by: Bob Magee I received the following e-mail last Friday...and it reminded me of a very important anniversary in wrestling history...the birth of the ECW that most people know... as Extreme Championship Wrestling...which took place on the night of August 27, 1994.

"Today is the 10th anniversary of the birth of Extreme. Shane Douglas threw down the NWA Title in Heyman's controversial doublecross of the NWA at the ECW Arena and proclaimed the championship the new EXTREME Championship Wrestling (ECW) World's Heavyweight Title. This was also the night Cactus Jack and Mikey Whipwreck pulled a huge upset and beat Public Enemy for the ECW Tag Team Titles. A huge anniversary as Heyman took the big step to make ECW "Extreme."

I know you guys, or some of you guys, had to cover that event back then. How momentous was it then? Could you tell back then they were creating history?"

I can go back to my AS I SEE IT column of March 18, 2003, reporting on the tenth anniversary of the ECW Arena to give that reader an answer:

"If someone had told us that this wrestling promotion owned by a center city pawnbroker... would be seen nationwide on cable television... that it would go on PPV... that it would have wrestling fans around the world chanting "ECW... ECW... ECW", to this very day...

If someone had told us that it would feature talent ranging from New Japan stars Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Chris Jericho, and Chris Benoit... to lucha stars Rey Misterio, Jr., Juventud Guerrera, La Parka, and Psicosis to All Japan stars Steve Williams, Terry Gordy, Dan Kroffat and Doug Furnas, and Gary Albright... to Japanese lucha style stars Great Sasuke, Gran Hamada, and TAKA Michinoku...

If someone had told us that it would see the creation of the most memorable new character of the last decade... a character called Raven... and that the company would change the direction of the professional wrestling industry... if someone had told us ALL these things would happen and more...

We would have looked at you, and told you that you were in need of serious psychiatric help."

If you look at the tape of that August 27, 1994 show, you'll see my younger brother and I in the front row on the right on the hard camera side, as we were for most ECW Arena shows at the time. I'm the one with the beard, somewhat receding hairline and somewhat expanding waistline. He's the younger one next to me who you can see calling out names of NWA Champions that Douglas had forgotten in his citation of the tradition he was now a part of.

That is, before the upcoming swerve that would make wrestling history.

When Douglas threw down the NWA belt, you will also see my brother as the one with his jaw dropping about ten feet below the floor, along with much of the rest of the ECW Arena crowd.

The backstory was that ECW had been called NWA Eastern Championship Wrestling, beginning in late 1993. In 1994, after the sale of Jim Crockett Promotions to Ted Turner and the completion of a resulting non-compete agreement with Ted Turner, Crockett decided to start promoting with the NWA again under something called World Wrestling Network, which as it turned out never got off the ground.

WWN however already had indirectly set the stage for ECW's future as early news of this upcoming WWN relationship back in 1993 was reported to have been the reason that Eddie Gilbert resigned as ECW booker back in September 1993, and resulted in Paul Heyman being given the booking position.

So in 1994, Crockett went to ECW's Todd Gordon and asked him to hold a tournament for the NWA Heavyweight title. NWA President Dennis Coralluzzo saw this and felt that Crockett and Gordon were going to do what had been done before... namely to make the NWA Title a company title as Crockett had done in the 1980s by keeping the NWA title within WCW. This would have killed any hope of keeping alive the fledging alliance of promoters under the NWA banner that was starting to reform.

As a result, Coralluzzo told Crockett as well as Gordon (who had already been butting heads since the 1992 founding of ECW, which competed with Coralluzzo's NWA Jersey shows) that the NWA Board would not approve their control of the belt. Coralluzzo and the NWA Board then attempted to take control of the tournament.

The tournament, which excited many area wrestling fans, would feature Dean Malenko, Chris Benoit, Osamu Nishimura, Two Cold Scorpio....and Shane Douglas. The show also would feature Cactus Jack and "underdog" Mikey Whipwreck going against The Public Enemy for the ECW Tag Team Titles. But it would feature something we'd never have imagined.

Following the situation with Coralluzzo, Gordon and Shane Douglas, who had been designated by Gordon and Crockett to win the tournament (reports at the time suggested that Coralluzzo wanted Benoit to win the tournament) planned to stage the controversial angle where Douglas would give his moving speech dedicating the title to his father, cite the NWA Champions he was succeeding, and then throw down the title. ECW would then break away from the NWA, and change the promotion's name to Extreme Championship Wrestling.

The rest, as the saying goes...is history... with all the events that would follow over the next seven years...often controversial behind the scenes, and exciting on front of the cameras.

Some of the events and the names that would follow that controversial night into the promotion that started at the "World's Most Famous Bingo Hall" would include:

1994