By Peter Wilura
For those of you who are unaware, Extreme Championship Wrestling was a
wrestling organization that was one of the most brutal ever. If you wanted
over the top violence, sexual overtones and other taboo topics blended into
your wrestling show, then you got it all plus more when watching ECW (well,
until they started their show on TNN, but I'll let the DVD explain that).
This DVD is put together featuring ECW mastermind Paul Heyman and the main
ECW players like Tazz and Tommy Dreamer doing most of the interesting
commentary and explaining the growth of the company. Vince, Bishchoff and
others put their two cents in as well, but seeing how this is a WWE produced
DVD, I'm sure that all that could have been said is still not out in the
open.
We get to see ECW before it was extreme and how Heyman took it from being a
plain bingo hall show to something that actually got on National TV and
competed (to a degree) with the big boys in WWE and WCW. Fans around the
world took notice and the little bingo hall show became something that is
still a cult favourite today.
During the retrospective look, the DVD focuses on the main players in ECW
like Tazz, the Sandman, Tommy Dreamer (who I have more respect for now that
I've watched this DVD than ever before), Raven, Terry Funk, Sabu and more.
You even get to see old footage of WWE superstars in the ECW ring.
Bonus features include matches featuring The Pit Bulls vs. Raven and Stevie Richards,
Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Psicosis, Mikey Whipwreck (boy
can that guy take a beating) vs. The Sandman, Tommy
Dreamer vs. Raven, Tazz vs. Bam Bam Bigelow and RVD
vs. Jerry Lynn. There are other little bonus clips on
the second DVD but I'll let you wrestling fans find
out what those are.
This documentary is almost 3 hours long and that's
not including any of the bonus features. If you are
a wrestling fan, this is one of the DVDs that you
NEED to own (just like the excellent "Monday Night
Wars"). It is put together perfectly and all the bonus
matches are icing on the cake. I hope the WWE realizes
that there is a market for ECW DVDs and releases PPV
DVDs or at least a "best of" series with the most
brutal matches known to man (excluding some of those
Japan-only matches). 10 out of 10.
Get
The Rise and Fall of ECW here
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