Talk about it here.

Finish of Shane Douglas winning the NWA title, followed by him throwing down the NWA title and declaring himself the first ECW World Champion. It had to be here, of course.

 

We cut to Dennis Corraluzzo cutting a promo about stripping the title from Douglas and ... wait, I thought this was a legit doublecross. I'm confused.

 

After that, Todd Gordon does the famous proclamation that NWA Eastern Championship Wrestling is dead and in its case is Extreme Championship Wrestling.

Cool historical moment to watch. With Dennis being interviewed on camera seems like a planned segment. Extreme Championship Wrestling is born.

Extreme Championship Wrestling is born! Shane Douglas cuts the best promo of his life and throws the NWA title belt to the floor and retrieves the ECW title and declares himself the ECW champion instead. Coralluzzo cuts what seems to be a planned interview and then Todd Gordon closes down Eastern Championship Wrestling and immediately begins Extreme Championship Wrestling.

Yeah can someone give some back story on this because Corluzzo definitely looked to be in on at least Douglas throwing the title down. Historical segment and really feels like a big moment and the crowd chanting ECW at the end was awesome.

From the WON write-up of it, it sounds like they convinced Corluzzo that it would just be a regional angle and he should just strip him of the title and then they could give the belt to Benoit like they always wanted to.

Historic moment, though this is another match with pretty terrible work at the finish. Douglas throws some of the worst strikes you'll ever see. Then the famous post-match promo--hey, check it out, blatantly canned "E-C-W" chants. Dennis Coraluzzo cuts a newscast-style man-on-the-street promo and talks of going to the NWA Board of Directors and says that Douglas is still the champion. Tod Gordon gets around that by folding Eastern Championship Wrestling and opening a new company, Extreme etc. etc. How very Japanese shoot angle-y of everyone.

 

Stop referring to "the ECW," dammit.

This is still one of my all-time favorite promos. The camera work being a bit unsteady (particularly on the word "sport") gives the impression that the building is physically shaking, which in turn gives the promo an even bigger feel.

This wasn't a great match, but each of them had already worked twice that night, so it's hard to fault them for not having a lot left in the tank. It was nice to see them focus mostly on wrestling, aside from the one trip to the floor and Shane's suplex onto the guardrail. The finish left a bad taste for me, I'm fine with Scorp wiping out on the moonsault, and Shane taking advantage with the belly to belly, but Shane has to blow off the Tombstone piledriver in the process. What I really found hard to swallow though, with the hindsight of knowing what was going to happen, was Styles' commentary. He's pretty much kissing the NWA's ass the entire time, with all sorts of namedropping going on.