The Hardcore Spirit of ECW Is Still Going Strong in MLW

Reviving the Spirit of ECW

While a lot of ECW memories can be that of barbed wire matches or flaming chairs and tables, you could also see some of the most intense pure wrestling on the planet on the very same shows. ECW’s billing as being hardcore or extreme went far beyond a style of wrestling match and enveloped the attitude of an entire generation tired of seeing the same old, same old week to week in the nation’s top promotions.

In both its original run and in this new version of Major League Wrestling avoided doing the one thing that I’ve always felt was the downfall of the ECW Revival promotions – it never told you that it was going to be extreme, hardcore or any other adjective that could be associated with ECW. Instead, MLW was always built on being a hybrid promotion which would give every type of fan something that they wanted.

This is the beauty of Major League Wrestling for me. By not putting itself in a box by claiming to offer the most hardcore matches, or only the best mat wrestling or any other metric by which a promotion could be judged, it leaves the door open to doing anything they see fit with only one thing in mind – producing a great wrestling show with a roster of exceptional talent.

Lucha Explosion

ECW was well-known for pushing the envelope and ushering in an age of professional wrestling far edgier than what had been seen in the past. The wrestlers (mostly) spoke like actual human beings fueled by actual human emotions driving them to beat, hurt and maim one another. The language was coarse and they never shied away from the type of sexualization which would become a cornerstone of the Attitude Era.

Aside from all of that, though, ECW presented styles of wrestling never before given such a platform in the United States. Thanks to matches from luchadores like Rey Mysterio Jr, Psicosis and Juventud Guerrera, whole new batches of fans were able to see insane lucha libre in matches consistently stealing the show.

Thanks to the buzz generated by ECW’s lucha invasion, WCW came calling with contracts to build their Cruiserweight division. The positive effects of ECW’s lucha libre push are still able to be seen today.

MLW mirrors this quite a bit. Take one look at an MLW card and you’ll see names of luchadores up and down the show. Pentagon Jr and Rey Fenix are the current World Tag Team Champions, LA Park and Hijo de LA Park are a part of Salina de la Renta’s Promociones Dorado, and Puma King and Rush both recently made their Major League Wrestling debuts.

I won’t claim that MLW is necessarily responsible for bringing these names to American eyes for the first time, as I think Lucha Underground has had a huge part in the current wave of lucha popularity in the United States. However, MLW has kept its finger on the pulse of the indie wrestling scene and listened to what crowds across the country want.

Pentagon Jr and Fenix alone have become two of the top, and most sought-after, names in professional wrestling today, period. They have both been pivotal parts of the MLW machine since the very first episode of Fusion where the two main evented in a singles contest. Recognizing the growing popularity of lucha libre in the United States, MLW has fully thrown its weight behind promoting more and more luchadores each month.

Saved From Bad Wrestling

For me, MLW came into my life much in the same way ECW came into my life when I was a kid. As a child, I started to become a little too wise to the storylines and found myself bored by and hating the babyfaces I was supposed to love.

As an adult, WWE has been a tiring experience to say the least. I threw in the towel one final time on main-roster WWE after Wrestlemania 34. I somehow found it impossible to care about watching Daniel Bryan, Samoa Joe, AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura have incredible matches because the writing and overall product had just become so tedious. It’d almost be impressive to ruin someone’s love for wrestling like that if it weren’t so sad.

While on the outs with WWE, though, I decided to devote the time I would have spent watching Smackdown or Network specials to NJPW, STARDOM, and MLW. MLW helped to pull me out of the rut, as did the amazing NJPW Best of the Super Juniors, at a time where I thought I was just exhausted by pro-wrestling completely. I realized, quite quickly, that I was exhausted by a very specific kind of pro-wrestling that I wouldn’t find in any of the promotions to which I had turned my attention.