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I attended 3 ECW shows in the past week.  The first show was the PPV, the second show was a house show, and the third show was a TNN taping.

The PPV was held at a college gymnasium in Danbury, CT.  The gym was new, fairly large, held about 4,000 people and was sold out.

The house show was held in Worcester, MA.  This is one of the ugliest cities in the northeast.  The show was held at the Palladium in a theater-like building.  The building is antiquated, run down and holds a max. of about 1,200.  At this particular show there were about 900 people.

The TNN taping was held at a hockey rink, the Icenter, in Salem, NH.  This is a very new building, it’s clean, and it’s large.  It probably holds 3,000 for wrestling and there were probably 2,500 people there.

Of the three shows the venue that I enjoyed the most was at the Palladium in Worcester.  And it’s not because my seats were the best of the 3 shows I attended (although that didn’t hurt).  Nor was it because of the sausage vendor outside of the building.

To me the Palladium is similar to the ECW Arena.  It’s a crappy building in a crappy part of town.  They each don’t hold a lot of people and there’s a chance that you can get mugged at each place.  The crowds are packed in and people are practically on top of each other.

The appeal of each place is all of these bad points that I listed above, as strange as that sounds.  ECW has always had the image of being the underground, outlaw promotion.  Buildings similar to the Palladium and Arena helped fuel that image.  It also didn’t hurt that the TV show was on an obscure, Spanish channel at some late night time slot.  When you went to an ECW show or watched the show on TV you knew you were watching something that was equal to or greater than the mainstream promotions yet very few people knew about it.  To me that was part a big part of the appeal to me.  Do you think you could ever see the WWF have a wrestling show at a dog track?  How about an IBEW building?

Now days ECW is running buildings that are much larger and considerably nicer.  The primary TV show is shown nationwide at the same time and same place every week on TNN.  It’s tough to keep that underground, outlaw image when you are slowly becoming what you claim not to be.  Slowly but surely ECW is becoming mainstream, like it or not.  Over the past week I experienced a few ‘firsts’ at these events.  Among these are ticket scalpers, traffic problems and paying for parking at ECW events.  This is not the ECW that I once knew.

I don’t blame Paul E. for making the moves to national TV and larger buildings.  I would do the exact same things if I were in his shoes.  It’s just important to remember your roots as you climb the ladder of success.  While I fear that shows at the Palladium will surely fade away shortly I hope that ECW will continue to run shows at the Arena, even if it’s just once a year, no matter how big ECW becomes.  Shows at venues with character like the IBEW hall in Waltham and the Madhouse in Queens have already been separated from ECW.  It’s important to keep those buildings that still remain alive as this is where ECW came from.