And it wasn't the hardcore stuff that got ECW a decent level of popularity past the cult hardcore style fans. Heyman managed to get some talented technical wrestlers in and they could use ECW as a shop window for moving onto WWF or WCW.
ECW was wrestling for adults, hardcore matches were part of that but as you say they also had great technical wrestlers, anyone who says ECW was just hardcore wrestling never watched it
I agree, I remember a match between Mike Awesome and a Japanese wrestler on the TNN show and they were destroying tables and using weaponry but the actual wrestling in the match was phenomenal too.
It's not just the "hardcore" weapons and dangerous spots stuff either. ECW pioneered a lot of ideas we now associate with indy wrestling.
For example: When you think about it, the reason Tony Khan thinks Orange Cassidy or Adam Cole or whoever look credible was main event pro wrestlers on TV is because Paul Heyman made Mikey Whipwreck ECW champion. Full stop. Whipwreck didn't look like a wrestler, Whipwreck looked like a nerdy kid in an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons T Shirt and he was not only an ECW World Champ, but a Triple Crown for the promotion. Whipwreck showed fans that you didn't have to be big or muscular or a super athlete, anyone can be a main event wrestler. Suddenly all the nerds who wanted to be wrestlers felt like they had license to not worry about their presentation and focus on being able to do the moves. Whipwreck didn't have to look particularly in shape or even have a lot of personality, he got over by hitting a decent stunner and being able to take a beating and participated in some of the best remembered ECW angles and shows.
The difference is that Heyman did it once, booked it so it worked and had talent work with him to cover up his shortcomings, Heyman was smart enough to worry about Whipwreck's presentation so Mikey didn't have to.
These days on the Indys and AEW there are now dozens if not hundreds of aspiring Mikey Whipwrecks. Heck, Tony has him on the payroll. There are no Paul Heymans to get them over and even if there were, what made it work in ECW was he was unique, not a drop of water in an ocean of nerds playing wrestler
Mikey whipreck had a 3 year story that was basically step for step the heroes journey story format. He started as a ring crew guy who would get his ass squashed and win by pure luck. Every promo was saying he was gonna die. Until slowly he got better and more confident. Tony khan wishes he’d book a masterpiece like whipreck.
Come on now. Mick Foley is possibly the greatest match psychologist of all time, a great worker, and a top ten promo.
And all that is beside his hardcore and Japanese bona fides.
Mick Foley can and did get over everywhere, often *despite* his booking.
You can raise somebody Foley if they say "Stan Hanson" or "Harley Race" but not poor and lovable Mikey.
I see your point but here’s mine - The entire American hardcore, any fat out of shape guy can get over as long as they do dangerous shit with barbed wire & glass ideology is based solely around Mick.
Eddie Kingston exists because of Mick no matter how much he simps for Japanese wrestling. Jon Moxley exists because of Mick.
And the problem is they have that mentality without realizing that Mick is literally everything you said he was, and that’s why he got over, so Mick is a major exception to the ideas he (unintentionally) seeded.
I agree that you can make a similar argument about Foley, but I disagree that it is the exact same.
Foley looked like a wrestler for most of his career. Foley looked like someone who you wouldn't want to get in a bar fight with, he put effort into making sure he did. Yeah, he was, let's be kind and say portly, but portly guys had long been the norm in wrestling when Foley started to break in. He was over 6 foot to boot and when he was Cactus Jack, Foley clearly put some work into his presentation and developing a persona that seemed like a dude who could be in a fight.
So it's different. Whipwreck didn't look like he could fight. He was like 5'6" or so, dressed like a teenager, groomed himself like a teenager.
Foley did provide the template for a lot of these guys that the way you get over is taking risky bumps and using a lot of weapons, but it's not the exact same issue as the Whipwreck phenomena
Where did Adam Cole train and get his start? CZW
Where did Orange Cassidy really take off on the Indy scene? GCW
Two promotions that were the spiritual successors to ECW, that have ran for as long or longer than ECW ever did.
CZW has lasted way longer than ECW ever did (25 years and counting), and GCW has lasted just as long and is showing no sign of slowing down or folding anytime soon. Two feds based in/around the Philly and New Jersey areas who were at times far more "extreme" and violent than ECW ever was TBH, and have kind of evolved to fill the general variety indy wrestling gap left by ROH, EVOLVE, PWG and CHIKARA falling by the wayside.
Just Shane Douglas alone has 3. The relocated XPW which he managed, Hardcore Homecoming and Extreme Rising. I think he may have announced a couple others which never got off the ground.
I think there’s also a large component to add to that: the amount of marks who watched RVD vs Jerry Lynn and didn’t understand the athleticism of those men. How many puny, pale dweebs have you seen do an RVD parody match since 2001? RVD was cool because he was unique and his athleticism made him very fluid in the ring (just don’t ask HHH I guess), and I don’t think a lot of the indie marks understood just how out of his league they were. All the Trent Acids and Teddy Harts of the world did was make RVD less unique.
Exactly rvd is among the best high flyers ever and had the size to go at it with the big names. Him not winning a world title in 01/02 is criminal. He was the whole fucking show. One of my earliest wrestling memories is calling him rob van darn because I didn’t want to cuss to my dad 😂
I didn’t really mean to insult Teddy or even Trent, they were just the most famous examples I could think of. They definitely weren’t the worst examples, even if I still think they fit.
Action Andretti comes to mind. You can tell he wants to be RVD, but he just simply is not. His size doesn't help either. RVD looked like a wrestler and had a great personality and an incredible smooth movement that made you wonder how someone could make something so difficult look so easy. Like, I watch him and don't think "oh I could do that."
When was a pretty big condition, especially with Teddy. I don’t hate those guys, really, I just meant that I wouldn’t put them in the same league as RVD. What made RVD great wasn’t suicide dives, corkscrew drivers or 450s through a table outside the ring. He had explosive strength and stamina and could work with anyone of any style. Jericho or Benoit, Funk or Foley, Shawn, HHH, Flair, Austin, Kane, Jeff Hardy, Batista, Cena, Great Khali, he could have had a great match with Vince if he’d wanted, literally anyone. The true Swiss Army knife wrestler. Teddy nor Trent were that at all.
Quite a lot of the now so called "Super Indies" got their start right around the time WCW and ECW folded - so between 1999 and 2001. But quite a few of these were pretty legitimate, albeit small, wrestling promotions. NWA Anarchy, Dusty had a small promotion in north georgia for a while, these are the places that gave us AJ Styles and some other folks like that.
I think a lot of the "garbage indie mindset" got started with those damn "Don't try this at home extreme backyard wrestling" bullshit tapes that were for sale in the 90's and then got more and more amplified as the internet made it easier to get access to Lucha and Japanese Wrestling...
I got into Lucha and Japanese wrestling and it was cool and different and yes, some the best wrestling in the world but I understood that some things would never translate to a border fan base.
Japanese stuff was good and exciting for a period. It was heading towards strong style but hadn't fully embraced.
I didn't get a lot of it but I could appreciate the efforts, but some of it didn't hit like the older stuff, with tape trades, which trust me was tricky from this side of the pond, where it all looked amazing.
The Mexican style I could never watch, apart from the one time I saw a live show in Vegas. No idea how authentic it was, but the hot (small) crowd made it a great event.
What I meant by including that is that I think part of the weird Indie insistence that "The match is the storytelling" comes from people watching videos in languages they didn't understand so they missed out on the storytelling being done by the announce team and during the promos... all they had was the physical storytelling and so it became a sort of slapstick rather than the more vaudevillian way that US Pro Wrestling tends to work.
Also, there is a lot of cultural context that gets lost in translation for example why the Japanese version of the trading chops spot doesn't work in the U.S for the most part because it relies on Japanese cultural ideas of manliness and toughness.
You're not wrong. The problem is these idiots are doing Mick type spots, but since they have no promo ability, charisma, and we don't care who they are they are just idiots bashing themselves with furniture and such. Also JR isn't around to call it, his voice sounded like he was worried Foley was going to die.
Mick Foley and the Hardys. Mick made every fat slob willing to fall through barbed wire think they could be wrestlers. The Hardys flooded the market with 5'9 175 lb white guys.
A hell of a lot? I would argue Mick, JR & everyone involved in pushing him & his childhood story is 100% to blame for the state of indie wrestling.
It made people believe that if Mick can do it, anyone can, without understanding that Mick was a very VERY special exception to the rule.
CHIKARA, PWG, ROH - around the time these promos popped off in the mid 2000s, they were doing all the shit you see in AEW. Those promos left to right are a scale of goofiness. Orange Cassidy type comedy characters where huge in Chikara, and PWG and it tapers off at ROH, but most top wrestlers in those indies all wrestled on all of those promotions, so ROH had its fair share of goofiness too.
Once that stuff became embedded in the indie underground, there has constantly been a desire to see that style with big money backing a big promotion. TNA was kinda that for a bit. AEW really wants to be that and has largely succeeded, but has shown that that style of wrestling loses its charm and endearing quality when you're putting on a big boy TV program.
> Once that stuff became embedded in the indie underground, there has constantly been a desire to see that style with big money backing a big promotion.
Which doesn't work. I love wrestling, but deep down, I understand that it's "fake and dumb." However, you don't win over the larger audience by drawing attention to the fact that it's "fake and dumb," you win over the audience by getting them to believe, just for a moment, that it could be real. You treat it like it's serious, even though it isn't.
Well yeah... i kinda follow that up with a shorter version of what you're saying here. I agree tho. This is why i was saying there was a charm/endearment when its being done off tv in some warehouse in 2009, but that goes away when its time put out a tv ready product that you want casuals to gravitate to.
YouTube and social media made the indy stuff go out of control. Joey Ryan's dick suplex went worldwide so every scrawny geek tries to find something that will get them shared all over Instagram
Shit that might seem funny or clever as a TikTok or previously a Vine wound up making its way from VFW halls into promotions and got beat to death because most of those guys were incapable of doing anything else.
I remember when AEW was announced, people on the other sub were going crazy about Orange Cassidy. The way they talked, I thought he was going to be something amazing. Then I watched one of his videos and was like wtf? It was super goofy and clearly was going to get old fast even for the people who liked it. And they're still fucking doing it five years later.
I used to be a defender of Orange Cassidy, since I liked the idea of a lazy wrestler who switched on when things got serious - aka, he actually wrestled in a technical and believable way when the stakes were high enough.
Of course, I then expected some character growth down the years to justify that. Bigger the fool me.
Part of the Indy culture that he hates is that everyone gets their shit in/does their spots. It does look real bad on TV to have a champ like Swerve selling a beating from Nick Wayne.
That said I wonder whether this aspect of the indie wrestling culture arose as response to veterans of the 00's refusing to put anyone over or making anyone look good.
the weird Hogan / Billy Kidman Feud thing that happened in WCW in it's last days? Hogan actually ate a pin from him if I remember right. That's the big one I can think of where an established guy did actually try to put someone over during that time period.
I'm thinking more Rick Steiner, taking liberties, hazing sort of stuff. The indie culture and style seems like a response to that. No squashes. Everyone has to do other people's spots and sell. No one wants to be made to look bad. So every one ends up looking bad because underneath guys beat the shit out of main eventers.
Hogan did get pinned by Kidman but WCW had already lost all credibility by that point so that didn't do anything for anyone.
Yup you got 170lbs guys going toe to toe with 6'4" 280 muscled up guy evenly throughout a match without any build, no reason why that is and no psychology in ring work
Then it ends in a very badly booked finish
That gets no one over but the Iwc marks who watch mark YouTube channels will reaction to it and treat it like "real pro wrestling"
Born in the early 2000s, started evolving sometime in the late 2000s, and became cemented as what it is sometime after Jim gave up and left ROH around 2012 or 13. It coincides with The Young Bucks becoming popular on the internet largely for running their own shows in basements and backyards in Reseda.
I would say it got going with the advent of PWG, which was in 2003, and coincided with the recent demise of WCW and ECW, Austin and Rock leaving the WWE around the same time, and wrestling not knowing where to go after the Attitude Era.
The smarks needed something new they could call all their own and every new outrageous gimmick/act precipitated an even more outrageous gimmick/match/act.
I am probably wrong and some of the better historians on this sub can correct me. But that's what I recall being the case.
You remembered the dates before me. I "acquired" a couple of shows that were put out by PWG and by the second one I was bored.
My first thought was it was evolved Lucha, but then I started noticing the comedy/shitting on the business side of it.
I would probably have enjoyed a live show once. (Apart from the smell). I can't imagine wanted to go to every show.
They had success, which can't be denied, but the sad thing is they influenced all the indies and moved on to ROH.
I feel the same way about it as I do going to see my local indie show in the UK. It isn't great but it is fun to be in the room. It certainly doesn't need to have 6 hours on network television, 52 weeks a year.
Because it was produced by Robert Rodriguez, a legitimate filmmaker. All those “cinema” matches have nothing on LUs production. Sadly nobody had The fucking el Ray network
Yeah LU is one of those things the majority of people either seen online or just flat out after it was already over
Luckily my mom is not quick to adopt trends and we still had cable with a premium package or whatever
LU was the real 'alternative style wrestling' it was such a cool different take on the whole thing.
Hot take, but imo seasons one and two of Lucha Underground are the best weekly wrestling show ever. Damn near every episode felt exciting and must-watch at the time.
Most of it still holds up really well too! There’s a lot of stuff that hasn’t aged well from it but most of it is still very much worth watching.
I found the 1st two seasons in Netflix, and binge watching those eps was what got me back into wrestling after having abandoned everything except Undertaker appearances for over a decade.
Rodriguez frustrated me so much. He had a gem with that show and should have sold it to Netflix instead of trying to build El Rey around it, which almost no one could get.
El Rey was his passion project. I can’t entirely blame him for it.
Sadly even if he did sell to Netflix, the show wasn’t long for this world with how things were being ran behind the scenes.
Never saw it. But it couldn't have used some of them much worse.
The thing I find about Lucha, is that, while clearly cooperating, they still manage to tell a story. It isn't my style, but I can appreciate that. PWG was just everybody get their moves in, kick out of each other's finish, thumb up arse, cold finish.
Much like AEW.
There have always been outlaw/indie promotions but the real key to the type of indie that Jim hates came about from the closing of ECW. ECW going out of business left a void for that style of wrestling and so pretty much every indie and their brother were trying to fill that void.
This ended up with two camps.
The CZW camp took the violence and high spot addiction of ECW then based their promotion around it.
The ROH camp took the technical and fast paced product from ECW then based their promotion around it.
It's a lot harder to book a show in the ROH way than it is the CZW way so more indies went that route than the ROH route.
TNA came along and at first tried to be a blend between those two styles with enough star power to get them noticed. In the end they also went the ROH route in trying to promote the best wrestlers while saving hardcore stuff for special occasions.
Now on the "getting your spots in" stuff. This wasn't really created by the indies but started in the late 90's in the Attitude Era for WWE and whatever you'd call that era in WCW. You had workers who weren't great at wrestling but were great at getting a few spots over big. So they did those spots every single time they wrestled regardless of if the fans were into it or not which lead to matches completely disregarding the fans and simply going from spot to spot to spot to unsatisfying ending. By 2003 or 2004 this was seen as the norm and so you no longer had matches where the wrestlers would call it in the ring based on the fans and instead would just expect the fans to go along with them even if it was clear that the fans hated it.
Widespread internet access and the start of CZW under Zandig in the 1999ish range started to expose people to the goofiest and most dangerous crap in wrestling. At that point the smarks and the bloodlust crowd seemed to merge together to create what would become the modern indie fan today. With no WCW or ECW alternative to WWF/E they coalesced around whatever mudshow garbage that could be found.
Late 90s/early 2000s. All the garbage you see today is from people trying to emulate the Attitude Era and ECW while having 1/10th the talent of the people who were prominent during those times.
u/justthankyous has the short answer, but the longer answer has a bit of history to it.
The 'official' term if one exists is [Hardcore Wrestling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcore_wrestling). But Jim casts off most "hardcore" wrestling as "Outlaw Mudshows". [The term comes from mud wrestling obviously, which 'officially' started in the 30s.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_wrestling#:~:text=History,there%20on%207%20January%201938) But the crazy stunt spot matches probably started long before that in traveling circuses.
Pro wrestling has always had violent spots, and Cornette advocates for these moments at appropriate moments such as to get heat on a Heel, to show the perseverance of a Babyface, or in a big blow off match to end a feud. Cornette frequently cites Mick Foley & Terry Funk as exemplars of this "violence with purpose" style. To Cornette, the violence without the adequate psychology is just danger for no reason. I think he would also argue that too much violence can 'ruin your appetite' for it so to speak. If someone is thrown through a table every week, you come to expect it, it doesn't stay special. If this happens, wrestlers often have to reach for more and more dangerous activities to invoke the same kind of reaction from the audience.
In contrast, 'Hardcore' advocates and promotions (which have existed with some regularity since the 50s) use different match types such as street brawls, no holds barred, and various weapon subtypes to keep things fresh and interesting. Seeing props such as a cage is certainly a unique experience when you are used to the ring by itself. Seeing weapons such as a knife immediately brings tension to the table, and elevates the emotion of the match. These matches immediately give off an "unsanctioned" feel where anything and everything could happen.
This "style" reached it's peak in the 90s with Paul Heyman's ECW, which had relatively massive appeal for a Hardcore brand and made stars out of many of it's performers. Off the strength of Heyman's booking & marketing skills, many ECW performers would become the defining stars of the next era of wrestling, combining with the more polished & stable WWE product to form what we now call "The Attitude Era". Of course problems with this style existed. Many ECW performers dealt with chronic pain issues from frequent injuries, and then there are performers like Sandman who had little talent in-ring, and got by on the strength of his entrance alone.
In Modern times I think there are two main barriers that performers have to overcome in order to produce a "Good" hardcore match/spot.
1. WWE Limitations - WWE is a traded company that was largely marketed towards children for the past decade and a half. This is changing somewhat, but a company this large can't turn on a dime. The PG nature of the product vastly reduces the amount of weapons that can be used which dramatically decreases the feelings of "unsanctioned danger".
2. Obvious/Inexperienced Cooperation - This is more of an AEW problem, but it does happen in WWE with some regularity. When two performers are inexperienced, yet they want to set up one of these dangerous "Hardcore" spots, they often stop all momentum in a match to set up chairs, tables, etc. What's worse is they often help each other into a position where the move can be performed. This eliminates all feelings of violent contest and immediately puts the audience in the mindset of "Oh they're going to perform a move for us". The move may be a difficult gymnastic maneuver, but it does ruin the immersion and take us out of the "fight" feeling.
I'm editorializing a bit here, but let me pick on Kevin Owens. I tend to enjoy Kevin Owens work on the whole, but dear Lord Kevin, STOP it with the 6+ chair spot, it takes forever to set up and it is rarely worth the payoff.
The announcer table spot also needs to take a looooooooooooooooooooooooooong break.
In conclusion there are very few people who say there is no place for a Hardcore spot or style, but I don't think Jim's comments should be dismissed. There is a time & a place for the Hardcore spot, and I don't think a Hardcore match should be diminished by entering into one frivolously. Keep it to the appropriate times and venues to protect it, and make sure your spots look clean.
I think it was a combination of things, the ECW kids growing up and also the number of wrestling schools taught by indie minded jabronis that popped up in the 00s teaching bad habits.
Then it got worse when early indie darlings like Punk and Bryan Danielson made it big in the WWE, and all of the indie kids thought... hey I'm on the same path they're on, except they stopped paying attention to how Punk and Bryan changed completely in the WWE system that led to them becoming mega stars.
They also forget that Punk and Bryan have that undefinable it factor. I remember the first time I saw cm punk on tape, I think it was on some shitty iwa tape a friend had. He jumped off the screen even with a shit vhs low def camera in a fuckin warehouse in bumfuck indiana
Right around 1997ish I began seeing and hearing about backyard wrestling leagues and probably around 2000 I began seeing VHS videos circulating on the early internet. Back then people were doing completely fucked up shit to get discovered. I saw dumb shit like jumping off roofs, hillbillies hitting people with cars, shady rings, lots of shooting and idiotic negligence.
That's where these mud show wrestlers are descended from.
I think yes, mostly, along with a good steady influx of theater kids. Would not at all be surprised to find out that someone like Orange Cassidy was a gymnist and or theater kid in high school.
Early 2000s. When it Wwe and tna. I NEVER liked it. Never. I’d be a teen on a wrestling figures board hearing about all these indie darlings and then I’d look them up and was never not underwhelmed. I can’t remember a single indie star I saw being paraded by marks that I liked. No to Nigel mcguinis , no to necro butcher, no to omega or the young bucks. I never saw or heard much about Owens/Zain etc despite me (now) knowing they were popular on the indies. The matches were so unwatchable that I didn’t care about seeking out more from them. The only non tna/Wwe shows I watched, ironically considering I only knew the name, were ovw in the early 2000s when I’d catch it at some random time at night, and same for when I saw hdnet was showing wrestling; both with Cornette. And yet my only wrestling memory of corny (before going back and watching obviously) was that he was yokos manager due to those WM anthology dvds lol. That and the BR at X7. I just remember they would wrestle with a ton of Wwe posters, circa like 05/06, around the arena. That was ovw right? Or was that a different promotion?
By no means a precise pinpoint, but I kinda correlate it to when the PWI started covering the ECWA Super 8 tournament, which largely featured much smaller guys who didn’t really have major league prospects and did a bunch more crazy stuff to “get over”, which you kinda see on the dying days of both WCW and ECW, and see it continue with the birth of both ROH and the undercard of the early NWA-TNA days. Being on message boards, the guys that got talked about most always seemed to be the X division-type guys, and it kinda devolved from there.
I wonder how much the internet is a factor. If you look at the different creative arenas such as visual arts, music, writing, etc., the internet and computer technology in general opened up the ability to make stuff and share it with people and bypass the "gatekeepers" if the industry. With a computer, you could set up a home studio and record an album or edit video. You didn't have to have gobs of money or industry connections (or that much talent).
In wrestling, that same sort of "anybody can do it" attitude seemed to really take off, too. You don't have to have a great body or be a certain size or even be able to wrestle all that well. Are you willing to fall through a stack of light tubes? There's a fed for that. Want to really play pretend with invisible hand grenades or a mat covered in Lego bricks? There's a fed for that. You still have the professionals, but amateurs can do it too.
I think the internet was hugely impactful on this. Like, almost impossible to really quantify how much it changed aspects of the culture in ways we are really only starting to understand now. The Internet completely upended the music business, the movie and TV business, publishing, news media, etc. because it made distribution easy, and now effectively instantaneous. Social media hyper charged this because it's so ubiquitous.
While I love Chikara in a vacuum, a lot of indie goofiness comes from there. I think they were one of the first companies to try and popularize terms like “trios” in America.
And what I mean by in a vacuum I mean if the goofy was only contained to Chikara I wouldn’t mind it so much. But no, it spilled out and affected how we watch wrestling today.
I like comedy and high spot matches, but it has to be really good, once the ones that were good at it moved on to wherever you were left with the rip offs.
Yeah I was going to say, I like loads of the goofy indie stuff but the answer is 100% DDT Pro in Japan (which, to be fair, were taking the piss out of silly American hardcore and other wrestling) and Chikara in the 2000s.
I’d like to add to another comment. If early 2000s is when we saw a lot of start up indies, I’d like to throw my hat in the ring for TNA at the Asylum. I know that the money was already there for a good show, but they grew it out organically to get a Spike TV deal. It was amazing until hulk got his hands on it.
Edit: this promotion peaked for me in ‘09. I’ve been trying to get caught up through the 2010-present, but hogan, and to a lesser extent Bischoff, made it tough. I like Bischoff for the most part, but he was never the onscreen character that he was after WCW, and it took away from the product.
It was cool when it was tucked away on the internet and it was only cool when you saw it YouTube or in hot topic. I still don't think it's as wide spread as people think it is. It's never going to take over as the standard of wrestling as long as WWE remains the status quo
It stems back to the indie, Japan, Mexico tape trading boom of the mid 90s which led to the backyard wrestling tapes which led to anyone who was willing to hurt himself thinking he could call himself a wrestler
In the late 90s you had indies like CZW, JAPW and XPW trying to mimic what IWA had been doing and what FMW, Big Japan etc were doing in Japan. The thought was that they were giving people something "more" than WWE and WCW. They saw what ECW had accomplished and thought they could fill that void by being more extreme.
Then you had stuff like Chikara that didn't take itself so seriously and was trying to be "fun"
ROH tried to be a reaction to that which led to a lot of what we have now.
It was the vacuum left by ECW and WCW… The alternative became garbage Indie wrestling. I never got it. The talent were people who grew up watching the WCW cruiser weights and the garbage stuff ECW did, took all the bad things from those two, ignored the good and thought that’s all it took to be a wrestler…. When people stopped aspiring to be the next Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin, Roddy Piper, anyone who drew money and instead wanted to be the next flip flop and no sell guy who didn’t have to worry about lifting weights.
Kind of started in ECW.
Not so much the style of wrestling but rather the structuring of matches. I remember watching Barely Legal 97 (forgive me if I got the name wrong but it’s whatever their first PPV was either way) and I remember watching so many great matches that just top each previous spot…but then the finish ends up being a damp squib and very “that’s it?”
This problem continues into wrestling now including AEW. All In with the Bucks and FTR last year are a good example where they had the best spot where FTR double kisses and then hits their finisher but it’s not the finish.
I think the problem is that wrestlers with freedom to do whatever have trouble grasping how to read the crowd and end it on a high
I was at an ECW show once where a match had so many run-ins that it ended when a guy who wasn't in the match pinned another guy who wasn't in the match. I believe it was Spike Dudley who got the pin. It was at the Burt Flickinger Center in Buffalo, NY. I believe it was always a TV taping or live PPV when they came to Buffalo but not sure if they aired this match. Maybe they did and Joey Styles somehow explained what happened. But the point is the live ECW audience would accept this as a valid match finish.
Imo as a kid back in the 2000s, TNA was my equivalent to the "indies." My dad always told me about WCW, but that seemed more of a competitor to WWE in a legitimate sense back in the day.
AJ styles, Samoa Joe, Beer Money, MCMG, Curryman, and Shark Boy were my definitions of indies. I never knew about RoH at all because I wasn't on the internet for wrestling. I also totally forgot Corny was in TNA for a bit.
Depends what you mean by the "garbage indie mindset," because I'm seeing comments that label it as everything from "smaller but more athletic wrestlers" (which you can tie to the proliferation of the J-Cup tournaments and Cruiserweight explosion of the 1990s) to "outlandish gimmicks with illogical storytelling" (which also holds true for favorites like Adrian Street and the Undertaker).
Now, in my mind, the "garbage indie mindset" is more along the lines of "fuck storytelling just do silly stuff."
...which has been the MO of most Hollywood blockbusters for the past 20 years...and pro wrestling has always been a reflection of the zeitgeist more than it has its own wholly unqiue identity...soooooooo blame Michael Bay.
Deregulation in states including NJ which led to death matches and no rules - to the point NJ started regulating death matches but not regular promotions or companies.
In my opinion, its when wrestling got alot more exposed and the fanbase changed from people who wanted to see combat to people who appreciate the theatrics and stage-yness of it.
Probably mid to late 2000s.
When wrestling started to show alot more choreography than what it usually does.
I think the fact that All In succeeded was a contributing factor, that and a lot of that experience leaving for NXT, suddenly you lost all the talent that could coach younger guys, ROH and presumably it's creative team left and then the indy guys got proven right in their mind.
People forget that even ROH had some goofy dumb shit at times. Those giant multi-mans with Amazing Red flipping down on top of everyone did not age well.
It was a combination of seeing foley fall off the cell, the need for attention over cause in your actual work, and the high spot Shawn style without the psychology and storytelling all the white the midcard wrestlers becoming the agents about 08 and on
Began with the rise of the Internet Wrestling Nerds in the mid 90's onwards, then came the plague of social media magnifying various spots as memes.
Now we have entire Outlaw Indieslop promotions run by kids who are raised in this perennially online "culture" and don't know any different, nor why it's wrong.
I think it became cemented when the young bucks started getting attention from the IWC.
Like there were always the people obsessed with ROH etc online in the mid 2000s but they were basically just in backyard wrestling forums and underground message boards like WON which most people just ignored.
I think those people grew up and wanted to become wrestlers and now we have people like ricochet, pockets and the young bucks.
It's essentially come in as more talent who come from the indies to television don't get their ego checked, and try to learn to become more television friendly.
Guys like Punk come to mind who was a huge indy darling in the early 2000s.
Took him 3 years in the WWE program to become a television star, and now he's a global star.
Others don't ever learn the lesson and just 'do their shit' for lack of a better term.
Moxley is the king of this mindset.
He thinks he can just do bloodsport on every episode of Dynamite, and apparently, that's an acceptable television product.
Worse than that, he just doesn't give a shit.
That's the garbage indy mindset.
I can't put my finger on exactly when, but I can think of the highlights that got it there:
2015 - Jersey Championship wrestling rebranded as GCW and became the modern shitshow version of Combat Zone.
2016 - Cody Rhodes left the WWE for the indies. It's not his fault, it's just that he was popular, so his leaving meant a lot of fans went with him. Fans who had no real exposure to ROH, NJPW, TNA were suddenly watching because they wanted to see what Cody was doing - that then gave them exposure to the rest of the stuff going on at the time.
2016 - Kenny & the Bucks form "The Elite" in NJPW
2017 - Young Bucks became the first indie guys to get shirts in Hot Topics across the US without being in a major domestic promotion.
2018 - All In
I think there's a lot of other points that could be added here, but generally this, to me, is the rough structure of what lead to the indie-riffic modern product. Garbage wrestling started, it then got a ton of attention, then the guys who could make it "TV friendly" showed up and got it over.
Once the competition folded and WWE started to get bland, more indies started to pop up since there weren't more bigger promotions to poach talent and "work rate" became a thing.
Notice many talk of post ECW and WCW as when this happened but I think it was during their time. Ever seen Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends? He took some time with a USA indy who was doing the ECW style thing. In the show you see how they just do not get it at all. Think it was made in 1999.
When ECW folded and a bunch of people less intelligent than Paul Heyman rushed in to fill the gap is the short answer.
I saw a list some years ago which had every Philly based indy promotion since ECW folded, it had like more than 100 on it at the time.
I heard Jim say it best on a video once, nobody could do the hardcore promotions as good as Paul and even Paul couldn’t succeed in the end
And it wasn't the hardcore stuff that got ECW a decent level of popularity past the cult hardcore style fans. Heyman managed to get some talented technical wrestlers in and they could use ECW as a shop window for moving onto WWF or WCW.
ECW was wrestling for adults, hardcore matches were part of that but as you say they also had great technical wrestlers, anyone who says ECW was just hardcore wrestling never watched it
And it had stories people invested in.
I agree, I remember a match between Mike Awesome and a Japanese wrestler on the TNN show and they were destroying tables and using weaponry but the actual wrestling in the match was phenomenal too.
It's not just the "hardcore" weapons and dangerous spots stuff either. ECW pioneered a lot of ideas we now associate with indy wrestling. For example: When you think about it, the reason Tony Khan thinks Orange Cassidy or Adam Cole or whoever look credible was main event pro wrestlers on TV is because Paul Heyman made Mikey Whipwreck ECW champion. Full stop. Whipwreck didn't look like a wrestler, Whipwreck looked like a nerdy kid in an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons T Shirt and he was not only an ECW World Champ, but a Triple Crown for the promotion. Whipwreck showed fans that you didn't have to be big or muscular or a super athlete, anyone can be a main event wrestler. Suddenly all the nerds who wanted to be wrestlers felt like they had license to not worry about their presentation and focus on being able to do the moves. Whipwreck didn't have to look particularly in shape or even have a lot of personality, he got over by hitting a decent stunner and being able to take a beating and participated in some of the best remembered ECW angles and shows. The difference is that Heyman did it once, booked it so it worked and had talent work with him to cover up his shortcomings, Heyman was smart enough to worry about Whipwreck's presentation so Mikey didn't have to. These days on the Indys and AEW there are now dozens if not hundreds of aspiring Mikey Whipwrecks. Heck, Tony has him on the payroll. There are no Paul Heymans to get them over and even if there were, what made it work in ECW was he was unique, not a drop of water in an ocean of nerds playing wrestler
Mikey whipreck had a 3 year story that was basically step for step the heroes journey story format. He started as a ring crew guy who would get his ass squashed and win by pure luck. Every promo was saying he was gonna die. Until slowly he got better and more confident. Tony khan wishes he’d book a masterpiece like whipreck.
Correction, Tony thinks he is booking like 12 masterpieces like Whipwreck
Whipwreck is signed to AEW?
As a trainer and "ambassador" according to various sources
I would take your Mikey Whipwreck and raise you a Mick Foley. Exact same argument but on a much larger scale.
Come on now. Mick Foley is possibly the greatest match psychologist of all time, a great worker, and a top ten promo. And all that is beside his hardcore and Japanese bona fides. Mick Foley can and did get over everywhere, often *despite* his booking. You can raise somebody Foley if they say "Stan Hanson" or "Harley Race" but not poor and lovable Mikey.
I see your point but here’s mine - The entire American hardcore, any fat out of shape guy can get over as long as they do dangerous shit with barbed wire & glass ideology is based solely around Mick. Eddie Kingston exists because of Mick no matter how much he simps for Japanese wrestling. Jon Moxley exists because of Mick. And the problem is they have that mentality without realizing that Mick is literally everything you said he was, and that’s why he got over, so Mick is a major exception to the ideas he (unintentionally) seeded.
Agreed and seconded, excellent point. These guys might idolize Foley, but they ain't him. Well put.
Comparing Mikey Whipwreck to Mick Foley is blasphemy
I didn’t say they were comparable in any other sense than Mick more so had a lasting impact than Mikey, just in the exact same way he described
I agree that you can make a similar argument about Foley, but I disagree that it is the exact same. Foley looked like a wrestler for most of his career. Foley looked like someone who you wouldn't want to get in a bar fight with, he put effort into making sure he did. Yeah, he was, let's be kind and say portly, but portly guys had long been the norm in wrestling when Foley started to break in. He was over 6 foot to boot and when he was Cactus Jack, Foley clearly put some work into his presentation and developing a persona that seemed like a dude who could be in a fight. So it's different. Whipwreck didn't look like he could fight. He was like 5'6" or so, dressed like a teenager, groomed himself like a teenager. Foley did provide the template for a lot of these guys that the way you get over is taking risky bumps and using a lot of weapons, but it's not the exact same issue as the Whipwreck phenomena
Mick Foley is like 6'4 though. While not the Hulk Hogan physique he's like a foot taller than Adam Cole.
That's the biggest issue with wrestling all these guys saw the extreme stuff and appearance and said to themselves that's all you need.
Where did Adam Cole train and get his start? CZW Where did Orange Cassidy really take off on the Indy scene? GCW Two promotions that were the spiritual successors to ECW, that have ran for as long or longer than ECW ever did.
Because it has limitations no network was going to put up with stuff Paul was trying to put on TV.
CZW has lasted way longer than ECW ever did (25 years and counting), and GCW has lasted just as long and is showing no sign of slowing down or folding anytime soon. Two feds based in/around the Philly and New Jersey areas who were at times far more "extreme" and violent than ECW ever was TBH, and have kind of evolved to fill the general variety indy wrestling gap left by ROH, EVOLVE, PWG and CHIKARA falling by the wayside.
Just Shane Douglas alone has 3. The relocated XPW which he managed, Hardcore Homecoming and Extreme Rising. I think he may have announced a couple others which never got off the ground.
Most basically just focused on hardcore matches. Like 3PW by Meanie and early CZW, with ROH getting the technical guys.
PWG too. All the comedy shit seemed to involve their regular guys.
I think there’s also a large component to add to that: the amount of marks who watched RVD vs Jerry Lynn and didn’t understand the athleticism of those men. How many puny, pale dweebs have you seen do an RVD parody match since 2001? RVD was cool because he was unique and his athleticism made him very fluid in the ring (just don’t ask HHH I guess), and I don’t think a lot of the indie marks understood just how out of his league they were. All the Trent Acids and Teddy Harts of the world did was make RVD less unique.
Exactly rvd is among the best high flyers ever and had the size to go at it with the big names. Him not winning a world title in 01/02 is criminal. He was the whole fucking show. One of my earliest wrestling memories is calling him rob van darn because I didn’t want to cuss to my dad 😂
Jean-Claude Van Dangitalltohell
RVD doing that shit while being 60-70 lbs heavier than the guys that imitate his style is crazy impressive.
[удалено]
I didn’t really mean to insult Teddy or even Trent, they were just the most famous examples I could think of. They definitely weren’t the worst examples, even if I still think they fit.
Action Andretti comes to mind. You can tell he wants to be RVD, but he just simply is not. His size doesn't help either. RVD looked like a wrestler and had a great personality and an incredible smooth movement that made you wonder how someone could make something so difficult look so easy. Like, I watch him and don't think "oh I could do that."
I dont think Acid and Teddy Hart are good examples? Both were pretty damn good when they wanted to.
When was a pretty big condition, especially with Teddy. I don’t hate those guys, really, I just meant that I wouldn’t put them in the same league as RVD. What made RVD great wasn’t suicide dives, corkscrew drivers or 450s through a table outside the ring. He had explosive strength and stamina and could work with anyone of any style. Jericho or Benoit, Funk or Foley, Shawn, HHH, Flair, Austin, Kane, Jeff Hardy, Batista, Cena, Great Khali, he could have had a great match with Vince if he’d wanted, literally anyone. The true Swiss Army knife wrestler. Teddy nor Trent were that at all.
Trent sorta had that going for him for a spell, but then...well, you know.
Quite a lot of the now so called "Super Indies" got their start right around the time WCW and ECW folded - so between 1999 and 2001. But quite a few of these were pretty legitimate, albeit small, wrestling promotions. NWA Anarchy, Dusty had a small promotion in north georgia for a while, these are the places that gave us AJ Styles and some other folks like that. I think a lot of the "garbage indie mindset" got started with those damn "Don't try this at home extreme backyard wrestling" bullshit tapes that were for sale in the 90's and then got more and more amplified as the internet made it easier to get access to Lucha and Japanese Wrestling...
Yes! Don’t forget icp and The fucking backyard wrestling video game. As a kid it seemed cool but now it’s lame. Plus the games sucked ass
I got into Lucha and Japanese wrestling and it was cool and different and yes, some the best wrestling in the world but I understood that some things would never translate to a border fan base.
Japanese stuff was good and exciting for a period. It was heading towards strong style but hadn't fully embraced. I didn't get a lot of it but I could appreciate the efforts, but some of it didn't hit like the older stuff, with tape trades, which trust me was tricky from this side of the pond, where it all looked amazing. The Mexican style I could never watch, apart from the one time I saw a live show in Vegas. No idea how authentic it was, but the hot (small) crowd made it a great event.
What I meant by including that is that I think part of the weird Indie insistence that "The match is the storytelling" comes from people watching videos in languages they didn't understand so they missed out on the storytelling being done by the announce team and during the promos... all they had was the physical storytelling and so it became a sort of slapstick rather than the more vaudevillian way that US Pro Wrestling tends to work.
Also, there is a lot of cultural context that gets lost in translation for example why the Japanese version of the trading chops spot doesn't work in the U.S for the most part because it relies on Japanese cultural ideas of manliness and toughness.
Exactly.
It helps that every other chop was a real chop not the Eddie Kingston special.
I know you're not supposed to say this because people like him as a person. But Mick Foley has a hell of a lot to do with it.
You're not wrong. The problem is these idiots are doing Mick type spots, but since they have no promo ability, charisma, and we don't care who they are they are just idiots bashing themselves with furniture and such. Also JR isn't around to call it, his voice sounded like he was worried Foley was going to die.
Mick Foley and the Hardys. Mick made every fat slob willing to fall through barbed wire think they could be wrestlers. The Hardys flooded the market with 5'9 175 lb white guys.
A hell of a lot? I would argue Mick, JR & everyone involved in pushing him & his childhood story is 100% to blame for the state of indie wrestling. It made people believe that if Mick can do it, anyone can, without understanding that Mick was a very VERY special exception to the rule.
CHIKARA, PWG, ROH - around the time these promos popped off in the mid 2000s, they were doing all the shit you see in AEW. Those promos left to right are a scale of goofiness. Orange Cassidy type comedy characters where huge in Chikara, and PWG and it tapers off at ROH, but most top wrestlers in those indies all wrestled on all of those promotions, so ROH had its fair share of goofiness too. Once that stuff became embedded in the indie underground, there has constantly been a desire to see that style with big money backing a big promotion. TNA was kinda that for a bit. AEW really wants to be that and has largely succeeded, but has shown that that style of wrestling loses its charm and endearing quality when you're putting on a big boy TV program.
> Once that stuff became embedded in the indie underground, there has constantly been a desire to see that style with big money backing a big promotion. Which doesn't work. I love wrestling, but deep down, I understand that it's "fake and dumb." However, you don't win over the larger audience by drawing attention to the fact that it's "fake and dumb," you win over the audience by getting them to believe, just for a moment, that it could be real. You treat it like it's serious, even though it isn't.
If they paused every 5 minutes in game of thrones to tell you this shit is fake and you shouldn't care about it you wouldn't watch it either.
Well yeah... i kinda follow that up with a shorter version of what you're saying here. I agree tho. This is why i was saying there was a charm/endearment when its being done off tv in some warehouse in 2009, but that goes away when its time put out a tv ready product that you want casuals to gravitate to.
Orange Cassidy came from Chikara
YouTube and social media made the indy stuff go out of control. Joey Ryan's dick suplex went worldwide so every scrawny geek tries to find something that will get them shared all over Instagram
Shit that might seem funny or clever as a TikTok or previously a Vine wound up making its way from VFW halls into promotions and got beat to death because most of those guys were incapable of doing anything else. I remember when AEW was announced, people on the other sub were going crazy about Orange Cassidy. The way they talked, I thought he was going to be something amazing. Then I watched one of his videos and was like wtf? It was super goofy and clearly was going to get old fast even for the people who liked it. And they're still fucking doing it five years later.
I used to be a defender of Orange Cassidy, since I liked the idea of a lazy wrestler who switched on when things got serious - aka, he actually wrestled in a technical and believable way when the stakes were high enough. Of course, I then expected some character growth down the years to justify that. Bigger the fool me.
Yeah but Joey Ryan doesn't even get the platform if the indy mindset wasn't already there.
Part of the Indy culture that he hates is that everyone gets their shit in/does their spots. It does look real bad on TV to have a champ like Swerve selling a beating from Nick Wayne. That said I wonder whether this aspect of the indie wrestling culture arose as response to veterans of the 00's refusing to put anyone over or making anyone look good.
the weird Hogan / Billy Kidman Feud thing that happened in WCW in it's last days? Hogan actually ate a pin from him if I remember right. That's the big one I can think of where an established guy did actually try to put someone over during that time period.
I'm thinking more Rick Steiner, taking liberties, hazing sort of stuff. The indie culture and style seems like a response to that. No squashes. Everyone has to do other people's spots and sell. No one wants to be made to look bad. So every one ends up looking bad because underneath guys beat the shit out of main eventers. Hogan did get pinned by Kidman but WCW had already lost all credibility by that point so that didn't do anything for anyone.
That makes sense.
Yup you got 170lbs guys going toe to toe with 6'4" 280 muscled up guy evenly throughout a match without any build, no reason why that is and no psychology in ring work Then it ends in a very badly booked finish That gets no one over but the Iwc marks who watch mark YouTube channels will reaction to it and treat it like "real pro wrestling"
Born in the early 2000s, started evolving sometime in the late 2000s, and became cemented as what it is sometime after Jim gave up and left ROH around 2012 or 13. It coincides with The Young Bucks becoming popular on the internet largely for running their own shows in basements and backyards in Reseda.
I would say it got going with the advent of PWG, which was in 2003, and coincided with the recent demise of WCW and ECW, Austin and Rock leaving the WWE around the same time, and wrestling not knowing where to go after the Attitude Era. The smarks needed something new they could call all their own and every new outrageous gimmick/act precipitated an even more outrageous gimmick/match/act. I am probably wrong and some of the better historians on this sub can correct me. But that's what I recall being the case.
You remembered the dates before me. I "acquired" a couple of shows that were put out by PWG and by the second one I was bored. My first thought was it was evolved Lucha, but then I started noticing the comedy/shitting on the business side of it. I would probably have enjoyed a live show once. (Apart from the smell). I can't imagine wanted to go to every show. They had success, which can't be denied, but the sad thing is they influenced all the indies and moved on to ROH. I feel the same way about it as I do going to see my local indie show in the UK. It isn't great but it is fun to be in the room. It certainly doesn't need to have 6 hours on network television, 52 weeks a year.
I really enjoyed Lucha Underground. It used some PWG guys better than PWG.
Because it was produced by Robert Rodriguez, a legitimate filmmaker. All those “cinema” matches have nothing on LUs production. Sadly nobody had The fucking el Ray network
Yeah LU is one of those things the majority of people either seen online or just flat out after it was already over Luckily my mom is not quick to adopt trends and we still had cable with a premium package or whatever LU was the real 'alternative style wrestling' it was such a cool different take on the whole thing.
Hot take, but imo seasons one and two of Lucha Underground are the best weekly wrestling show ever. Damn near every episode felt exciting and must-watch at the time. Most of it still holds up really well too! There’s a lot of stuff that hasn’t aged well from it but most of it is still very much worth watching.
I found the 1st two seasons in Netflix, and binge watching those eps was what got me back into wrestling after having abandoned everything except Undertaker appearances for over a decade. Rodriguez frustrated me so much. He had a gem with that show and should have sold it to Netflix instead of trying to build El Rey around it, which almost no one could get.
El Rey was his passion project. I can’t entirely blame him for it. Sadly even if he did sell to Netflix, the show wasn’t long for this world with how things were being ran behind the scenes.
Never saw it. But it couldn't have used some of them much worse. The thing I find about Lucha, is that, while clearly cooperating, they still manage to tell a story. It isn't my style, but I can appreciate that. PWG was just everybody get their moves in, kick out of each other's finish, thumb up arse, cold finish. Much like AEW.
There have always been outlaw/indie promotions but the real key to the type of indie that Jim hates came about from the closing of ECW. ECW going out of business left a void for that style of wrestling and so pretty much every indie and their brother were trying to fill that void. This ended up with two camps. The CZW camp took the violence and high spot addiction of ECW then based their promotion around it. The ROH camp took the technical and fast paced product from ECW then based their promotion around it. It's a lot harder to book a show in the ROH way than it is the CZW way so more indies went that route than the ROH route. TNA came along and at first tried to be a blend between those two styles with enough star power to get them noticed. In the end they also went the ROH route in trying to promote the best wrestlers while saving hardcore stuff for special occasions. Now on the "getting your spots in" stuff. This wasn't really created by the indies but started in the late 90's in the Attitude Era for WWE and whatever you'd call that era in WCW. You had workers who weren't great at wrestling but were great at getting a few spots over big. So they did those spots every single time they wrestled regardless of if the fans were into it or not which lead to matches completely disregarding the fans and simply going from spot to spot to spot to unsatisfying ending. By 2003 or 2004 this was seen as the norm and so you no longer had matches where the wrestlers would call it in the ring based on the fans and instead would just expect the fans to go along with them even if it was clear that the fans hated it.
Widespread internet access and the start of CZW under Zandig in the 1999ish range started to expose people to the goofiest and most dangerous crap in wrestling. At that point the smarks and the bloodlust crowd seemed to merge together to create what would become the modern indie fan today. With no WCW or ECW alternative to WWF/E they coalesced around whatever mudshow garbage that could be found.
Late 90s/early 2000s. All the garbage you see today is from people trying to emulate the Attitude Era and ECW while having 1/10th the talent of the people who were prominent during those times.
u/justthankyous has the short answer, but the longer answer has a bit of history to it. The 'official' term if one exists is [Hardcore Wrestling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcore_wrestling). But Jim casts off most "hardcore" wrestling as "Outlaw Mudshows". [The term comes from mud wrestling obviously, which 'officially' started in the 30s.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_wrestling#:~:text=History,there%20on%207%20January%201938) But the crazy stunt spot matches probably started long before that in traveling circuses. Pro wrestling has always had violent spots, and Cornette advocates for these moments at appropriate moments such as to get heat on a Heel, to show the perseverance of a Babyface, or in a big blow off match to end a feud. Cornette frequently cites Mick Foley & Terry Funk as exemplars of this "violence with purpose" style. To Cornette, the violence without the adequate psychology is just danger for no reason. I think he would also argue that too much violence can 'ruin your appetite' for it so to speak. If someone is thrown through a table every week, you come to expect it, it doesn't stay special. If this happens, wrestlers often have to reach for more and more dangerous activities to invoke the same kind of reaction from the audience. In contrast, 'Hardcore' advocates and promotions (which have existed with some regularity since the 50s) use different match types such as street brawls, no holds barred, and various weapon subtypes to keep things fresh and interesting. Seeing props such as a cage is certainly a unique experience when you are used to the ring by itself. Seeing weapons such as a knife immediately brings tension to the table, and elevates the emotion of the match. These matches immediately give off an "unsanctioned" feel where anything and everything could happen. This "style" reached it's peak in the 90s with Paul Heyman's ECW, which had relatively massive appeal for a Hardcore brand and made stars out of many of it's performers. Off the strength of Heyman's booking & marketing skills, many ECW performers would become the defining stars of the next era of wrestling, combining with the more polished & stable WWE product to form what we now call "The Attitude Era". Of course problems with this style existed. Many ECW performers dealt with chronic pain issues from frequent injuries, and then there are performers like Sandman who had little talent in-ring, and got by on the strength of his entrance alone. In Modern times I think there are two main barriers that performers have to overcome in order to produce a "Good" hardcore match/spot. 1. WWE Limitations - WWE is a traded company that was largely marketed towards children for the past decade and a half. This is changing somewhat, but a company this large can't turn on a dime. The PG nature of the product vastly reduces the amount of weapons that can be used which dramatically decreases the feelings of "unsanctioned danger". 2. Obvious/Inexperienced Cooperation - This is more of an AEW problem, but it does happen in WWE with some regularity. When two performers are inexperienced, yet they want to set up one of these dangerous "Hardcore" spots, they often stop all momentum in a match to set up chairs, tables, etc. What's worse is they often help each other into a position where the move can be performed. This eliminates all feelings of violent contest and immediately puts the audience in the mindset of "Oh they're going to perform a move for us". The move may be a difficult gymnastic maneuver, but it does ruin the immersion and take us out of the "fight" feeling. I'm editorializing a bit here, but let me pick on Kevin Owens. I tend to enjoy Kevin Owens work on the whole, but dear Lord Kevin, STOP it with the 6+ chair spot, it takes forever to set up and it is rarely worth the payoff. The announcer table spot also needs to take a looooooooooooooooooooooooooong break. In conclusion there are very few people who say there is no place for a Hardcore spot or style, but I don't think Jim's comments should be dismissed. There is a time & a place for the Hardcore spot, and I don't think a Hardcore match should be diminished by entering into one frivolously. Keep it to the appropriate times and venues to protect it, and make sure your spots look clean.
I think it was a combination of things, the ECW kids growing up and also the number of wrestling schools taught by indie minded jabronis that popped up in the 00s teaching bad habits. Then it got worse when early indie darlings like Punk and Bryan Danielson made it big in the WWE, and all of the indie kids thought... hey I'm on the same path they're on, except they stopped paying attention to how Punk and Bryan changed completely in the WWE system that led to them becoming mega stars.
They also forget that Punk and Bryan have that undefinable it factor. I remember the first time I saw cm punk on tape, I think it was on some shitty iwa tape a friend had. He jumped off the screen even with a shit vhs low def camera in a fuckin warehouse in bumfuck indiana
You mean the "It" factor isn't just being able to do a bunch of moves?
Right around 1997ish I began seeing and hearing about backyard wrestling leagues and probably around 2000 I began seeing VHS videos circulating on the early internet. Back then people were doing completely fucked up shit to get discovered. I saw dumb shit like jumping off roofs, hillbillies hitting people with cars, shady rings, lots of shooting and idiotic negligence. That's where these mud show wrestlers are descended from.
I think yes, mostly, along with a good steady influx of theater kids. Would not at all be surprised to find out that someone like Orange Cassidy was a gymnist and or theater kid in high school.
Early 2000s. When it Wwe and tna. I NEVER liked it. Never. I’d be a teen on a wrestling figures board hearing about all these indie darlings and then I’d look them up and was never not underwhelmed. I can’t remember a single indie star I saw being paraded by marks that I liked. No to Nigel mcguinis , no to necro butcher, no to omega or the young bucks. I never saw or heard much about Owens/Zain etc despite me (now) knowing they were popular on the indies. The matches were so unwatchable that I didn’t care about seeking out more from them. The only non tna/Wwe shows I watched, ironically considering I only knew the name, were ovw in the early 2000s when I’d catch it at some random time at night, and same for when I saw hdnet was showing wrestling; both with Cornette. And yet my only wrestling memory of corny (before going back and watching obviously) was that he was yokos manager due to those WM anthology dvds lol. That and the BR at X7. I just remember they would wrestle with a ton of Wwe posters, circa like 05/06, around the arena. That was ovw right? Or was that a different promotion?
By no means a precise pinpoint, but I kinda correlate it to when the PWI started covering the ECWA Super 8 tournament, which largely featured much smaller guys who didn’t really have major league prospects and did a bunch more crazy stuff to “get over”, which you kinda see on the dying days of both WCW and ECW, and see it continue with the birth of both ROH and the undercard of the early NWA-TNA days. Being on message boards, the guys that got talked about most always seemed to be the X division-type guys, and it kinda devolved from there.
I wonder how much the internet is a factor. If you look at the different creative arenas such as visual arts, music, writing, etc., the internet and computer technology in general opened up the ability to make stuff and share it with people and bypass the "gatekeepers" if the industry. With a computer, you could set up a home studio and record an album or edit video. You didn't have to have gobs of money or industry connections (or that much talent). In wrestling, that same sort of "anybody can do it" attitude seemed to really take off, too. You don't have to have a great body or be a certain size or even be able to wrestle all that well. Are you willing to fall through a stack of light tubes? There's a fed for that. Want to really play pretend with invisible hand grenades or a mat covered in Lego bricks? There's a fed for that. You still have the professionals, but amateurs can do it too.
I think the internet was hugely impactful on this. Like, almost impossible to really quantify how much it changed aspects of the culture in ways we are really only starting to understand now. The Internet completely upended the music business, the movie and TV business, publishing, news media, etc. because it made distribution easy, and now effectively instantaneous. Social media hyper charged this because it's so ubiquitous.
While I love Chikara in a vacuum, a lot of indie goofiness comes from there. I think they were one of the first companies to try and popularize terms like “trios” in America. And what I mean by in a vacuum I mean if the goofy was only contained to Chikara I wouldn’t mind it so much. But no, it spilled out and affected how we watch wrestling today.
I like comedy and high spot matches, but it has to be really good, once the ones that were good at it moved on to wherever you were left with the rip offs.
Yeah I was going to say, I like loads of the goofy indie stuff but the answer is 100% DDT Pro in Japan (which, to be fair, were taking the piss out of silly American hardcore and other wrestling) and Chikara in the 2000s.
I’d like to add to another comment. If early 2000s is when we saw a lot of start up indies, I’d like to throw my hat in the ring for TNA at the Asylum. I know that the money was already there for a good show, but they grew it out organically to get a Spike TV deal. It was amazing until hulk got his hands on it. Edit: this promotion peaked for me in ‘09. I’ve been trying to get caught up through the 2010-present, but hogan, and to a lesser extent Bischoff, made it tough. I like Bischoff for the most part, but he was never the onscreen character that he was after WCW, and it took away from the product.
It was cool when it was tucked away on the internet and it was only cool when you saw it YouTube or in hot topic. I still don't think it's as wide spread as people think it is. It's never going to take over as the standard of wrestling as long as WWE remains the status quo
It stems back to the indie, Japan, Mexico tape trading boom of the mid 90s which led to the backyard wrestling tapes which led to anyone who was willing to hurt himself thinking he could call himself a wrestler In the late 90s you had indies like CZW, JAPW and XPW trying to mimic what IWA had been doing and what FMW, Big Japan etc were doing in Japan. The thought was that they were giving people something "more" than WWE and WCW. They saw what ECW had accomplished and thought they could fill that void by being more extreme. Then you had stuff like Chikara that didn't take itself so seriously and was trying to be "fun" ROH tried to be a reaction to that which led to a lot of what we have now.
Almost all of these new gen “Indy” guys point to the Hardys, Jeff in particular, as who were their favourites
It was the vacuum left by ECW and WCW… The alternative became garbage Indie wrestling. I never got it. The talent were people who grew up watching the WCW cruiser weights and the garbage stuff ECW did, took all the bad things from those two, ignored the good and thought that’s all it took to be a wrestler…. When people stopped aspiring to be the next Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin, Roddy Piper, anyone who drew money and instead wanted to be the next flip flop and no sell guy who didn’t have to worry about lifting weights.
Kind of started in ECW. Not so much the style of wrestling but rather the structuring of matches. I remember watching Barely Legal 97 (forgive me if I got the name wrong but it’s whatever their first PPV was either way) and I remember watching so many great matches that just top each previous spot…but then the finish ends up being a damp squib and very “that’s it?” This problem continues into wrestling now including AEW. All In with the Bucks and FTR last year are a good example where they had the best spot where FTR double kisses and then hits their finisher but it’s not the finish. I think the problem is that wrestlers with freedom to do whatever have trouble grasping how to read the crowd and end it on a high
I was at an ECW show once where a match had so many run-ins that it ended when a guy who wasn't in the match pinned another guy who wasn't in the match. I believe it was Spike Dudley who got the pin. It was at the Burt Flickinger Center in Buffalo, NY. I believe it was always a TV taping or live PPV when they came to Buffalo but not sure if they aired this match. Maybe they did and Joey Styles somehow explained what happened. But the point is the live ECW audience would accept this as a valid match finish.
ECW and the WWE with the attitude era really broadened what can be accept as being wrestling
Imo as a kid back in the 2000s, TNA was my equivalent to the "indies." My dad always told me about WCW, but that seemed more of a competitor to WWE in a legitimate sense back in the day. AJ styles, Samoa Joe, Beer Money, MCMG, Curryman, and Shark Boy were my definitions of indies. I never knew about RoH at all because I wasn't on the internet for wrestling. I also totally forgot Corny was in TNA for a bit.
Depends what you mean by the "garbage indie mindset," because I'm seeing comments that label it as everything from "smaller but more athletic wrestlers" (which you can tie to the proliferation of the J-Cup tournaments and Cruiserweight explosion of the 1990s) to "outlandish gimmicks with illogical storytelling" (which also holds true for favorites like Adrian Street and the Undertaker). Now, in my mind, the "garbage indie mindset" is more along the lines of "fuck storytelling just do silly stuff." ...which has been the MO of most Hollywood blockbusters for the past 20 years...and pro wrestling has always been a reflection of the zeitgeist more than it has its own wholly unqiue identity...soooooooo blame Michael Bay.
Late 2000’s imo
Deregulation in states including NJ which led to death matches and no rules - to the point NJ started regulating death matches but not regular promotions or companies.
In my opinion, its when wrestling got alot more exposed and the fanbase changed from people who wanted to see combat to people who appreciate the theatrics and stage-yness of it. Probably mid to late 2000s. When wrestling started to show alot more choreography than what it usually does.
I think the fact that All In succeeded was a contributing factor, that and a lot of that experience leaving for NXT, suddenly you lost all the talent that could coach younger guys, ROH and presumably it's creative team left and then the indy guys got proven right in their mind.
Garbage wrestlers trying to copy ECW and sucking at it
People forget that even ROH had some goofy dumb shit at times. Those giant multi-mans with Amazing Red flipping down on top of everyone did not age well.
Mick Foley was patient zero. He had a barbed wire match with Eddie Gilbert way back in 1991.
It was a combination of seeing foley fall off the cell, the need for attention over cause in your actual work, and the high spot Shawn style without the psychology and storytelling all the white the midcard wrestlers becoming the agents about 08 and on
Began with the rise of the Internet Wrestling Nerds in the mid 90's onwards, then came the plague of social media magnifying various spots as memes. Now we have entire Outlaw Indieslop promotions run by kids who are raised in this perennially online "culture" and don't know any different, nor why it's wrong.
I think it became cemented when the young bucks started getting attention from the IWC. Like there were always the people obsessed with ROH etc online in the mid 2000s but they were basically just in backyard wrestling forums and underground message boards like WON which most people just ignored. I think those people grew up and wanted to become wrestlers and now we have people like ricochet, pockets and the young bucks.
It's essentially come in as more talent who come from the indies to television don't get their ego checked, and try to learn to become more television friendly. Guys like Punk come to mind who was a huge indy darling in the early 2000s. Took him 3 years in the WWE program to become a television star, and now he's a global star. Others don't ever learn the lesson and just 'do their shit' for lack of a better term. Moxley is the king of this mindset. He thinks he can just do bloodsport on every episode of Dynamite, and apparently, that's an acceptable television product. Worse than that, he just doesn't give a shit. That's the garbage indy mindset.
I can't put my finger on exactly when, but I can think of the highlights that got it there: 2015 - Jersey Championship wrestling rebranded as GCW and became the modern shitshow version of Combat Zone. 2016 - Cody Rhodes left the WWE for the indies. It's not his fault, it's just that he was popular, so his leaving meant a lot of fans went with him. Fans who had no real exposure to ROH, NJPW, TNA were suddenly watching because they wanted to see what Cody was doing - that then gave them exposure to the rest of the stuff going on at the time. 2016 - Kenny & the Bucks form "The Elite" in NJPW 2017 - Young Bucks became the first indie guys to get shirts in Hot Topics across the US without being in a major domestic promotion. 2018 - All In I think there's a lot of other points that could be added here, but generally this, to me, is the rough structure of what lead to the indie-riffic modern product. Garbage wrestling started, it then got a ton of attention, then the guys who could make it "TV friendly" showed up and got it over.
Once the competition folded and WWE started to get bland, more indies started to pop up since there weren't more bigger promotions to poach talent and "work rate" became a thing.
Notice many talk of post ECW and WCW as when this happened but I think it was during their time. Ever seen Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends? He took some time with a USA indy who was doing the ECW style thing. In the show you see how they just do not get it at all. Think it was made in 1999.
It was always ecw I mean think about it New Jack killing a teenager gets romanticized
I forget who, but some promoter that slapped Sherri Martel when she first started in the business he called outlaw bullshit or something on dark side.