On This Day...

On This Day: Sunday March 21st 1999

ECW Living Dangerously '99 - Jerry Lynn vs. Rob Van Dam for the ECW World Television Championship

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Extreme Championship Wrestling sat in third place in the "big three" battle for wrestling supremacy in the 1990s. With a very limited budget and a product generally considered too "extreme" for a national or global television audience, ECW was never going to be able to complete with the likes of the WWF and the WCW as far as exposure and commercial success goes. Not that they didn't give everything to attempt to break into the mainstream anyway!

In the early and mid nineties professional wrestling was very character and gimmick orientated. Wrestling offered a wide audience a colourful, often family-friendly product and catered mainly to its younger fans. When Paul Heyman took the reigns of Eastern Championship Wrestling in 1993 and its newly crowned Heavyweight Champion Shane Douglas threw down the NWA belt, the promotion spat in the face of tradition. Eastern Championship Wrestling severed all ties with the National Wrestling Alliance and became Extreme Championship Wrestling, offering a brand of adult-orientated violence that really seemed to strike a chord with some of WWF and WCWs more mature fans. However the belief that ECW was all about blood and violence is most certainly a myth. ECW offered a brand of solid wrestling also and two men, over the course of the promotions existence, arguably did more to promote the great talent in ECW than anyone else.

The series of matches that "The Whole F'N Show" Rob Van Dam and Jerry Lynn had were unrivaled in ECWs nine year history. Rob Van Dam held the ECW TV Championship for 23 months, something unheard of in quite some time in WWF and WCW. His title reign helped bring tradition to the company and as he fought off challenger after challenger over that period, he became the companys top draw. During his reign RVD met no challenger whom he worked better matches with than Jerry Lynn, the two having their first match in late 1998. It would be in 1999, however, when the two next hooked up and became the professional wrestling story of the year with their epic series of matches.

In February of 1999 the two would meet at Crossing the Line. However the budding rivalry would really ignite 13 years ago today on Sunday March 21st 1999 in Asbury Park, New Jersey at ECWs Living Dangerously pay-per-view event. For 22 minutes the two would work a classic, flowing encounter as the momentum shifted from man to man. The men would wrestle a solid ground game, quick successions of reverals and pinning combinations that literally brought a hungry, respectful crowd to their feet in admiration and, in true ECW fashion, the action would spill out to the floor and into the crowd. The match also had what, in my opinion, was one of the finest finishes I have ever seen. Very intelligently booked to put Lynn over with the ECW fans yet preserve and kick-start a feud that would spill into ECWs Hardcore TV programme, ECW on TNN and another classic encounter at Hardcore Heaven '99. As a result of this match Jerry Lynn would declare himself "The New F'N Show" as the feud grew stronger. This great partnership wouldn't end there however. The classic series of matches between these two men would continue into 2001 in ECW and also, after the companys demise, into the WWF as they met for the Hardcore Championship on an edition of Sunday Night Heat. The two would hook up again many years later in TNA in the culmination of an outstanding, breath taking rivalry.

Should you not be familiar with Rob Van Dam, Jerry Lynn, ECW or should you simply think that ECW was all about blood & guts, I really can not think of a better way to introduce yourself to what the product was really all about, or the talent these two great men possessed, than with this great match.