20 Years Ago - ECW Barely Legal

[supersonic]

Lapsed Fan podcast - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-9-1997-ecw-barely-legal/id1044102900?i=1000381662407&mt=2

 

For those who experienced this historic event in real-time, please share any memories before, during, and after. What is this PPV's ultimate legacy?

[rzombie1988]

My first exposure to ECW. Ended up thinking all these guys were pretty awesome. I wondered for years what happened to the Eliminators as they looked like the greatest tag team ever, then I watched a 6-hour comp and realized that they weren't that good. Thought RVD was the real deal and really loved the Taz gimmick. I thought the Douglas/Pitbull match was too long even as a kid.

 

I still can remember lines from that show 20 years later, so you know it was a good one.

[sek69]

A non WWF/WCW wrestling show getting major PPV exposure was a mind blowing occasion. It was supposed to be the springboard for ECW to get to the next level, and I guess for a brief period it was, but it ended up in retrospect being the blowoff show capping off 5 years of Paul E getting his company to the big time. Everything since seemed to be Paul chasing the dragon trying to get back to the level of this show.

[William Bologna]

I loved this show even though everything except the Michinoku Pro match was terrible.

 

The pre-show had a Dudleys/Eliminators/House of Pain hype video that I remember being pretty great. (I found a version on YouTube, but it's not the right one. I'm very particular when it comes to forgotten House of Pain singles accompanied by wrestling highlights.)

 

One more fond memory: after Joel Gertner took a Total Elimination, they go back to Joey Styles, who says something like, "Someone call Joel Gertner's mother and tell her her little boy's not coming home . . . *looks away from the camera* *looks back at the camera* . . . EVER!"

[Petey]

My first exposure to ECW. Ended up thinking all these guys were pretty awesome. I wondered for years what happened to the Eliminators as they looked like the greatest tag team ever, then I watched a 6-hour comp and realized that they weren't that good. Thought RVD was the real deal and really loved the Taz gimmick. I thought the Douglas/Pitbull match was too long even as a kid.

 

I still can remember lines from that show 20 years later, so you know it was a good one.

Two things here: 1) there's a 6-hour Eliminators comp tape? and 2) you chose to watch it??

[BackDropDriver]

The thing about the Eliminators is that they weren't that good, but at the time they were presented as a legit bad ass tag team. Compared to the crap gimmicky teams in the big two at the time (Godwinns, New Rockers, American Males, etc) , it's easy to see how they got over as "the next great tag team", at least for a bit.

[stro]

At the time it was OH SHIT because it wasn't WCW or WWF and getting PPV seemed like some unthinkable thing even though there had been other non-WWF/WCW PPVs all throughout the 90s. Now it's fucking terrible like everything ECW related.

[JaymeFuture]

Wrote a piece on this show a couple of years ago for a magazine, and I find it so weird. A show that felt like the beginning, the next step in ECW's exposure and ascension. In terms of business it probably was. But to me it's the end of ECW having a real impact on the wrestling world. If you're interested, have a read.

 

http://vulturehound.co.uk/2015/04/the-extreme-duality-of-ecw-barely-legal/

[BBscout]

At the time I felt like Barely Legal and the couple PPVs after it never delivered enough to match the hype ECW had in general. Heatwave 98 was the first one where it clicked the most from top to bottom.