The name still rings out in promotions around the world today; 'E-C-W, E-C-W, E-C-W'. By all accounts the third promotion in major North American professional wrestling during the heady days of the 1990s, Extreme Championship Wrestling was the rule-breaking rebellious youngest son of the pro graps family. It would go on to become a humongous influence on both professional wrestling today and professional wrestling over the 15 years since the doors closed on the original incarnation. Well, original incarnation isn't exactly true, as before it was taking things to the Extreme the promotion was merely Eastern Championship Wrestling. The ECW championship was introduced in April 1992, with Jimmy 'Superfly' Snuka crowned the first champion by defeating Salvatore Bellomo to become the first champion. Numerous men had reigns under the Eastern banner, but it wasn't until Shane Douglas picked up the title in 1994 that things really took off. This is also when WWE begins to recognise the championship reigns. Taking Douglas as our starting point, 39 different chapters were written into the ECW World Heavyweight Championship book by 28 different men. Which chapters were the longest? Who held the ECW World Heavyweight Championship for the longest time, an impressive feat considering the hot potato nature of world titles when the company was at its peak? Here are the 10 men who held the strap for the longest. As noted, I am using only WWE recognised reigns for this list.
Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.
