paid in cash up

front, couldn't take a chance of not getting paid.

- He was owed a lot of money, like we all were,

but Rob Van Dam stayed till the end.

- Of course, when I was there and I was like,

"This is a check."

He was like, "You mean cash, cash?"

[chuckles]

But that's just Paul, but everything worked out.

- The Van Terminator.

- Everything was just like so good then and it was just the

last time that it would be.

- In every aspect, we were born, bred, raised to crash and burn

as a company.

We were a shooting star.

- The pay-per-view distributors offered to give us some money

if we put on the next pay-per-view,

but they wouldn't give us the money

until we put on the next pay-per-view,

but we couldn't put on the next pay-per-view

unless we got their money.

We were finished.

We were filing for bankruptcy.

It was over.

Had we landed on television, you'd be interviewing me today

as the genius that took ECW all the way and I'd be sitting here

with a billion-dollar stock option.

And the fact that we couldn't find television makes me the

schmuck that couldn't carry ECW any further.

WWE finally acquired all the assets of ECW after a long

bankruptcy proceeding.

- There were a lot of athletes I liked in ECW, and they had

a huge fan base.

And that's why I wasn't surprised when Vince McMahon

bought the company in 2001.

- My God, somebody tell me what this means.

I thought ECW was dead and buried.

- Even though it hurt to lose ECW, the fact that it went to

WWE also gave you a feeling of I'm not saying goodbye to all of

this, it's just going to be different than it was before.

- It was really great to see the transition that some people were

able to make from ECW and then see such a wider audience have

appreciation for them.

- Oh, we got new tag team champions.

Rob Van Dam is the Intercontinental Champion.

[crowd chants "Thank you"]

- ECW was special because they were extreme.

It's what led the audience to the product, but it was also one

of the things that led to ECW's downfall.

A lot of companies and sponsors didn't want to work with ECW

because of the nature of the programming.

- I always compare ECW to Napster.

Napster went bankrupt and out of business,

but Napster changed the way we listened to music forever.

ECW went bankrupt and out of business,

but ECW changed the wrestling business forever.

[crowd cheering]

- Bubba Ray Dudley says it best.

"ECW wasn't meant to last.

We were meant to go out in a blaze of glory.

We were Napster.

We were here to change the business.

We were here to disrupt the industry."

And it's exactly what we did.

For those of you, who will say,

that ECW lives no more,

I respectfully disagree with your assessment,

and for those of you who don't realize it,

ECW is alive today in the matches

that are performed in front of you,

that in the concepts

that have been adopted by the entire industry,

and the passion of the fan base that still comes today

to WWE and any other wrestling promotion

on the face of this planet.

If you think that the spirit of ECW died

in a bankruptcy court in 2001,

you can suck my [bleep].

[crowd cheers]

- What a bathroom here.

How apropos.

The ECW wall.

You got D-Von Dudley, testify, Hall of Fame right there.

You got Tod Gordon.

I just saw an RVD somewhere.

Oh, wait, where the freak is my-

I must have signed this somewhere.

- We still talk about it because ECW was a phenomenon.

Just like we talk about the Chicago Bulls dynasty

to this day in basketball, we will always talk about ECW.

[crowd chants "ECW"]

- Unless you've been to an ECW show and seen them at their

peak, then you have not seen or done it all.

- You wear those ECW shirts like a badge of honor because you

were at the bingo hall, or you at least want people

to think that you were.

- To this day when I see original ECW fans

with ECW tattoos and everything else, I am just shocked

and I am just moved.

- I wish people could understand how deep the relationship ran

between the wrestlers and those fans.

This company was like a family, and that's what made

it so special.

- The fact that we can incorporate stuff that happened

in ECW in WWE now, that just shows a little bit of the legacy

that ECW still has.

- Paul with the Frog Splash.

- When anyone shows up, whether it be Paul Heyman, Rob Van Dam,

you hear that chant, "ECW, ECW."

You're gonna hear the chant every single time.

[crowd chants "ECW"]

- I lived it in my sleep, and it was all encompassing.

It was exhilarating.

It was extreme.

[crowd chants "ECW"]