The 5 Most Historic Matches In ECW

While the company might not be to everyone's tastes, and while some of what produced in that iconic bingo hall in South Philadelphia might not have aged too gracefully through a modern lens, the wrestling business simply wouldn't be what it is today without ECW.

Eastern Championship Wrestling was founded back in 1992 by Tod Gordon after the demise of the Tri-State Wrestling Alliance. It was a small yet respectable independent promotion that would eventually become an affiliate of the National Wrestling Alliance in 1993, with "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert being the booker. However, after Gordon and Gilbert had a bad falling out, Gordon turned to a young Paul Heyman, who was just coming off the back of a run as Paul E. Dangerously in WCW, to guide ECW into the future, but little did Gordon know that choosing Heyman as his next booker would change the face of wrestling forever.

By the end of 1994, Eastern Championship Wrestling was no more, and in its place was Extreme Championship Wrestling, a company that marched to the beat its own drum, and embraced the angsty nature of the 1990s and coated it in blood, barbed wire, and brilliance. For the next six-and-a-half years, ECW would be the wrestling equivalent of Nirvana or Alice In Chains, and despite being hamstrung by financial difficulties, the little engine that could became one of the most influential wrestling companies of all time, creating historic moments seemingly at every turn.

That is what we're here to talk about today, the moments and matches from ECW that are still talked about three decades later. So sit back, relax, and join us on a journey to the corner of Swanson and Ritner, home to one of the most iconic wrestling venues in the world, and the place where Extreme Championship Wrestling called home. These are the five most historic matches in ECW history.

BUT BEFORE WE MOVE ON! Narrowing this down to just five matches is nearly impossible considering how many memorable matches took place in ECW, meaning that some honorable mentions need to be highlighted before we can continue. 

The 1995 feud between Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko ended in a two-out-of-three falls match that was commentator Joey Styles' favorite match he has ever called. Psicosis and Rey Mysterio's feud later that same year brought Lucha Libre to the United States in an extreme fashion that was never seen before. The wars that Taz and Bam Bam Bigelow had in 1998 saw both men crash through both the ring and the ramp at various points, and the iconic rivalry over the ECW World Television Championship between Rob Van Dam and Jerry Lynn not only produced some of the greatest matches in company history, but they were involved in the final ECW pay-per-view main event in 2001.

If you had to ask any wrestling historian what was the moment where ECW was truly born, this would be it. August 27, 1994, a night that was supposed to crown a brand new NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion became the night where Eastern Championship Wrestling spread its wings and flew from the NWA nest in the most dramatic fashion imaginable.

By the summer of 1994, Paul Heyman had turned ECW from an independent promotion that relied on the stars of the past to attract a crowd into the renegade member of the National Wrestling Alliance. Younger talent was highlighted, storylines became more dramatic and layered, and the violence level was ramping up every single week. Despite all of this, Heyman knew that in order for ECW to succeed, it needed to break away from the NWA, because while he respected the contributions of those who came before him, he also understood that the golden era for the NWA was dead, and so he came up with a plan.

ECW was going to hold the tournament to crown the new NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion, a title that had been vacant since 1993 after WCW also withdrew from the NWA. The final would come down to the high-flying yet technically savvy Too Cold Scorpio, and "The Franchise" Shane Douglas. For a wrestling match that has so much on the line, it must be said that it isn't the greatest in the world, and for many ECW fans they probably don't remember anything that happened in the 12 minutes Scorpio and Douglas were in the ring. For what it's worth, the match is fine, if a little unspectacular, and when you run an entire tournament in one night, the matches are always going to suffer in the heat department.

What makes this match historic however is what came afterwards. Shane Douglas was the new champion and listed off some of the greats that had held the "Ten Pounds of Gold" before him, but instead of being thrilled to be a part of such a historic group, Douglas told them all he could kiss his ass and threw the belt down to the mat. Instead, he declared himself as the ECW World Heavyweight Champion, and declared that the new era of wrestling had begun, and ECW was at the forefront.

In that moment, ECW had set itself apart from the aging NWA and took its first bold step into the future. NWA President Dennis Coralluzzo was disgusted and disappointed by what happened but it didn't matter, and two days after the event, Tod Gordon officially folded Eastern Championship Wrestling and founded Extreme Championship Wrestling in its place, with Douglas being recognized as the ECW World Heavyweight Champion. It's still up for debate as to who knew what when it came to Douglas throwing the belt down, but for as bland as Douglas vs. Scorpio was, ECW simply wouldn't be the same without it.

Just over two-and-a-half years after Shane Douglas lifted his leg on the legacy of the National Wrestling Alliance, all of the efforts of those in ECW had finally paid off as on April 13, 1997, ECW presented its first-ever pay-per-view, Barely Legal. A conscious decision was made to not mention any of the matches from the Barely Legal card in the honorable mentions because, to be honest, the whole card is historic and deserves a mention. The arrival of Rick Rude. The stars of Michinoku Pro showing an American audience a glimpse of what wrestling would look like in the future. The grudge match of the century between Taz and Sabu, all of the show was historic, so it's only right that the main event gets its own entry.

At the time, Raven was the ECW World Heavyweight Champion and would be defending his title in the main event of Barely Legal, but he wouldn't know who he was facing until that night. A three-way dance between his long-time friend/follower Stevie Richards, the "Hardcore Icon" The Sandman who he had psychologically tormented for the better part of a year, and the living legend that was Terry Funk would take place, with the winner facing Raven immediately afterwards. As you can tell by the title, "The Funker" picked up the win, and at 53 years old, he had the chance to prove that he still had it.

To say this was overbooked would be an understatement, as was the style in ECW at the time as the main event of the first pay-per-view acted more as a way to further the story between Raven and Tommy Dreamer. However, this didn't take anything away from this being one of the most exciting ends to a wrestling show you will see anyway. Funk bleeding to within an inch of his life, Raven sending his entire Nest after both Funk and Dreamer, only for each member to be thwarted one by one. Raven pulls out every slimy trick in the book but he just can't seem to keep Funk down, and then with a little help from Dreamer and a little bit of luck, Funk rolls Raven up to win the ECW World Heavyweight Championship.

If you look closely at the footage, you can see Tod Gordon running around like a headless chicken at ringside, screaming instructions at Raven, Funk, and the referee. This was because the show was dangerously close to running over time, which if that had happened ECW wouldn't have lived past 1997. Fortunately, everyone hit their time cues and the show went off the air as planned with a bloody Funk celebrating with Dreamer and the title in the crowd. Mere seconds after the show went off the air, the generator to the ECW Arena blew out and the building was plunged into darkness, but in that darkness was a building full of people who knew they were a part of something historic.

During the "ECW Exposed" special that aired on the WWE Network in 2014, Paul Heyman was asked what his favorite episode of ECW television was, and he had a very specific answer. When ECW would host the big monthly events at the ECW Arena that weren't meant for pay-per-view, those shows would be chopped up and served as one hour blocks of programming for "ECW Hardcore TV," one specific hour from ECW Wrestlepalooza 1997 that kicked off with this match became the embodiment of what the company was to Heyman.

We've already namedropped a number of iconic feuds from the ECW history books, but none are more iconic than the rivalry between Tommy Dreamer and Raven. Dreamer arrived in ECW as a white-meat babyface who needed to earn the respect of the audience, but once he was taken in by the Philadelphia faithful, he became "Mr. ECW" to a lot of people, and was adored by everyone. On the opposite side of things, Raven was the loner who took the worst aspects of his own personal life and took them out on everyone else. From brainwashing The Sandman's son, to his relationship with Stevie Richards being borderline abusive at times, Raven personified the dirty underbelly of life that no one ever wanted to discuss.

Both Dreamer and Raven would go off in different directions at times, but they would always find their way back to each other, with the one common throughline being that no matter what he did, Dreamer couldn't beat Raven. For all of the iconic moments that Dreamer created during this feud, he never got his hand raised at the end of any match he had with Raven, and with the news of Raven leaving to join WCW immediately after Wrestlepalooza 1997, this was his last chance.

If you thought the ending of Barely Legal was overbooked, wait until you see this one. It's only 12 minutes in length, but Dreamer and Raven pack nearly three years of storytelling into those 12 minutes. A whole host of characters who have been involved in the arc get involved to try and prevent Dreamer from getting the big victory, while another cast of characters interrupt proceedings to help him along the way. In the end, it's Dreamer who yells out one last defiant "E, C, F****** W" before landing a DDT for the win and he's done it, Tommy Dreamer has finally beaten Raven to the delight of the fans inside the ECW Arena.

What followed was more of the reason why Heyman loves this show so much as Dreamer's victory transitioned into the return of Sabu and Rob Van Dam, which then led to the arrival of Jerry "The King" Lawler as the anti-ECW invader. This prompted the arrival of Taz, who went on to have a Barely Legal rematch against Sabu right away, and capped off the hour by choking out Shane Douglas to become the new ECW World Television Champion.

A match so barbaric that Paul Heyman never booked another one like it ever again, not just because it was insanely dangerous, but because it simply couldn't be topped.

Both Sabu and Funk always had a lot of respect for each other, but Sabu wanted the ECW World Heavyweight Championship after returning alongside Rob Van Dam and Jerry Lawler at Wrestlepalooza, and getting his win back over Taz. Funk on the other hand knew it would take something extreme to get one over on Sabu, thus resulting in a Barbed Wire match at "Born To Be Wired" on August 9, 1997. Fans in attendance were blissfully unaware that what they were about to witness would be the most violent match in ECW history.

Right from the opening bell there is a distinct sense of dread looming over the arena. Everyone knows that Sabu and Funk don't mess around when it comes to matches like this, and are more than happy to put themselves through unimaginable pain to get what they want. However, neither man wants to hit the barbed wire (obviously), creating so much tension that when Sabu is the first to have his flesh ripped by the metal barbs, it's even more disgusting than originally anticipated. Funk takes control by throwing Sabu around the ring as the blood starts flowing when he connects with the wire, but Sabu gets back into it by managing to get Funk to feel the barbs as well. Then things really take a turn for the worst.

Just as Sabu looked to keep control of the match, Funk moved out of the way when Sabu went for a dropkick in the corner and Sabu's left bicep was ripped wide open. The gash in his arm was reportedly ten inches in length and required over 100 stitches to close, but Sabu wasn't going to stop as he taped the gash shut and carried on. Amazingly, Sabu would go on to regain control of the match, albeit with a little help from Bill Alfonso and RVD, cutting entire sides of barbed wire off the ring posts and wrapping them around Funk. Sabu would go a step further and wrap the wire around himself for a leg drop through a table, and by this point, neither man was thinking about the title.

Sabu and Funk had become a ball of tangled barbed wire, and unable to get out of it, Sabu got a quick pin for the victory in a match Joey Styles called on commentary "the most amazing thing he had ever seen." It would take an army of people to cut both men from the wire, and they had to do it quick as some of the wire had wrapped itself around Funk's neck, meaning that it was dangerously close to a main artery. On top of this, Funk was close to losing an eyeball in the midst of being tangled up, and Sabu had puncture wounds all over his body. The match is barbaric, disgusting, atrocious, fascinating horrific, and incredible all at the same time. An essential match for any fan of ECW or hardcore wrestling.

We have to cheat with this last entry because for as much as Mike Awesome's match with Masato Tanaka at ECW One Night Stand 2005 needs to be mentioned, it is technically a WWE show. With that in mind, we've coupled the match up with one of their iconic meetings from the past to balance things out.

All of the major wrestling companies in the United States at one point in time have incorporated international stars into their products. The WCW cruiserweight division was built on the back of stars from Mexico and Japan, WWE have outright bought AAA in 2025, and New Japan Pro Wrestling have had relationships with WCW, TNA, and AEW over the years. For ECW, their main partners in the east were FMW, founded by Atsushi Onita, who carved out their own unique audience in the 1990s for being one of the most insane promotions in the world where everything was rigged with explosives. 

Of the stars who made their names in FMW, two that made the trip to ECW in 1998 were Mike Awesome, then known as The Gladiator in Japan, and Masato Tanaka, a man with one of the hardest heads in all of wrestling. After being introduced in July 1998, the two men were booked for a singles match at ECW Heatwave on August 2, a show that has since gone down as perhaps the greatest pay-per-view in ECW history, and this match is huge reason for that. The two men put on a 12 minute showcase of what they had been doing to each other in FMW and the fans in Dayton, Ohio couldn't get enough of it. Some of the sickest chair shots you've ever seen, tables galore, and Awesome flying through the air as if he was a cruiserweight, it was genuinely a ground-breaking match that landed both men jobs in ECW immediately after.

They would pick up their feud a year later as Awesome spent the first half of 1999 rehabbing injuries, this time over the ECW World Heavyweight Championship, with their November To Remember 1999 match definitely deserving a mention. However, they would part ways in 2000 when they left the company at separate times.

However, Awesome and Tanaka would have one final match at ECW One Night Stand in 2005, one that would steal the show on a night full of memorable moments. It was so good that the anti-ECW crusaders legitimately couldn't hide how much they were enjoying the match. It was wince-inducing but you couldn't look away, and while some are put off by the unprotected shots to the head, seeing Awesome grow more and more fearful of a man who simply will not go down makes the over the top finish even sweeter. The match in 2005 would ultimately be Awesome's last as he tragically passed away in 2007, but as far as final matches go, they don't get much better than this.