ECW

ECW was originally known as Eastern Wrestling Championship and was originally owned by Joel Goodhart. He would eventually sell the company to Tod Gordon in 1992. Initially, ECW was part of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) and in 1992, Paul Heyman entered the company as lead booker. Together, they wanted to do something very different with the product as opposed to what was being offered by the WWE and WCW respectively

. ECW created their own ECW world heavyweight championship and left the NWA in 1994. ECW started creating taping from the ECW Arena, which was actually an old warehouse. The presentation was very different to what had come before. The audience almost had a front row seat and audience interaction. Moreover, ECW was unapologetically an adult product. The matches were of the hardcore variety which featured anything from barbed wires to chairs to pieces of broken glass. Before the WWE’s attitude era, ECW actually introduced sexualized storylines with the women engaging acts that would not have passed censors on the prime time television.

Eventually, Paul Heyman brought the company from Tod Gordon in 1995. With Paul Heyman in charge, ECW was putting out content that defied wrestling standards and was a part of the counterculture at the time. In the mid 1990s, there was even cross-promotion with WWE with ECW performers showing up at WWF events and vice-versa. More importantly, ECW essentially became a training ground for wrestlers such as Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Rey Mysterio and even Stone Cold Steve Austin. While WWE and WCW tended to recruit talent from these organizations, they even created their own. Stars like Tazz, Raven, The Sandman, Tommy Dreamer, Rob Van Dam and the Dudley Boyz would homegrown and are forever known to wrestling fans as ECW originals.

Due to financial pressures and poor management, Paul Heyman was forced to sell the organization to Vince McMahon. While the organization was defunct, Paul Heyman would eventually go on to work for WWE itself. They were part of the Invasion storyline of 2001 as they allied with WCW to bring down the WWE. After the invasion angle, a few years passed and WWE started introducing old ECW footage in DVDs as part of their growing tape library. This re energized the interest in ECW as WWE put on a reunion PPV called One Night Stand, which proved to be successful. This eventually led WWE to introduce ECW as a third brand alongside WWE Raw and WWE SmackDown in June 13, 2006. While the initial interest was successful, it died over time. With the arrival of NXT, ECW was discontinued on February 16, 2010.

List of ECW World Heavyweight Champions