Hardcore History: The Extremely Unauthorized Story of the ECW

by Scott E. Williams

ECW was one extreme contradiction piled on top of another. It was an incredibly influential company in the world of professional wrestling during the 1990´s, yet it was never profitable. It portrayed itself as the ultimate in anti-authority rebellion, but its leadership was, at various points, working covertly with the two wrestling giants, the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling. Most of all, it blurred the line between real life and the fantasy world of professional wrestling like no other company before it – many of those who thought they were conning others ended up being victims of the ultimate con. Hardcore The Extremely Unauthorized Story of the ECW offers a frank and balanced look at the evolution of the company, starting even before its early days as a Philadelphia-area independent group called Eastern Championship Wrestling in 1992 and extending past the death of Extreme Championship Wrestling in 2001. Writer Scott E. Williams has pored through records and conducted dozens of interviews with fans, company officials, business partners, and the wrestlers themselves to bring readers the most thorough account possible of this bizarre company. The book sets out to answer several Did World Championship Wrestling really try to destroy ECW by draining off its talent? Was Vince McMahon secretly as a friend to ECW, as he has claimed? What really caused the death of ECW? Who lied to whom? Hardcore The Extremely Unauthorized Story of the ECW will address all of those mysteries and many more in a story that is sure to be extremely controversial for fans and critics of both the ECW and professional wrestling.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2006

Reviews

[Nicholas Godwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t want to give it one star because I genuinely love the subject matter. I was an ECW kid in the 90’s and love to hear anything about it even now.

I listened to the Audiobook for this one and it came across like someone who had heard the story from someone else. Other reviews point out misspellings and typos in the physical copy of the book, and the audiobook is littered with mispronunciations that sound like they’re being read from a correctly spelled word. Little things like A-A-A being spelled out rather than referred to as “Triple A.” Or Mickey Whipreck rather than Mikey.

Don’t bother with this one. Watch old ECW shows instead.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and complete overview with indepth views and words about how ECW came to live and how it ended - twice. After reading this book i fell in love even more with the wrestling of the early 90ies and especially ECW because i was a fan in these days and so am i nowadays but with more wiseassing and more fun.

[Chip Rickard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to say, I don't think I've ever read a book with this many spelling and punctuation errors. "Rie" Flair? Getting past that, I thought the content of the book was excellent. The author traced the entire history of the promotion through the WWE days. Reading the book you will see that there was no one person or event that led to ECW's downfall. It was actually amazing it lasted as long as it did. It was one of the most competitive eras in wrestling history and this little company operating on a shoestring held its own against two corporate behemoths with most of its talent defecting to those companies in order to literally get paid. One wonders if ECW could have thrived with more money.

[John Remedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read the Audiobook, I forwent a lot of the typos and bad grammar plaguing this book. Some led to mispronounciations, and as a wrestling book, some names were mispronounced regardless of typos. If I had learned less from this book (especially when covering the time ECW was active), I would have awarded three stars.

[Grump · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of talking about Paul Heyman without getting an interview from Paul Heyman. Felt a bit like a super long wikipedia article but more disjointed. Certain details were reintroduced as if they hadn’t just been established in the previous chapter. Basically ECW had a great product but couldn’t get the money right then Vince McMahon diarreahed all over everything and ECW went pfffft. Shoulda had more Mike Awesome. Shoulda interviewed Sabu and New Jack. Shoulda been better.

[Duncan Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very entertaining but far from perfect read. Lots of good detail on business dealings and some great perspectives from those involved (Douglas, Francine & Raven in particular come across really well).
Nearly went the full 5 stars for the comprehensive rundown of the bankruptcy & many other dealings leading up to it, but the closing parts of the book let it down a bit. There was lots of circling back over the same points raised earlier in the book when it discusses ECW's influence & some of the weird jumping back and forth in time that made the very beginning of the book hard to get into made an unwelcome return. Despite a good run down of Heyman & Vince's falling out during the WWECW revival (including details that Lashley wanted on the show to get away from Michael Hayes, rather than Vince forcing him onto the show like I'd thought, and that Lashley & Heyman wanted to give him a heel run there), I can't get over two very jarring sections:
1. The large indifference/borderline distain for the first One Night Stand event, almost totally ignoring the fact that it's a largely well received show just because it wasn't as "authentic" as the Hardcore Homecoming show (a much weaker show). While the book raises a valid point that several stars who only "passed through" ECW got prominent spots on the show, I struggle to see how that's a bad thing. Isn't it actually an important part of ECW's influence on the industry that it could give talent their first break in North America & be a launch pad for their careers in other promotions (Mysterio/Malenko) or a place for wrestlers to find new depths to their abilities before other spots open up (Austin/Pillman)? The book was rather inconsistent on such talent before then, with people like Benoit getting short shrift for only being around briefly before jumping at an opportunity elsewhere while others like Pillman escaped any such criticism.
2. The ridiculously ill-thought out section on the women of ECW. The aim seemed to be to capture a range of opinions, but the result just flip flops between "ECW's women were really strong characters" to "actually, women like Hilary Clinton were giving men a hard time in the 90s, so of course men deserved to see a woman get piledriven by someone twice their size".
It would honestly have been better off finishing with the bankruptcy & the closure of the original promotion.

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first five words of this book are “Much has been whiten about…”, instead of “Much has written about…” Like… what?! Did anyone edit this at all? There is an editor thanked in the acknowledgments, but their contributions are seemingly nonexistent. The typos in this book are both plentiful and preposterous. Ric Flair is called “Rie Flair” not once, but over and over. Tommy Dreamer is “Dremer”. “Kown” instead know. The DVD is referred to as “The Rise and Fall of FCW”. Francine is “Trancine”. Mick Foley is “Mici”. Beulah is “Bedlah”. Jack Victory is “Jack Wictory.” And so on and so forth.

So with that in mind I was sort of leaning toward probably not liking this book early on. And I was also convinced that 274 pages would not be enough to really cover ECW deeply, especially since a quarter of that is just about the 2005 and 2006 nostalgia shows.

But once you get past that, there’s actually a very refreshing, well researched and original book here. Having basically memorized every line of “The Rise and Fall of ECW” and “Forever Hardcore” DVDs, I learned a ton of new things from this book that weren’t covered there. I have to credit this author with doing a lot of original interviews with people who had unique perspectives, including the owner of a small business that did lighting for ECW and got screwed over in the bankruptcy.

If I were to write a biography of ECW, I might consider leaning in a bit harder on the injuries and and financial hardships and early deaths that have happened since to a lot of these performers. I’d also probably go a bit harder on Paul Heyman, who in the end got out unscathed and gets to make money hand over fist in WWE, while many of the wrestlers who bought into the idea they were leading a revolution against WWE don’t. But overall I think this author did a good job on Heyman, praising him as a creative genius and lambasting him as a woefully horrible business person. There’s good coverage on the funding from WWE too, and a fair assessment of WWE’s role in killing the company.

[Boomer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was appealing for me because although I caught the occasional ECW show back in the late 90's, I really knew nothing about them. Here I got to read through the history of ECW, from it's beginnings as Eastern Championship Wrestling with Tod Gordan and Eddie Gilbert, all the way through its rebirth as Extreme Championship Wrestling with the Shane Douglas promo, Paul Heyman taking over, and everything else leading up to its bankruptcy in 2001 and the awful WWF "Invasion" storyline.

It was a fun read for someone like me who came in with next to no prior knowledge. In the know ECW fans probably won't find anything new here, but for the new fan this is a good historical account. Or at least it would be if writer Scott E Williams had spent less time 'poring through records' as the blurb states, and more time making sure he got his facts straight and hired a freaking editor!

I've read hundreds of eBooks, and this one was the worst I've seen in terms of editing. It's riddled with spelling and punctuation errors. The book's opening sentence literally is 'Much has been whiten about the wrestling revolution'. Seriously? It only gets worse from there. Wrestlers names are misspelled constantly everything from Chris Ghetti (should be Chetti) to Rie Flair (Ric, obviously) and many others. One of my favorites was the chapter on Raven having the title 'Quoth the Ravan'. Seriously, how do you get such horrific errors in your chapter HEADINGS??

A three star book but because of all the horrible errors I have to drop the rating down, and I question whether everything in here is legit. If the author can't be bothered to have his book edited, then I can't trust him to have the material be 100% accurate either. I got this on sale for $1.99, but that was still probably too much to pay for this. Avoid

[Stephen Holtman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the story of how the innovative wrestling company (ECW)went from being a small federation to a somewhat contender. I have to say that as a wrestling fan I enjoyed the memories and inside stories that this book provided. I thought that the writer did a fantastic job of bringing the facts along with the fans and talent who experienced this fantastic time in Pro Wrestling history. The way that the group of insiders know how they felt about the downfall of the historic federation. If you aren’t a fan of Pro Wrestling, or at least ECW, Then you are not going to like this one. But for the ones who did, it will be a great read. I had thought that this was going to be one of those books that was only made to either trash people and\or kiss certain peoples butts. There were times that there were more opinions then facts. But those were few and far between. The few times it did happen didn’t affect the real life stories. But those little hiccups in an otherwise great journey. I will say for the most part that this book delivers on the more important parts of the book. I love going back and reliving both the wrestlers that I used to have fun following and the stories. The fact of the matter is that, being a wrestling fan myself, had went into this one with neither a love it nor a hate it type of mentality. By the end of the book, it leaned more towards the love it side of things. In all, I have to say that this book did a great job of being a fun, informative recounting of ECW and should be read by all of the wrestling fans out there. I am going to give this one a huge four stars.

[ReadinRasslin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject matter and research into this book is fantastic, but the book is riddled with countless spelling errors, bad formatting, and hammers home one central message - ECW was always great, until the evil WWE ruined everything. The book covers pretty much all of ECW's major historic moments with good pacing, but the general message that ECW barely had any flaws while WWE and WCW were awful trainwrecks for ten years is just false. The last half of the book covering ECW's purchase by WWE and subsequent ECW rebranding feels bitter, and while that was a massive failure in the end, the book felt like it was trying to convince me to hate the WWE and all it stands for. ECW was great, but remaining bitter about its end and clamoring for that "real sports feel" it has even in 2007 felt cliched. I mean, come on, how can you try to convince me that One Night Stand 2005 wasn't incredible? And I must have seen "Rie Flair" and "Ravan" a thousand times. Skip this one.

[Nat Medlen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to this book and gave it over half the book before I decided that I could not continue any further. The story reads like Williams got too locked into the sensationalism of the story and did not go into the underlying story for much of the book. However, just when that seems to be the case for the whole book there will be a long portion of insider minutiae that does not really advance the plot. The other problem I had with it was that it was set up to go chronologically, but then would make time jumps from the early 90's all the way to the very end of the promotion in 1999-2001. Williams focuses a lot of the novel, appropriately I think, on Paul Heyman/Paul E. Dangerously. The problem with this is that it switches from the point of view that Heyman is a genius to a few pages later having Heyman be nothing but a media craving fool. Pro Wrestling history will remember Heyman as somewhere in between these two extremes, but neither will be his lasting legacy I think.

[Michael Knolla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to Audiobook after listening to “Nitro” as ECW a neglected aspect (unsurprisingly given the latter book’s focus on the business and TV side where ECW was never as influential as it was on the booking/creative and style sides).

Biggest issue is it never fully decides what type of history it wants to be. There is a strong central spine to the book in its analysis of Paul Heyman. The author however is always more than willing to take multiple detours, many of which seem highly influenced by availability of interviews to quote, even when it jumbles timeline or gets pretty far away from the main event, so to speak. Which is not to say those detours aren’t interesting, longtime fans of ECW will probably love them. They just dull the barb wire sharp edge the material calls for.

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) was founded in 1992. This wrestling company was known for their use of weapons in matches, such as tables, ladders, chairs, etc. Several famous names spent time in ECW, including notoriously annoying Paul Heyman, Chris Benoit, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and Eddie Gurrero. ECW was in direct competition with the WWE until it went under in 2001. Many elements of ECW can be seen in the current wrestling era, such as the matches with weapons and some of the remaining stars. This book gives a decent history of the ECW, and I am sure diehard wrestling fans would appreciate it more than I did. It is currently available on Audible Plus if you are interested in giving it a listen.

[Luke Koran · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a refreshing look at a piece of professional wrestling history that has often been rewritten and told through the lens of WWE, ECW makes itself heard loud and clear in these extreme, unauthorized pages. At times, simply rattling off match results bogged down this reading experience - but for the most part, you definitely get a fantastic scope of ECW's trajectory and realize the numerous, continuing influences that still appear on wrestling programming today. Most importantly, you get a clearer look at the creative genius of Paul Heyman and the sheer passion exhibited by the wrestlers and fans who lived and breathed the letters E. C. W.

[I.D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decently in depth look at the history of ECW up to 2005. If you’ve seen the DVDs or lived through the era you probably won’t learn all that much but if not, you will for sure. The only real issue here is the poor editing, loads of typos etc. But since ECW could be so sloppy I guess that’s almost apt.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audio book....Good overview of the history of ECW.If your at all familiar with the company it’s not going to put out too much new information for you.But if your a novice with the company it’s a great history.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a brisk read that covers the details of ECW without sounding like an extra long Wikipedia article but it really comes to life right at the end where it walks you through just how stubborn, and either incompetent or spiteful Vince McMahon was when he relaunched ECW. What a dipshit.

[Tim Hoar · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is not always great. It’s pretty workmanlike and at times repetitive. And it goes on too long after the original ECW dies. But it’s a nice history of a very unique company in modern wrestling history.

[Optimus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is awesome.Its a true and unfiltered look at all the sides ECW had.Innovation,trailblazing,money problems,interaction with fans...basically read this if you want an unbiased look at ECW.

[Nmnjhhlhlh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty good book about the history of ECW. It leads in the WWECW era and ends around 2005.

[Salfaraz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, I loved ECW.

[Boyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book on the history, and how wrestling was in the tri state area.

[Cortney Holbrook · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read

A good read till the end, if you can look past the many grammatical and spelling errors. Anecdotes and inside from the ones who were there.

[Jiro Dreams of Suchy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the best ECW book

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong historical context that well-sources. Slightly biased, but that’s to be assumed going in. We’ll worth the read

[Not · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fuck Vince

[Dylan Guest · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad by any means, but it did feel a little directionless at times, like it kinda went in a linear fashion but not exactly. I'm wording this poorly...

[Chris Wroblewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great look into the history of the wild and chaotic wrestling company known as Extreme Championship Wrestling.

[Amanda ☆ Nana's Books ☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on a time in wrestling history I wish I could have enjoyed in person.
Also, I have always loved Paul Heyman and enjoyed learning more about him.

[Robert Hobbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a longtime fan of Extreme Championship Wrestling and its legacy in the wrestling world, I went into this book hoping for a deeper dive into the rise and fall of one of wrestling’s most influential promotions.

Overall, this is a decent book in terms of content. It does a solid job laying out the history of ECW, pulling in quotes and stories from some of the wrestlers themselves and filling in a few gaps about events and backstage moments that fans have speculated about for years. For anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes history of ECW, there are definitely nuggets here worth hearing.

Where the book struggled for me was in its flow. The narrative often feels scattered. Just as the story starts to settle in on one personality or moment, it abruptly shifts to someone else or another storyline entirely. Instead of allowing the reader to really explore a particular figure or era, the book tends to bounce around, which made it harder to stay fully engaged.

To be fair, telling the complete story of ECW in one book is almost impossible. There are simply too many personalities, backstage dynamics, and chaotic moments to capture everything cleanly. But this book seems to struggle with deciding what deserves deeper attention and what should be left out, and the result is a presentation that can feel a bit jumbled.

Because of that, I found myself consuming the book in pieces rather than as a continuous narrative. I approached each section more like a collection of new stories or facts about ECW rather than one cohesive historical account.

In the end, it was worth the read for the additional insight and anecdotes. But the structure and pacing kept it from being something I’d revisit.

For me, this falls firmly into the category of a one-time read—interesting for the material it provides, but not a book whose presentation really works for me.