Take a skinny kid on your promotion's ring crew, have him wrestle in t-shirts adorned with dragons and jean shorts for gear, and watch him as an underdog become the promotion's most unlikely "Triple Crown" champion (Heavyweight, Tag Team and Television championships). In his ECW career, Mikey defeated 2 Cold Scorpio and Steve Austin, and won the tag team championships with Cactus Jack. Between May 1994-May 1996, when the promotion also featured the likes of Rey Mysterio, Psicosis, Konnan, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Jericho and many more later legends, it was Whipwreck who was the main event performer. With less than two years of significant ring-time, Whipwreck was certainly less-than-polished, but it was in his lack of acumen by comparison to the likes of so many others in the ECW that made him a unique attraction. Returning to ECW after a one-year sojourn to WCW in 1998, he returned and reinvented himself as the mentally unhinged Mikey Whipwreck who was managed by James "The Sinister Minister" Mitchell, and teamed with then Japanese sensation Yoshihiro Tajiri. At the end of ECW, Whipwreck and Tajiri's matches versus the likes of the Full Blooded Italians (Little Guido Maritato and Tony Mamaluke) were some of the world's most innovative tag matches for that era.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
