By Jim Shea

Say you want to start a wrestling promotion, yet you hold a true passion for the sport. It may seem pretty simple enough to get the wrestlers you need and establish a fan base, but one thing that always seems to fall short for wrestling promoters is money. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) may be the lone major wrestling promotion today, but back in the day, WWE saw some stiff competition from its main rival, Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling. However, there was also one other wrestling promotion that wasn’t necessarily a threat to WWE that became a valuable asset to the wrestling world.

Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) was a ragtime wrestling promotion headed by Paul Heyman, who brought wrestling to the extreme. Heyman has been credited for introducing hardcore wrestling to North America, as well as letting the smaller guys get a chance to shine. While Heyman’s dream was to turn ECW into a national promotion, that proved to be his fatal mistake, as the company folded, following their national television deal with TNN (now Spike TV). Once ECW closed its doors, WWE soon brought the rights of all ECW property as well as all ECW video footage. Thankfully, WWE president Vince McMahon didn’t let all that ECW footage go to waste. WWE used it to make probably one of the best wrestling documentary DVDs ever.

The Rise and Fall of ECW takes a clear-cut look from the beginning to the end of ECW. It’ surprising that WWE made this DVD look like a documentary from A&E; as The Rise and Fall of ECW covers just about every aspect of ECW’s history. What’s even better is that WWE let former ECW employees-including ECW owner Paul Heyman-speak their minds and leave nothing out.

In this documentary, you’ll see how ECW started off when the company was known as “Eastern Champhionship Wrestling” and ECW co-owners Heyman and Todd Gordon wanted to take the company to the next level. ECW was finally born when wrestler Shane Douglas denounced his victory for the NWA World Title and named himself the first ever ECW world champion. From there on, ECW flourished into one of the most extreme wrestling promotions ever.

Most documentaries take about one or two hours to tell its story, but The Rise and Fall of ECW clocks in at an amazing three hours that fully explain the best of times and the worst of times at ECW. Along with the three hour documentary, The Rise and Fall of ECW also provides some action for wrestling fans, as there’s a second disc of select matches from ECW. While the matches on the DVD aren’t the best ECW has to offer, they were important turning points for the company.

Back to the documentary-a good number of former ECW wrestlers such as Tazz, The Dudley Boyz and Tommy Dreamer discuss the backstage environment that took place during the ECW days, including how it was a close-knit organization even as it faced financial hard times. According to Mark Lemonica, better known as Bubba Ray Dudley, he says that Paul Heyman, “was a great promoter, but a terrible businessman.” Some of the former ECW employees say Heyman’s inability to handle money was what brought ECW down. On the other hand, Heyman claims it was the failure of getting a brand new national TV deal that was the fatal blow to ECW’s existence.

It’s true, while ECW signed a national television deal with TNN, the promotion was unable to market itself to a nationwide audience, and ECW never received money off of advertisements and revenues from the TV deal. In the documentary, Heyman says he was enraged that TNN went public about securing the rights to air WWE programming even while the TV deal with ECW was still going on.

Another selling point of The Rise and Fall of ECW is the controversy between WWE wrestler Kurt Angle and ECW. During a show in 1996, Angle was present at the show as he was close to signing a deal to wrestle in ECW. However, an incident took place at the show in which Angle was “totally offended,” and said he would bring a lawsuit against ECW if they aired footage of him along with the incident. Not to spoil what exactly happened that offended Angle, but you’ll be intrigued about what took place that offended not only him, but just about everyone at that show.

Upon watching The Rise and Fall of ECW, you will see that not only ECW debuted hot and rising talents to the world such as Tazz, Rob Van Dam and Sabu, but also ECW was the home of superstar wrestlers like Terry Funk, Chris Jericho, Mick Foley and especially Steve Austin, as he wrestled in ECW right before his rise to fame with his “Stone Cold” persona.

As fans still chant “ECW” all around, WWE has finally answered with this remarkable documentary DVD that chronicles every part of ECW from its start in 1994 to its untimely bankruptcy in 2001. Long time ECW fans will definitely eat this one up while others will watch this documentary and feel like they’ve been there since the beginning.

Final Grade: A