Hardcore History: The Extremely Unauthorized Story of the ECW [Hardcover]

Scott E Williams (Author), George Tahinos (Photographer), Shane Douglas (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2006

ECW was one extreme contradiction piled on top of another. It was an incredibly influential company in the world of professional wrestling during the 1990´s, yet it was never profitable. It portrayed itself as the ultimate in anti-authority rebellion, but its leadership was, at various points, working covertly with the two wrestling giants, the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling. Most of all, it blurred the line between real life and the fantasy world of professional wrestling like no other company before it – many of those who thought they were conning others ended up being victims of the ultimate con.

Hardcore History: The Extremely Unauthorized Story of the ECW offers a frank and balanced look at the evolution of the company, starting even before its early days as a Philadelphia-area independent group called Eastern Championship Wrestling in 1992 and extending past the death of Extreme Championship Wrestling in 2001. Writer Scott E. Williams has pored through records and conducted dozens of interviews with fans, company officials, business partners, and the wrestlers themselves to bring readers the most thorough account possible of this bizarre company.

The book sets out to answer several questions: Did World Championship Wrestling really try to destroy ECW by draining off its talent? Was Vince McMahon secretly as a friend to ECW, as he has claimed? What really caused the death of ECW? Who lied to whom? Hardcore History: The Extremely Unauthorized Story of the ECW will address all of those mysteries and many more in a story that is sure to be extremely controversial for fans and critics of both the ECW and professional wrestling.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Scott E. Williams is a criminal-justice reporter and an award-winning wrestling columnist for The Galveston Daily News in Texas. He has been a wrestling fan for more than 20 years and has written two books on professional wrestling, Terry Funk: More Than Just Hardcore (published in 2005 by Sports Publishing L.L.C.) and The Cowboy and the Cross: The Bill Watts Story.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Sports Publishing (March 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596700211
• ISBN-13: 978-1596700215
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #988,454 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Great subject, awful writing, May 22, 2006

By 

chain reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hardcore History: The Extremely Unauthorized Story of the ECW (Hardcover)

As a long time ECW fan I was really looking forward to this book. I enjoyed the stories in the book but it was a difficult read due to the authors writing styles. This was a hard book to get into because the author would continously start thoughts and then seem to wander to another topic without completing his initial thought. Many times he also seemed to start stories in the middle. Very frustrating and difficult to read. A real disappointment since the author seemed to have good sources and ideas they just did not translate to the written word. I would suggest that if you an old ECW fan to pick this up at a library or when it goes to paperback but not waste the money on harcover.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The next wrestling book, April 14, 2006

By 

R. Howell "boriskhan" (Medford, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hardcore History: The Extremely Unauthorized Story of the ECW (Hardcover)

While wrestling television is in a decline, the industry has turned to churning out more and more books on the subject, with which we can largely blame/thank Mick Foley. Don't get me wrong, I read most of the biographies that have been released. ECW comes to the forefront in this 300 page text. The author does a good job on his run down of the history of ECW and the multiple creative characters that developed there and then went on to national exposure with WCW and WWF/E. It's actually a pretty good read but there is a bit of a problem with chronology as the author skipped back and forth in time. I liked the chapter of "where are they now" but the whole book is worth reading as it is not published by the WWE so you don't get the revisioned history of ECW as in the "The Rise and Fall of ECW" dvd or the clone book based on that dvd The Rise & Fall of ECW: Extreme Championship Wrestling (WWE)put out by the WWE. A good chunk of this book almost seems to transform into a biography for Paul Heyman but since he was such an integral force behind ECW that should be natural. I'd like to have seen more pictures of the personalities/characters in ECW. I would also have liked to have seen a title history list of the holders of the ECW championship, TV title, and tag titles.

Certainly worth adding to your collection, but new fan that have been weened on current WWE just won't get it. Children should also be warned away. I found it interesting without getting bogged down by random ramblings about inconsequential details. Thumbs up on this one.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Half-assed, June 5, 2006

By 

Kenneth A. Mcbride (Glasgow, Scotland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hardcore History: The Extremely Unauthorized Story of the ECW (Hardcover)

Hardcore History is not a bad read as such. Lots of the quotes are fun, and you do get a feel for how important and exciting ECW was for action-starved hardcore fans in the early to mid 1990s. Scott Williams' research is a joke, though. He misses out key matches and angles, and gets others confused beyond belief. Anyone who really followed the company would spot these errors a mile off, and anyone else could check them in 30 seconds just by Googling show names. For the *real* history of ECW, John Lister's "Turning The Tables" is still the gold standard.