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ECW was violence personified and in the storied history of professional wrestling, there will never be another promotion quite like it. Paul Heyman’s project was as polarizing as anything else and people were split down the middle.
One half felt that ECW was a disgrace to wrestling as people were mutilating themselves for the sake of putting on a show and not actually competing. Meanwhile, the other half considered ECW to be the pinnacle of wrestling and despite a whole lot of naysayers, the chants of ECW echoed through every major wrestling arena, whether it was WWE or WCW.
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Paul Heyman continued airing the gory spectacle and on almost every show, the ring was bathed in blood, and wrestlers were sent crashing through tables, sometimes flaming ones with thumbtacks.
Born To Be Wired
The brutality remained the most focal aspect of the promotion from start to finish as that was what ECW fans gravitated toward but even the extreme promotion had limits. One match, in particular, was just so gnarly that Heyman decided on never pulling it off ever again.
The event was titled Born to Be Wired and it was held in August 1997. Terry Funk and Sabu were set to compete in a barbed wire match, with the ring-ropes replaced with barbwire. The world title was on the line.
According to a popular rumor, both Sabu and Funk had to sign release forms prior to the match-up and Funk’s doctor told him, point-blank, that he was going to be in an extreme amount of pain. His opponent, Sabu, was 33 years old but Funk himself was 52.
Upon the commencement of the match, Sabu and Funk went right at it. Funk was particularly brutal during the early portion of the match as he nailed brutal-looking piledriver and then a nasty DDT. Eventually, Funk pushed Sabu into the barbwire to shed the first drop of blood in the match.
Funk then literally crotched Sabu on the barbwire and Sabu started bleeding profusely but he got a little bit of revenge when he reversed an Irish whip and Funk was sent into the wire and started bleeding as well. It is a little pertinent to mention here that Funk had a t-shirt on while Sabu did not.
After beating up Funk for a while, Sabu positioned him on the corner of the ring and did his signature Air Sabu move, using the chair as a catapult but Funk moved out of the way and Sabu crashed onto the barbwire. Ouch.
This was where the match got too extreme for even Extreme Championship Wrestling. Sabu’s bicep was shredded open and a gallon of blood gushed out. The insanely-tough ECW original demanded surgical tape and began patching up his grotesque-looking bicep in the middle of the match. During this, Funk dragged him to the center of the ring and nailed a scary-looking neck breaker onto two chairs.
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Sabu continued wrestling the match with his bicep torn open and towards the end of the match, RVD came running down for the interference. Rob beat up on Funk for a while and then wrapped up the hardcore legend in barbed wire, pretty much literally.
The Match Remains The Most Brutal in ECW History
Sabu launched himself off the top rope and put Funk through the table and the two were laid out for a while. Tommy Dreamer then came running and chased off RVD and by some miracle, Funk and Sabu ended up back in the ring. This time, Sabu cut off a piece of barbed wire, wrapped it around his own body, and put himself through another table with Funk on it. Yes, the barbed wire table spot was done twice.
Now, both wrestlers were tangled in a heap of barbed wire and their bodies were put through hell. After the second table spot, Funk kicked out at 2, but Sabu went for the pin again and this time, the ref counted to three and that was the end of the match. Interestingly, Funk’s shoulders were not even touching the mat, but these two had gone through barbed-wire hell and there was nothing left. Not to mention, they could barely even move and as soon as the match was over, officials had to bring in pliers to free them from the barbed wire.
That was the last barbed wire match in ECW history and many hardcore fans consider the gory clash as the best match in the history of the now-defunct promotion. Heyman, the owner of ECW, refused to hold another match like that ever again as he refused to put anyone else through that much brutality. He also revealed that Sabu required 100 stitches on his arm to close up the gash that he suffered during the Air Sabu spot.
Even Extreme Championship Wrestling had limits. And good luck finding this match online.
