On this episode of Chewin’ The Fat with Chubby Dudley, Bay Ragni sits down with two men who were there at the very beginning of Eastern Championship Wrestling: The Super Destroyers, A.J. Petruzzi and Doug Stahl. Bay opens the show by calling them the guys who “beat my ass and taught my ass a lot about the wrestling business,” and reminds everyone that before ECW became “Extreme,” these two were the longest reigning ECW Tag Team Champions (and are still to this day!)
This is a true early ECW history lesson from two guys who lived it. A.J. and Doug talk about their very different paths into wrestling, how they came together under the masks, working with Hunter Q. Robbins III, winning the original tag title tournament, and being part of those first wild nights before ECW found television, blood, barbed wire, and the identity that would later make it famous.
The best thing about this episode is that it fills in a part of ECW history that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. Before the Public Enemy, before the Dudleys, before the Eliminators, before the “Extreme” identity took over, The Super Destroyers were the tag team standard in Eastern Championship Wrestling. They were big, masked, rough around the edges, and paired perfectly with Hunter Q. Robbins III as the loudmouth manager fans loved to hate.
A.J. and Doug are also very honest about how quickly things changed once ECW started shifting direction. Eddie Gilbert comes in, Paul E. Dangerously becomes more influential, the Suicide Blondes rise, Hunter is taken away, the masks come off, and suddenly the Super Destroyers are no longer central to the plan. Doug says he powdered out, while A.J. says he could see the writing on the wall.
The conversation also gets into one of the big early ECW questions: did the violence make ECW, or did ECW lose something when the violence became the point? Doug argues that without story, the violence doesn’t mean much, and that fans needed a reason to come back next week beyond blood, chairs, and shock value. A.J. points out that Philadelphia fans wanted violence, but also reminds everyone that the Super Destroyers were doing chairs and tables before it became the whole promotion’s identity.
The Johnny Hotbody story is one of the wildest parts of the episode. A.J. explains how a shot to the back of the head while he was wearing the mask left him seeing stars, and he lost his temper badly enough to rip Hotbody’s earring out. Thirty years later, it’s water under the bridge, but it’s exactly the kind of story that shows how real things could get in those small ECW locker rooms.
For fans of early ECW, Eastern Championship Wrestling, The Super Destroyers, Hunter Q. Robbins III, Johnny Hotbody, Chris Candido, Tony Stetson, Sal Bellomo, Todd Gordon, Eddie Gilbert, Paul E. Dangerously, and the forgotten foundation of what became Extreme Championship Wrestling, this is a must-listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qm62UkmZlM
