YMMV / ECW

• Awesome Music: During a period when both WCW and WWF were using in-house bands and music for entrance and PPV themes, Paul Heyman just raided his CD collection. Few of the tracks were officially licensed, which led to them being replaced with cover versions or generic music when the shows were released on video. The results (including Sandman making his entrance to a bouncy Euro-pop number) can be jarring to say the least.
• Crosses the Line Twice
  • A lot of angles, but notoriously the crucifixion of The Sandman by Raven.
  • Anything and everything out of Joel Gertner's mouth.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The promotion as a whole. Out of the "big three" promotions of The '90s up to the end of the Monday Night Wars, ECW was relatively the smallest (in between money issues and their talent being cherry-picked for the remainder of their existence), yet it was the one who managed to attract the most intense cult following.
• Fanon Discontinuity: As far as most fans are concerned, WWECW never existed. For those who are willing to acknowledge its existence, they usually state the show ended when CM Punk got drafted to RAW, as acknowledgement of the fact that he was perhaps the only reason it was still even remotely relevant to any fan.^note The sad part about this is that it's generally agreed that taken in a vacuum WWECW was actually a pretty good wrestling show, sort of a prototype to what NXT would later become under Triple H. But between it just not being anything close to the "real" ECW and WWE openly treating it like the C-show that it was fans either trashed it or just ignored it. Presentation is everything in wrestling.
• Fan Nickname
  • The original ECW is often referred to as "E-C-Dub", due to the famous chant.
  • Rabid ECW fans are referred to as "The Mutants".
  • The ECW revival was often referred to as "WWECW".
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • ECW led to an influx of garbage wrestlers who could not wrestle well but could swing stuff around, take hits, or were willing to jump off high places, to the USA scene. These did not originate in ECW, but this is where they caught on. While wrestlers credited with being the originators of what became the hardcore wrestling style such as Abdullah the Butcher, The Sheik, and Dick the Bruiser could still work traditional matches well, the hardcore wrestlers ECW popularized such as the Sandman... not so much. Following in ECW's wake, XPW, IWA Mid-South and CZW would magnify these flaws to new heights (though in fairness, the latter two would learn from their mistakes and outlast ECW).
    DDT: (circa 1999) They've become a caricature of what made them unique - they're just absurd spots with tables and ladders, with no real match flow or anything else.
  • Also popularized valets mainly there to do "cat fights". The ECW women typically had more to their roles during their early to mid years but as ECW wound down, rolling around and Bronco Busters were about all women did. Prior garbage feds like FMW tended to produce some of the most fearsome women divisions on the planet.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In this case, Americans Love Masato Tanaka. Even Shane Douglas, who rarely had anything good to say about anyone, acknowledged while doing commentary how Tanaka got over faster with the ECW fans than anyone he had seen before.
• Growing the Beard:
  • Shane Douglas' "KISS! MY! ASS!!" promo, as that was the night the promotion left the NWA and became an entity of its own.
  • "THANK YOU SIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?!": Tommy Dreamer's response to getting caned by Sandman after losing a match against him. Paul had stuck him in a feud with Sandman and Woman, the two most hardcore people he had at that time. And Dreamer went toe-to-toe with both of them. The crowd fell in love with Dreamer after that.
  • For his money, Shane Douglas doesn't think ECW would be remembered today if not for The Radicalz.
    Shane Douglas: Today, as we see a resurgence of the ECW legend, it is, in large part, due to the performances that wrestlers like Eddie brought to the "extreme table". When Eddie, Benoit, and Malenko arrived in ECW, it was a clear signal that the "bingo hall company" was definitely going to change the face of American wrestling.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Witness a particularly brutal spot involving weapons? You are due to chant "E-C-DUB! E-C-DUB! E-C-DUB!".
  • "He's Hardcore! He's Hardcore!" is the crowd's acknowledgement of someone being beyond-badass.
  • "HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT!" for something that was truly extreme (e.g., Mike Awesome giving Masato Tanaka a sit-out Awesome Bomb from the apron through a table to the floor at ECW November to Remember 99.)
  • Commentating legend Joey Styles' OH MY GOD!!!
    • TOTALELIMINANATIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON
    • CATFIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT
  • And Paul Heyman's Ascended Meme of "Drinking the Kool-Aid".
  • "Well, well, well...it is I, Joel 'Hotter than tabasco sauce, but loads easier to swallow' Gertner."
  • The crowd chanting "YOU FUCKED UP!" over and over whenever somebody messed up a move or a spot.
  • ECW pioneered the art of brawling and wrestling all over the building. Unfortunately, with such a low budget, the chant "CAN'T SEE SHIT!" was introduced.
  • "From the Harley Races, to the Barry Windhams, to the... Ric Flairs!" "Nevermind that shit, here comes Mongo!"
  • "GORE! GORE! GORE!"
  • "AND HERE COMES NEW JACK!"
  • From the infamous "WWECW": "UUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!" ^ExplanationThe first episode of WWE's incarnation of ECW featured the "debut" of a character called "The Zombie" who as a wrestling Zombie. For reasons not even Vince knows he stumbled out to the ring, and cut a "promo" that consisted of loud grunting. He then proceeded to get the shit kicked out of him by Mr. Sandman and was never seen on TV again. His "promo" is often mocked either for its ridiculousness or for the fact that it perfectly encapsulated the crowd reaction to The Zombie.
• Never Live It Down: ECW would make fun of Jerry Lawler for allegedly raping an underaged girl, even though the case was thrown out when police determined it could not have happened and she admitted to lying. There is a reason why he despised ECW.
• Newer Than They Think: ECW was the first American pro wrestling company to feature wrestlers tapping out to submissions as in Mixed Martial Arts, introduced by Taz. Before this, wrestlers only verbally signaled to the referee. Although, tapping out itself is still pretty old. Mixed martial arts as a sport was started in Japan, and it lifted tapping out directly from shoot style promotions like the Universal Wrestling Federation. Further back than that, in the martial-arts movie parody A Fistful of Yen in The Kentucky Fried Movie, all the way back in 1977, a character applies a juji-gatame, known in pro wrestling as a crucifix armbar or a cross-armbreaker, to another character, who taps out to it.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Between the company's will to succeed and the "make-noise-at-all-costs" mentality of Paul and Tod, there's very little ECW wouldn't do for some press.
• Obscure Popularity: The promotion in general could be considered this — squeezed in between the WWF and WCW during their heyday, it had to subsist mostly on pay-for-time late night/early morning/weekend slots on regional sports networks or low-rated independent TV stations, meaning that aside from word of mouth, it was next-to-impossible for the promotion to gain a lot of new viewers. The one-time crossover episode of WWF Raw in 1997, held in Philadelphia, ECW's home city, which featured several ECW stars and matches on WWF television (one of many pre-Attitude Era moves by WWF to counter WCW's surging fortunes) did very little for WWF, as the common fan had never seen nor heard of these wrestlers, but it did wonders for ECW, as they wanted to find out, and on searching the embryonic internet traced these new names to a tiny regional territory airing shows on late-night pay-for-air television, which caused interest to surge. Even with the increased viewership, ECW never reached the same mainstream popularity that WWF and WCW had, and what little mainstream coverage it got wasn't positive, usually revolving around scandals such as the Mass Transit Incident or Raven's Nest crucifying the Sandman.
• Older Than They Think: Fireballs, cages, tables...they were all staples of the South long before ECW or "Hardcore" was a thing. Randy Savage (back when he was working for his Father's company, ICW) may have been the first person to piledrive someone (poor Ricky Morton) through a table. This was lampshaded by Steve Corino when, while doing an anti-hardcore crusader gimmick, he blamed Dusty Rhodes for starting the "hardcore revolution". The difference is the Southern promotions largely relied on garbage when they felt enough people weren't watching, then went back to wrestling once they felt they had enough attention. This isn't really such a bad thing, as much of what ECW brought back was sorely missed by those who recognized it from somewhere else.
• Once Original, Now Common: A large part of the reason most modern wrestling fans view ECW as nothing more than a blood and guts promotion is because everything ECW did that was revolutionary in wrestling at the time is so commonplace in today's wrestling atmosphere that it's the only thing that stands out.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The promotion had a couple of awful games back in the early 2000s, made by Acclaim (who had lost the WWF license to THQ) and using the same (crappy) engine as their last two WWF games. Some reviewers used the ECW games as a launching board to decry the promotion, along with pro wrestling as a whole.
• Rated M for Money: When younger people think of ECW, they think of Taz choking people out, the Dudleys' crude promos and Sandman smoking, people being wrapped in barbed wire and going through flaming tables. One of their TV shows was called Hardcore TV, their video game was Hardcore Revolution, and one of their PPVs was named Hardcore Heaven. They were clearly selling the image even if it isn't all they were about.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap
  • Tommy Dreamer was a pretty-boy face who, on the surface, had absolutely no business being in ECW - and the fans made their feelings about Dreamer perfectly clear. Then he lost a match to The Sandman, took numerous Singapore cane shots to his back, then famously told Sandman "Thank you sir, may I have another?!" before getting further beaten. In that one moment, Tommy became a legitimate fan favorite.
  • Mike Awesome who was legitimately hated by the fans after jumping to WCW with the ECW title jumped out of the Scrappy Heap by himself after his performance against Masato Tanaka at the Original ECW One Night Stand event. However, he then jumped right into retirement. And worse.
• The Scrappy: The Trope Namer for X-Pac Heat had a stablemate named Justin Credible who is a tragic case. He was a focal point in the later years of ECW, but he's hardly-mentioned when people recall the promotion. His title run was more about Tommy Dreamer not having the title: Dreamer had finally won the world title when Credible challenged him for it and he won it, meaning that Dreamer wasn't even able to put the belt around his waist. Credible always came across as the X-Pac of the company, someone who was known for being associated with someone better. How was he World Champion in a year which had people like Raven return? Answer: ECW were that desperate. A long-standing rumor was that Heyman, who was struggling to create new stars,^note as while RVD was argued to be the logical pick for ECW World Champion at the time, Heyman was saving him for network TV, but by the time they got a TV deal, RVD was hurt, and then by the time he was healed, they had lost TV, decided to give Credible the title because he knew that he wouldn't be offered as much money as someone like Sandman or RVD, and he was the one guy neither WWF or WCW would try to steal away. His workrate was artificially-inflated by pitting him against good workers like Jerry Lynn Credible's first main event (Hardcore Heaven 2000, vs. Lance Storm) had a dead crowd because nobody really cared: Storm was probably not a good pick for a babyface; and since he was leaving, he was obviously not winning the belt, so there was no tension and thus no heat.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Unfortunately, by 2000 ECW could no longer feasibly do any long-term planning and kept tripping over their own shoelaces because all of their big names kept going away. In 2000, Mike Awesome infamously jumped to WCW while he was still under ECW contract and the ECW champ. This caused a disastrous domino effect:
    1. Taz was loaned to ECW by the WWF to get the belt off of Awesome. (As a side note, this was historic: WCW talent vs. WWF talent for ECW gold.) Taz worked briefly on WWF TV as ECW champ, only to be jobbed out to Triple H, which made ECW look stupid.
    2. Dreamer was also made to look silly: Dreamer, against his wishes, won the belt off Taz at Cyberslam 2000—making Taz a meaningless transitional champion. Mere minutes later, Credible threw down the tag team belts (because Lance Storm was unable to prevent it) and beat Dreamer for the belt—making Dreamer (who did not even want the belt) a meaningless transitional champion.
    3. Credible was a middling wrestler but a steady hand. He was now carrying ECW, and the world title lineage had become dire; as had the tag team belts, which would remain vacant until August. The TV title was also up in the air: RVD had it for almost two years, then got hurt and had to vacate it. So, in about a three-month period, two-thirds of the ECW belts had been vacated and any future plans were foiled. (Supposedly the ECW World and TV belts were supposed to be contested against each other in a unification bout at the end of 2000, but it was put on hold by the injury.) There was still much to like in the undercard, but the top of the pyramid had fallen apart as early as May.
    • For added bonus points, the company was doing so badly on money that even when RVD's ankle actually healed, he didn't show up for anything but PP Vs because Heyman owed him $150,000.
  • General agreement is that WWECW underwent this after the 2009 WWE Draft saw their roster poached of all its best talent. After that, the only reason to watch the show at all was a combination of Christian, Shelton Benjamin, and William Regal.
  • After 18 years of existence, ECW drew their last breath in the final episode of WWE's ECW on Syfy which aired in February 2010, with The Miz, Yoshi Tatsu, and Ezekiel Jackson among the last names ever mentioned on the show. Not even poor Christian, who'd carried that show on his back for a year, who as his reward, lost the belt in the closing episode to Jackson.
• Squick
  • Sabu vs. Terry Funk in a Barbed Wire Match; it's a match so violently disturbing that some viewers will admit to only watching it once in its entirety. It was also a gimmick match that Paul Heyman said he refused to book again in ECW, because he didn't think anyone could top that one - and he didn't want anyone else to try. Fortunately for the fans, Shane Douglas booked a Barbed Wire Three-Way-Dance between Sabu, Funk, and himself for Hardcore Homecoming - and it was just as disturbingly brilliant as the original.
  • The Taipei Death Match. Ian and Axl Rotten decide to battle it out by taping up their fists and forearms, covering them with hot glue, and then roll their glued-up arms in broken glass. And then they went to town on each other. Dear lord, what a bloodbath.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • By the time the 90's ended, Heyman could not stop his talent pool from bleeding out. A main event scene of Taz, Awesome, Tanaka, RVD, Rhino, and Sabu would have been harder to ignore.
  • This was WWECW's problem. On its own it was actually a decent wrestling show that actually exceeded the quality of the other two main roster shows at times. But because it was named ECW, it had to be compared to the original ECW. Between WWE openly treating it as a C-Show, using it as a dumping ground for mid-carders they couldn't find spots for and young stars they were still developing for RAW and SmackDown, and having no resemblance to the promotion that preceded it, WWECW had no hopes of living up to the original ECW and the fans knew it.
• Vindicated by History: As much as WWECW was a bastardization of the original ECW, after it ended many fans over the years came to fondly remember it as a decent show that helped introduce them to many of the young wrestlers that would come to stand at the top of the wrestling industry. This is helped by the fact that, despite its flaws, WWECW was often cited as a better show than RAW and SmackDown due to more logical booking and a smaller roster to focus on and develop. They just wish it hadn't been called ECW.
• The Woobie
  • Arguably, Tommy Dreamer; every time he was on the verge of a major victory, someone would always manage to cause him to lose. Even when he got the victories he was looking for, they were short lived (for example: the night he won the ECW Championship, he lost it just a little while later to Justin Credible). It was at its worst during his epic feud with Raven. Despite mixing it up nearly every week, it took Tommy two-and-a-half years to finally score a decisive win over Raven (on Raven's last night before jumping to WCW). Word of God has that this was intention - at least the not-winning-the-title part, at any rate. Dreamer mentioned he would have liked to have spent his entire career without a title, but only won them due to circumstances beyond his control.
  • MIKEY WHIPWRECK. This was his whole act as the Underdog in his first year or so.