Understanding ECW

Whenever I see younger people, online, talking about ECW, I wish they'd actually been there. A lot of wrestling fans, today, know nothing more about the real ECW than what was in the Rise and Fall DVD or what they read on the internet or saw on youtube. The thing is, if you weren't a wrestling fan in the 90s, being fed silly nonsense like what WCW was doing with these Dungeon of Doom skits, you'll never really understand how revolutionary ECW was. If you grew up with wrestling that had already been heavily influenced by ECW, you won't ever be able to truly appreciate how different it was, at the time.

I compare it to Black Metal. Today, someone can use the internet to download thousands of albums, from every corner of the earth. They hear all of this 'Extreme Metal' stuff and then they hear some old Venom and crap all over it because it's not heavy enough or something. They're comparing it to current music (that was influenced by Venom) instead of comparing it to Venom's peers in the early 80s.

Unless you had to suffer through the cartoonish crap that WWF and WCW gave us in the early to mid 90s, it's probably impossible to feel the true impact of ECW. Even if you like what you see, it just won't have the same effect.

I don't say this to be elitist. I'm actually sorry that not everyone was able to see ECW in its prime or to attend the shows.