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This week’s Gospel is brought to us by AntiSemanticShow.Com…. This week we’ll be looking back at the ECW career of one of my favorites, “The King Of Old School” Steve Corino.
Ahh Steve Corino, “The King Of Old School”. My earliest memory of Steve comes from the pages of an old PWI magizine. I recall seeing a picture of Steve and thinking, REALLY this GUY is a pro wrestler? Corino was over 6 foot don’t get me wrong, but he looked about 120 lbs soaking wet. Fast forward a year or so, and Steve made his ECW debut. If you don’t know what ECW is, then please stop reading here. When Steve first showed up, he played the role his body was at the time built for, fodder for guys like John Kronus & Sid Vicious to crush, kill and destroy. Think old school WWF superstars, I honestly thought Steve was there to play Barry Hardy to the rest of the ECW locker room.
That all changed once they gave the man a microphone, and “the King of Old School” was born. Corino could talk, and he could really get himself some heat. “The King of Old School” was ANTI-HARDCORE, he was a “wrestler” and would refuse to participate in all the “violent crap”. The early stages of this angle where awesome! He battled the “Hardcore, Chair Swinging Freak” Ballz Mahoney at an ECW and actually USED a steel chair, TO SIT ON AS HE APPLIED A SIDE HEADLOCK. Some truly funny stuff, that was just the start.
Not everyone in ECW could talk, so Steve slowly but surely turned into a “player coach” type figure. With veternan Jack Victory at his side, Steve would guide the careers of Yoshihiro Tajiri & Rhino. It was perfect, Corino would do all the talking, Tajiri and Rhino would do all the arse kicking. Rhino & Tajiri battled with most of the main eventers in ECW with Corino riling them up and every turn. It was also around this time that Steve started a legendary feud with Tommy Dreamer. Dreamer was the heart and soul of ECW, “the Innovator of Violence” was as hardcore as they come so it ony made sense for Steve to work against him. The matches themselves were something else.
Just recently I heard them described by Steve himself on Colt Cabana’s Art of Wrestling Podcast, they were pure comedy. What started as a 10 minute match, would mature into 50+ minutes on the road, and 40 of those minutes were on the microphone. I attended a show where they went 35 minutes +, with 25 minutes of mic work. Serious it was spot, spot, roll to the outside grab a microphone, do some comedy, then back to the spots. AND IT FREAKING WORK, the crowd ate it up!
Steve bulked up a bit in his time, dyed his hair blond, and started to really gain some momentium. In time he would enter a program with one of his idols: Dusty Rhodes. Yes DUSTY RHODES WAS IN ECW. They actually got to work a few bull rope matches, and although Steve lost much of these, he was able to truly establish himself as a main event player in ECW. It was also around this time that Steve started to bleed like crazy, something that would be part of his routien from here on out in ECW.
Immediatly following the program with Dusty, he would go onto have a falling out with Tajiri. This would lead to an AWESOME match at Hardcore Heaven in 2000. Steve didn’t win, but showed such tremendous heart that he was READY for the next logical step of his career.
Steve Corino would close out that same year of 2000, the ECW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION! Steve had truly made it in the “big 3″ and had the belt to prove it. His reign was perhaps one of the more unique runs in recent history. Steve would play face when battling the heels of ECW on the road, heel when battling the faces. A true throwback to Ric Flair from the terriotory days, only difference is Steve was doing it in JUST ECW. It made sense, as Steve never truly fully turned face, and was STILL Steve Corino, but was getting some cheers. Here is said example.
His run was a ton of fun, although it was extremely short lived as he would drop the belt AT THE FINAL ECW PPV Guilty As Charged. With ECW closed, Steve would go onto have an amazing career on the indy scene, and in Japan. He would live out his dream by winning the NWA World Championship, and even got himself a run or two as AWA Champion. Spent some time in ROH, helped establish ZERO-1 in Japan, and is currently tearing it up in ROH and Puerto Rico. Sure he’s never made it to the “WWE”, which is a real shame, but he’s an ICON to those in the “know.”
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