Nick Piccone
On April 13, 1997, Extreme Championship Wrestling held their first-ever pay-per-view at the ECW Arena in South Philadelphia, titled Barely Legal. By that point, ECW had been in business since 1993, worked its way through countless obstacles to reach pay-per-view, and finally Paul Heyman and the ECW roster were ready to display the fruits of their labor to a national audience.
It wouldn’t be the first time ECW was exposed to a national audience. WWE, known as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) at the time, allowed ECW some exposure on their nationally televised programs, including the Mind Games pay-per-view that was held at the then-named CoreStates Center in September 1996. In February 1997, ECW invaded WWF’s Monday Night RAW live in the Manhattan Center in New York City, two months before Barely Legal.
Re-live the memories as The Blue Meanie (@BlueMeanieBWO) takes us down memory lane with how the atmosphere in ECW was at the time, some great stories about the ECW invasion in the Manhattan Center, how the whole angle came about and whether he knew about it beforehand, and even a great story of how WWE helped ECW with the Taz/Bam Bam Bigelow ring spot from the Living Dangerously pay-per-view one year later.
You can follow Nick Piccone on Twitter (@nickpiccone) and e-mail him at [email protected]. You can read his pro wrestling articles on PhillyVoice here.
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