We just launched a new site: Before the Extreme.
Everybody talks about Extreme Championship Wrestling. The chairs, the tables, the barbed wire. Fewer people talk about the founding years.
Before the Extreme is going to tear into that stretch: 1989 to 1994. Eastern Championship Wrestling, not Extreme. A Philadelphia promotion that started as the Tri-State Wrestling Alliance, run by a businessman named Joel Goodhart, before he sold his stake to his partner Tod Gordon in 1992. Gordon wasn’t a wrestling guy. He ran a pawnshop. He rebuilt what was left of TWA into Eastern Championship Wrestling and spent the next two years chasing legitimacy from the National Wrestling Alliance.
Then on August 27, 1994. Shane Douglas won an NWA World Heavyweight Championship tournament at the ECW Arena, threw the belt on the ground, and declared himself the new ECW World Heavyweight Champion instead. Eastern Championship Wrestling became Extreme Championship Wrestling in the same motion.
This project is going to exploring everything that came before that night on August 27, 1994.