ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) is a professional wrestling brand for World Wrestling Entertainment, based on the independent promotion that lasted from 1993 to 2001, Extreme Championship Wrestling.
It premiered in the US on June 13, 2006 with a weekly television series. The brand is one of WWE's three brands, the other two being RAW and SmackDown!.
In 1993, a young promoter named Paul Heyman had recently been handed the reins of Eastern Championship Wrestling. Seeing that the world of sports-entertainment was in need of change, Heyman decided to take the fledging company and kick it into overdrive.
Bringing in a collection of fearless wrestlers like Tommy Dreamer, Sandman and Sabu, he began staging events that offered fans a breathtaking mix of brutal action and cutting-edge wrestling.
The result was Extreme Championship Wrestling. With its take-no-prisoners mindset, ECW quickly won a loyal following whose fevered chants of "ECW! ECW! ECW!" rang to the rafters of the bingo hall the company called home.
By the beginning of the millennium, ECW had grown from local sensation to national phenomenon. ECW stars had been seen on Monday Night RAW and had brought the company to The Nashville Network (now Spike TV).
However, mounting financial pressures would prove to be the company's undoing. In 2001, Heyman was left with no choice but to file for bankruptcy.
Although it seemed ECW was dead, the company refused to stay buried. In 2004, The Rise and Fall of ECW went on to become one of the highest-selling DVDs in WWE history.
The success of last year's pay-per-view event ECW: One Night Stand at last set the stage for a dramatic and unprecedented return.