Intro
One commonality among all wrestling leagues is that there's a championship. From the backyard fed down the street, to the mega-event selling out the stadium, the championship should be the centerpiece of that fed. You can have one, four, or ten, but wrestling isn't wrestling without a championship to be defended and sought after.
With All Elite Wrestling mere less than a few days away from crowning their first World Champion, I thought it might be fun to look back at one of the most important and controversial title tournaments in history, the NWA Title Tournament from 1994, hosted by Paul Heyman's ECW. Sadly, the tape that was sold is less than an hour and a half long, but that's enough to write an essay about. As usual, I'm gonna look at what was good about it, what was in the middle, and what was outright bad.
The Good
Let's get this out of the way right now, Shane Douglas' closing promo. Obviously, this is what the whole tournament built to, and it couldn't have ended in a better, more shocking fashion. Heyman had been playing fast and lose with the rules of pro wrestling ever since he took the reigns as booker, but this was the ultimate crap on, and the rewriting of, the rules of professional wrestling. It set up ECW as a counter culture phenomenon, and Shane Douglas as its intelligent, albeit self important, centerpiece.
As great of a promo as this was, it cannot be understated that the match that it proceeded was just as good. In the journeys into ECW I've made, I've found that Shane is a fantastic worker on a consistent basis, and this match is no exception. Unfortunately, it's oddly played straight babyface vs babyface, likely at the behest of the NWA contingent, despite the fact that Shane was an arrogant heel with a bodyguard on ECW TV. Also worth noting is Todd Gordon's officially christening of Extreme Championship Wrestling, and the promos that Shane cuts afterword (with a cameo by Cactus Jack, who won the tag belts earlier) being chummy and joking about who the best wrestler is between them.
Another historic happening of the show, and one that's woefully under-reported, is the introduction of Matt Borne, portraying an aloof clown persona as he had in the WWF, being squashed by 911. Later on in the tournament, he would assist 2 Cold Scorpio with beating 911 by countout, and align himself with Shane Douglas, which was the start of Borne's "Borne Again" character, a character that played on schizophrenia who would go between a happy circus clown and a raving madman, which, in my opinion, is one of the coolest characters in wrestling. Not to keep harping on Shane Douglas, but he and Matt cut a promo after the events that sets up why the two are aligned, and gives us the opportunity to figure out what "Borne Again" is all about.
Additionally, Heyman cuts a MASTERFUL promo simultaneously putting everyone in the tournament over, the tournament itself, and his charge 911 before swinging back around and making it clear that he, the character, doesn't care about the tournament
The Meh
One of the main problems with this tape is that it is clipped to hell. Matches you'd think it would behoove them to put in full, like Scorpio vs Benoit, or the ECW Tag Title match, they don't. We get clips of finishes. that all looked "meh" at best to begin with. We also get a random Douglas/Pillman vs Simmons/Scorpio match from a different event. Douglas piledrives manager Sherri Martel at the end.
We also get a truly baffling set of promos from Scorpio and Douglas. Douglas basically foreshadows his tournament-closing promo, which is probably why you never see the event in full. Scorpio's promo is full of stereotypical black slang, and he looks wacked out on something. And, because his theme song is "Whoop (There it is)" by Tag Team, he ends his promo with the hook of the song. At this point, you might be wondering, "Why isn't this in the bad category then?"Because he's actually comes across as legitimate unlike.
The Bad
Dean Malenko's promo, oh my land. It legitimately looks like one of those 80s speed dating video tapes, as he's dressed in a polo against a white wall , and monologues dryly to the camera about himself. Velvet smooth voice aside, this can't shy away from the entirely-too-long waste of time that this promo was. Also, you might be wondering, how did ECW decide to put the cap on the Douglas promo that shocked the world? How did they decide to broadcast, even to the thickest layman, that this was real wrestling? Why, by having loveable doofy gangsters The Public Enemy vandalize the old ECW sign, crossing out "Eastern", and spraying in "Extreme". I get the Public Enemy had an extremely (no pun intended) wheelhouse and this was one of those things, but this just felt like the complete failure to understand tone and tact that WWE has.
Conclusion
Skip this tape. It sounds awesome, but you're inevitably going to get conned by how bare bones this tape is. I feel like a "Best of Shane Douglas" montage that's just footage slapped together would be worth your time, because that's what this is essentially, a 1994 Shane Douglas celebration with other lesser characters thrown in.