There is a cross section of wrestling fans who are mourning the loss of the ECW icon Sabu. The suicidal, homicidal, genocidal, death–defying maniac was a key figure in the growth and identity of ECW throughout its glory years between 1995 – 2000.

Best known for his high-flying, risk-taking, table-breaking hardcore style, Sabu was known for his feuds in ECW with Taz, Shane Douglas, Public Enemy, Mikey Whipwreck, Terry Funk, The Eliminators, Justin Credible. His tag team with Rob Van Damme saw spots and matches that were truly death-defying. His extreme bloodbaths littered with barbed wire, fire, explosions at FMW with Atsushi Onita, Tarzan Goto and Hayabusa, are a challenging watch that were passed through a tape trading network on duplicated VHS tapes throughout the 90s.

At a time when pro wrestling on the major stage in the US looked like this…

Sabu was wrestling matches that looked like this…

Sabu’s reckless and violent ring style became a cornerstone of what defined ECW and for that, as fans, we can’t thank him enough.

Sabu AKA Terrance Michael Brunk wrestled his “last match” at 60, after a 4-year hiatus, for GCW on the 18th of April 2025. He would ultimately leave this world on the 11th of May 2025. It feels like he had one last match in him and had made his peace with this existence and chose to ride off into the sunset.

As wrestling fans we are far too familiar with our legends not getting old. I hope as the years roll on and the current generation learns from past mistakes, we get to see more of our legends live long and valued lives into their old age. I want more wrestlers relaxing in the sun in their 70s & 80s, rather than passing away before they even see 40.

Rest in peace, Sabu, You gave the fans everything you had until the end.

The title of this piece is, “Has ECW’s legacy been lost to history?” It was the death of Sabu that made me think about this. The passing of any wrestler will lead to an outpouring of stories, messages of positivity, love and memories. But I can’t shake the feeling that despite its enormous impact on the face of wrestling, ECW’s value and importance is being forgotten and lost in the wake of The Attitude Era and Monday Night Wars. History is written by the winners…and they would rather write a story of their own success, not one that says, “I saw what those guys were doing and tried to copy that!”

To start this conversation, I have to admit that there are many people who had no means of accessing the original ECW whilst it was happening. Living in the UK, it wasn’t until at least 1998 that official releases started to find their way to our shores and it wasn’t until 1999 a TV deal with long forgotten channel Bravo would see Hardcore TV broadcast in the small hours on Fridays and Saturdays. Prior to that, the best we could hope for was write ups in Powerslam, bootleg tape trading and 10 second videos uploaded to message boards. In the US, the company was plagued by TV deal issues until it found a home on a national home on TNN in 1999. When you consider ECW (as Extreme Championship Wrestling) only existed from 1994 to 2001, it was a hard company to follow sometimes.

Why is this relevant? Because, sadly, most people weren’t exposed to ECW until 2001 during The Invasion storyline and this the beginning of a watered-down WWE safe version of ECW, missing some of its key players for…a long list of complicated reasons. But also, it added to the aura and mystique surrounding the wild wrestling outlaws. When you have to work harder to gain access to something, you love it that little bit more. 

It wasn’t until the documentary, The Rise and Fall of ECW in 2004, would we see a true revival of the infamous ECW at One Night Stand PPV. On this night, ECW felt like it was being used to its original & full potential. This led to another One Night Stand in 2006 (there was also the not-endorsed WWE offshoot Hardcore Homecoming but now isn’t the time to get into that), which would lead to the launch of ECW TV on Sci-fi in 2006 as a WWE sub-brand.

From here on, I’ll call the original Extreme Championship Wrestling, ECW and the WWE variation WWECW.

WWECW would last for 4 years, it sat under the creative control of Paul Heyman, but it was steadily treated more as a training ground for WWE and the hardcore/extreme style ECW was known for was steadily phased out, at the request of Vince McMahon, to bring it inline with WWE products. If you look up the title history of the ECW championship, from 2006 – 2010, gone are names like Justin Credible, The Sandman, Sabu, Jerry Lynn, Mike Awesome and Steve Corino. The title history includes names like The Big Show, Bobby Lashley, Kane, Mark Henry, Jack Swagger and the final champion was Ezekiel Jackson (I had genuinely forgotten about him until researching this).

I can’t think of a better analogy for this than Taz. If you are an ECW fan, Taz is the human suplex machine!

If you aren’t…Tazz is a commentator wearing a beige suit, sat next to Michael Cole, making bad jokes.

If your lived experience of ECW was WWECW, you aren’t going to have the memories of someone who was watching around the millennium. Do the maths, if you are under 30, you aren’t likely to have any lived experience of ECW. Are you going to find the time to dig back through the ECW archive? Let’s be honest, there is already too much wrestling to watch on a weekly basis! 

I can’t help but think of how we treat Chris Benoit. We all know how good he was in the ring, and he was at the centre of some of our favourite wrestling moments, but we can’t escape his actions outside the ring. We can respect his body of work, but we CANNOT celebrate a man who is guilty of (an albeit complicated) double murder and suicide. So we all talk about him in hushed, awkward tones. I have friends who were at Wrestlemania 20, with the incredible main event match between Benoit and (the also complicated) Eddie Guerrero. It was a special memory for them that is forever clouded.

ECW has a similar problem, can we watch a company that encouraged brutal chair shots to the head, knowing what we know now? Performers’ lives were shortened by the insanity played out in and around ECW shows. I can’t recommend my niece, who is 20, go back through the ECW archive and see Jasmin St Claire brutally piledriven from the second rope by Rhino. Can we even watch a New Jack match knowing one of the hundreds of incidents he was involved in? We were more ignorant to it back then, we aren’t now.

Are you going to feel comfortable looking back into the history of the company with names shrouded in controversy, drugs, and horror stories like Tammy Sytch/Sunny, Brian Pillman, Raven, 2 Cold Scorpio, Abdullah the Butcher, Balls Mahoney, Axl & Ian Rotten to name a few. If you are in any doubt about how dark ECW can be, please be cautious when you look up the Mass Transit incident.

I’m not going to ignore the in-ring super feuds between Yoshihiro Tajiri & Super Crazy or the in-ring peak of ECW that was RVD vs Jerry Lynn. In both cases, every time these pairs met, the story would evolve. It started with a counter and ended somewhere around a counter, to the counter of the counter, to the counter of the counter, to the counter of the counter…I hope somewhere there is a playlist of these matches, and you can watch this story unfold. (Maybe just jump into RVD vs Jerry Lynn at Living Dangerously 99)

There are so many positive stories about ECW…

I’ve commented in an article about Cody Rhodes that his time on the independents and AEW made the American Nightmare, in the same way Steve Austin’s venom towards WCW and wild creative freedom in ECW led to the birth of Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Cactus Jack found a place he could feel at home in North America after he departed from WCW, which would lead to a WWE championship run.

Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Chris Benoit…all found their feet in ECW before they moved to WCW and then onto massive WWE success.

Paul Heyman proved he has one of the greatest minds in wrestling in a dilapidated bingo hall, long before he became a world class commentator, booker, writer, manager, talent development…dreadful businessman, sure. If we are talking about the greatest minds in wrestling, Paul Heyman should be in your top 3.

Bubba/Bully Ray and DeVon Dudley broke tables in the Hammerstein Ballroom long before they threw Jeff Hardy through one.

But…

As I’ve mentioned, somewhere between the brutal chair shots to the head, the piss poor treatment of women on screen, crucifixion angle, blood, guts barbed wire, mountains of drugs and alcohol behind the scenes…it feels…much like Chris Benoit, difficult to celebrate and recommend to new and younger fans.

My girlfriend got sucked into wrestling after Summerslam 2013, the main event between John Cena and Daniel Bryan with the screwy finish involving Seth Rollins sucked her in. After the event, she wanted to watch Raw to find out what happened next. In the 12 years we have been together, we have made wrestling a cornerstone of our relationship, friendships, and even big holidays. We have never sat down and watched an ECW event. I’m not even sure we’ve watched a classic match.

As fondly as I remember ECW, I find myself torn. I don’t want its impact and legacy to be lost to time, as if it were WWE & WCW that changed the face of wrestling in the 90s. Equally, I can’t recommend the watered-down WWECW, because it is not the ECW I loved which changed wrestling forever. This leaves us as fans at a complete impasse. Let it go? Or try to watch it again with a nostalgic haze that ignores the complications? I wish I knew. 

One day, my girlfriend and I might sit down and watch the documentary; until then, I guess I’ll save the ECW talk for my friends who watched it at the time. Michael Partridge

If you like what we do and want to help us keep the lights on and the podcasting mics warm, we’d appreciate it if you bought us a cup of coffee