PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The world of professional wrestling will converge upon Philadelphia in April for the biggest spectacle in the sport: WWE WrestleMania 40. But the City of Brotherly Love’s connection to pro wrestling runs even deeper — thanks to a South Philly warehouse that changed the business of wrestling forever.
Half of that building — at the corner of Swanson and Ritner streets — was a Forman Mills, while the other half was the headquarters of the Vikings, a Mummers chapter. That’s where it got its original name: Viking Hall. Wrestling fans, however, called it the ECW Arena, named after the wrestling company that used it week after week, Extreme Championship Wrestling.
“ECW was started by Joel Goodhart as Eastern Championship Wrestling and eventually sold to (Philly businessman) Tod Gordon,” explained wrestling journalist Bill Apter, “and it changed the wrestling fan forever. Forever.”
Much of that change was thanks to Paul Heyman, who Gordon hired to put together, or “book,” the matches and storylines. With Heyman at the helm, ECW transformed pro wrestling from a kid-friendly affair to a bloody romp with edgy stories and beer-guzzling anti-heroes. It also let the fans in on the act.
“They were extremely interactive and it was extremely violent,” said Apter. “They did stuff that WWE and WCW and all these other places did not do.”
It was something Apter learned firsthand at the ECW Arena, sitting in the front row.
“They have matches where you could bring weapons for the wrestlers to use in the ring,” he recalled. “One fan brought a frying pan. I was between (wrestlers) Mick Foley and Terry Funk. So a fan hands Terry from the frying pan. Terry Funk looks at me, goes ‘Apter!’ ‘What?’ Boom, right over my head a hard frying pan!”
One of the faithful ECW fans was Philly-born Brian Heffron, who would ultimately wrestle for the company as the mischievous Blue Meanie.
Heffron was nine years old and living in Gloucester City, New Jersey when the wrestling bug first bit him. “I went over to my neighbor, my buddy Sean. I said, ‘Hey Sean, you wanna come over and watch the Phillies game?’ ‘No, I can’t, I’m watching wrestling.’ I went, ‘What’s wrestling?’ I went over his house, watched wrestling and I watched Tony Garea and Rick Martel lose the WWWF tag team titles to Mr. Fuji and Mr. Saito. I was hooked.”
Heffron’s love of WWE became an all-encompassing love of pro wrestling, and he knew he found his calling in life. But there was one big problem. “I grew up a severe asthmatic,” he said, “and that hindered everybody's perception of what I was going to be growing up, just because I couldn't participate in a lot of athletic events.”
Eventually, he says, his family found a doctor who was able to treat his asthma. With his lungs improving, Heffron decided to start training to be a wrestler. After training for a year in the midwest, he came back to Philly, where he ultimately found a place at ECW.
“I got into ECW through just hustling,” he said. “I used to go to the shows as a fan. You watch a lot of those early ECW shows, I'm in the crowd as a fan.”
In the early to mid-’90s, ECW was the place to get noticed by the dedicated wrestling fan base. Wrestlers like Sabu, Tommy Dreamer and The Public Enemy became fan favorites, while young standouts — including Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho and even a pre-”Stone Cold” Steve Austin — would cycle through ECW on their way to even bigger things.
“The fact that I was a part of the roster and watching people trying to get in was humbling,” he admitted, “because, you know, I'm just a kid breaking into the wrestling business.”
He would have to wait just a little longer, however, to make his mark, thanks to Mick Foley and Terry Funk.
“Mick Foley went to hit Terry Funk with a flaming chair, in which he wrapped a t-shirt around a steel chair, which he had taped on and he lit on fire, not thinking the fire would melt the tape. And the flaming t-shirt that was wrapped around the chair flew off and hit Terry Funk,” Heffron remembered.
“Terry becomes engulfed in flames, so he rolls out and a fan reaches over the guardrail to try to put Terry out because his arms got all burned. Well, Terry Funk comes back in the locker room and does what I call the Terry Funk Death March. And he's just walking, he picks up, you know, those big fans that [are] supposed to cool the whole room. He just picks it up by the arm and throws it. He's just angry and everybody's just getting out of the way. And so that happened.”
The incident took place on the same show where Heffron was scheduled to make his ECW wrestling debut but the footage never made air. Heffron, as Meanie, would finally make his first appearance the following month — and become a fan favorite over the next three years.
In 1998, Heffron’s wrestling trainer Al Snow called him with the offer of a lifetime: a spot in WWE. The young asthmatic wrestling fan had finally fulfilled his dream of making it to the highest echelon of the business — and was now able to repay the people who helped him make it.
“After I got off the phone [with WWE], I walked a couple feet from my bedroom into the living room where we were living in a second story apartment,” Heffron recalled.
“I told my grandma to put all the bills in my name. And she's like, ‘Well, why?’ I said, ‘I just signed with the WWF.’ And her and my mom were like, ‘Oh my God.’ And from then on, you know, I was able to take care of my mom and grandma, who took care of me. Every now and then I would get one of those ‘You sold out’ chants out in public and I’m like ‘Yeah, whatever.’ I was doing the thing I always wanted to do that nobody believed I could do except for me.”
Heffron’s biggest highlight in WWE was appearing at the city’s last WrestleMania, at what was the First Union Center, “in the city I was born,” he said. “A lot of people don't get the opportunity.”
Another Philly wrestling diehard vying for that opportunity is Drew Gulak. The Abington-born Gulak also got into wrestling as a kid watching WWE. But by the time he started going to shows at the ECW Arena, ECW itself was no more. WWE had not only purchased its rival WCW, but also bought ECW’s assets in bankruptcy court. That left a bingo hall-sized crater in the wrestling world.
“When ECW went away, there was like a big void in that third-tier level of wrestling shows,” Gulak said, “and Combat Zone Wrestling filled the hardcore wrestling gap pretty well.”
CZW, which launched in South Jersey in 1999, started to run shows at the arena after ECW’s demise. The company also followed an “extreme” model of pro wrestling, with bloody, no-rules contests — but veered even further into an ultraviolent style known as “deathmatch” wrestling.
But ECW was more than hardcore violence: the company would also present technical and catch wrestling, Mexican lucha libre and Japanese strong style. Ring of Honor emerged in 2002 at South Philly’s Murphy Rec Center, to cater to fans of those styles.
“CZW is gonna be the hardcore promotion and Ring of Honor is going to be the technical wrestling promotion up the street, and that was kind of the initial vision for the place,” Gulak said.
“That ECW hardcore wrestling crowd was craving that too. They were both at the same time able to capitalize on a big opening in wrestling — and it all happened in South Philadelphia, in one of two buildings.”
The early years of CZW and ROH begat a who’s who of today’s wrestling icons, like Bryan Danielson, Seth Rollins, Jon Moxley, CM Punk, AJ Styles… and Gulak, who would win CZW’s world championship before signing with WWE in 2016. He wrestled all over the independent circuit, but when he wasn’t on the road, he trained at the place that once was the epicenter of the indie universe, the former ECW Arena.
Now known as the 2300 Arena, the venue was pivotal in Gulak’s development. “I usually quote (CZW star) Necro Butcher because he said something really cool to me one time,” he recalled.
“If you can get over at the ECW Arena, you can get over anywhere in the world. They're the most picky, fickle, diehard, pride-themselves-on-being-the-most-knowledgeable fan base, probably for any sport or any performing art.”
WrestleMania 40, on April 6-7, will be the next big chapter in Philly’s wrestling legacy — and for Gulak, being on the show is the dream he’s been chasing.
“I have lived and breathed professional wrestling, I'd say, more than anyone else in the entire active wrestling roster that I'm with right now,” he said. “My life is solely dedicated to being able to make an impact at that show … I've never been more motivated for anything.”
Gulak and Heffron both appreciate what the city has given to the industry and sport they love. From the down and dirty attitude of ECW that inspired the gritty ‘90s wrestling boom to the super indies that spawned the next generation of wrestling superstars, there’s no doubt that the cradle of liberty, Philadelphia, is the cradle of professional wrestling.
For more on Philadelphia’s wrestling heritage, listen to the latest episode of the Jawncast on the player above. You can subscribe to the Jawncast on the Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts.