>It is wild to think about ECW now. It deserves at least some
>credit for creating some energy on earth to make more people
>feel like they could start their own rasslin companies.

i think Jim Cornette might get take umbrage haha. SMW beat Heyman to ECW by a few years. that being said your point stands. ECW had the internet to work with and eventually became something I could see on syndication in Detroit, whereas i never saw SMW before the last few years. since i missed the territory days by just this><much (and Detroit wasnt in SMWs region), ECW was the first TV i ever saw outaide of the Big 2.

>TNA

i feel like ol' Double J was destined to give it a go regardless lol

>PWG, ROH, WWN, Chikara, and places like this come to mind. Now
>sure, we're very fortunate that lots of those feds didn't go
>overboard on the violence like ECW wasn't above doing. But
>still, the world is a better place when rasslers have multiple
>places to go work. That's one of Corny's really strong talking
>points about 'tha territory days'. If you left/had a falling
>out at one place, you could show up some other place and
>either:
>- do the same stuff again in another town (IE: the 'get
>suspended and show up as an alternate character' gimmick;
>redoing storylines/feuds, sometimes with all of the same
>people and match finishes)
>- do something completely different and have a clean af slate
>because people weren't going to make a habit of chasing you
>around the territories yelling your old/completely different
>gimmick at you

in listening to old pods of his, and where I am now he's going deep into what wrestlers were making at various times in various territories, and its nuts. people all over America making Wrestlemania payoffs once or twice a month in the flagship town of a weekly territory.

I have to believe the territory system forced stuff to be more creatively inspired yet with minimal fakery. its crazy to think about how good stuff had to be to go buy a ticket every. single. week. and not even always on the weekends, but like, Tuesdays. continually having to do that over and over with different crowds who like different shit made getting yourself over an imperative, rather than thinking you were just gonna come in and do "your stuff"

>(IE: Mean Mark --> Undertaker; Isaac Yankem -->
>Kane; Vinny Vegas --> Diesel; hell, even something like
>Demolition Crush --> Islander Crush --> Brian Adams).
>I remember seeing folks change gimmicks/fed as a kid and
>thinking stuff like 'wait, Ted DiBiase is rich now!?
>Okaaaayyyy'. Or 'Wait a minute, ain't that Diamond Stud!?'.
>'Hey pops, that one dude in Doom has to be Butch Reed,
>right?'.
>And of course, 'damn, Tugboat busted his ass coming through
>that wall!! Bwahahahahaha!'.

my dad and I loved playing this game! in fact, growing up,I had trouble accepting that guys like Kevin were championship level because "Vinny Vegas could obviously never beat Bret Hart!". Scott Hall won me over everywhere because he was so good, but even in WCW the second time i had trouble buying it, and I was old enough to have my license.

The vicious blood-thirsty Sheepherders becoming the Bushwhackers was a big one for me, because the fear of them led me to flee backstage at a Crockett show before I got to meet Sting (Tommy Young let us come back bc we asked for his autograph and made him cry lmao). when they showed up on WWF TV licking babies a few months later I was HOT. i felt like a huge dumbass.

even Stone Cold, it took me a minute to warm up to him as more than a high level IC Champ kind of guy because no one had ever presented him as a King of the Mountain type.

Barry Darsow and Mike Rotunda even retroactively ruined their Demolition and Varsity Club gimmicks for me with Repo and IRS respectively (altho IRS had a little bit of Scott Hall-type redemption with his wrestling), because "oh wow these guys were idiots the whole time" lol.

i could talk about guys switching gimmicks during the Silly Gimmick Era alllllllllll day.