I’ve previously written a list of wrestlers you may not know were in ECW. In that piece, it was heavily implied that almost everyone who was anyone in wrestling wrestled at least once in the Philadelphia promotion. Even with that considered, some of these matches that took place in ECW may have you going “Boy, those are some wrestling matches that surprisingly took place in ECW”, which is handy considering the title of this piece, really.
And it is one match per wrestler, for the record.
Ax vs The British Bulldog
In the Winter of 1992, The British Bulldog was released from the WWF. After receiving growth hormones from a home pharmacy in England, Smith was let go despite having only had the moment of his career triumphing in the SummerSlam 1992 main event for the Intercontinental title in front of 80,000 fans.
Smith quickly jumped to Eastern Championship Wrestling, both bizarre encounters. In his debut, he beat former ECW World Heavyweight champion Jimmy Snuka managed by Hunter Q. Robbins III.
In his second match at Battle Of The Belts, he beat The Masked Superstar in just under two minutes. Masked Superstar, a former WWF world title contender, had too been noted for his role in the WWF in the years prior as Demolition Ax.
Bulldog won the match with his patented running powerslam. Bill Eadie, who portrayed The Masked Superstar, would walk away with this as his only match in the company.
Hawk vs Mr. Hughes
The ECW runs of both Hawk and Mr. Hughes are not unremarkable but a match featuring the two seems out of place in WCW. A guess as to what promotion this could have taken place would likely result in a guess of the NWA or WCW.
Hughes’s career is quite surprising in hindsight, working in ECW, WCW, and the WWF within a span of just over a year. Perhaps his ECW run was most memorable, albeit not so much so, for his work as the bodyguard of reigning ECW champion “The Franchise” Shane Douglas. Hughes faced some bizarre opponents during his ECW run from Johnny Gunn (Tom Brandi, Salvatore Sincere, etc.) to Dory Funk Jr. to Chris Kanyon.
Hawk’s run on the other hand consisted of only nine matches. The most memorable being at the inaugural edition of flagship event November To Remember in 1993. In that, he main evented, teaming with Sabu in a win over Terry Funk and King Kong Bundy in a match for the Television and Heavyweight belts.
Hawk and Hughes actually fought a few times. At events on March 5th and March 26th 1994, Hawk defeated “The Ruffneck” on both occasions. They also clashed at Ultimate Jeopardy as well that month in the namesake match, an eclectically-packed eight-man steel cage in which a harsh stipulation would be imposed on the loser. In case of Hughes’ loss, his manager Jason would be locked in a cage with the opposite team and had Hawk lost, he could no longer call himself a Road Warrior. As it goes, neither man was involved in the decision.
In fact, Hawk never lost during his ECW run, winning sometimes by DQ if ECW booked themselves into a corner. Yes, I know the Eastern was very different to the Extreme iteration but come on – a DQ in ECW?