Tom Misnik ECW

This page is about Tom Misnik and his work during the original ECW promotion.

Tom Misnik provided a tremendous amount of help to serve as a bridge between ECW and the growing loyal ECW fan base. We have been in communication with Tom and he has been helpful to this website on several topics such as clarifying missing historical information, confirming ECW trivia questions and much more.

Tom sent us some of his background regarding ECW including running ECWnews.com and being instrumental in running the fan Q&A afternoon session each year before the annual Cyberslam event in Philadelphia.

Here is more on Tom’s background:

Tom started doing a synopsis report of the weekly ECW tv show and posted to the online wrestling newsgroup http://rec.sport.prowrestling (some of the archives – click here)
This was in the mid 90’s, and he started showing these and the ECW-based posts to Tod Gordon. Tom then worked with Tod to organize first convention, which was around the “Double Tables” card in Feb of 1995. The night before was show at Flagstaff in Jim Thorpe, PA. The first convention guests were Sandman, Tod Gordon and Public Enemy.

Another convention was held in the summer of 1995, with Q/A session held at airport hotel. That then grew into the CyberSlam events, which Tom organized.

In mid 90’s he also co-hosted the weekly ECW chat in AOL Wrestling room which then grew into the Prodigy pre-show chats with wrestlers at the Travelodge hotel. Those were run by Bob Ryder, with his assistance corralling the guests. That eventually grew into a live play by play from the ECW Arena.

In 1997, Tom was approached by Shane Douglas to organize a CyberSlam-like event around the November to Remember in Pittsburgh. He then founded the website http://ECWNews.com (click the button above to see the most-complete archived snapshots of the website), which ran ECW-related news, interviews, opinion columns, photos, and was the base for the CyberSlam events.

The ECWNews awards were presented at the Q/A sessions to the wrestlers and they were actual awards. Tom also sat in the front row for most of the ECW Arena shows, behind the timekeepers table with ECWNews.com staff and close friends. Got very close to a lot of the action & sometimes right in the middle of it.

Tom also a fixture at local spot shows & attended ECW PPV events reporting for http://ECWNews.com as the shows went on.

After ECW stopped running live events, Tom worked some with Dan Kowal for his woman’s wrestling group GLOOW. Tom also worked with 3PW and finally with Bay Ragni (who wrestled as Chubby Dudley) at his Liberty All-Star Wrestling.

*** Tom also wanted to emphasize two people who were incredibly important behind the scenes for getting spot show venues for ECW: Ed Zohn and Dan Kowal. ***

This is the Wikipedia page for Cyberslam which also mentions the fan conventions held before the shows each year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberSlam

ECW Memorabilia (From Tom Misnik)

In mid-April 2024 Tom was kind enough to share some photos from his collection of 1995 T-shirts autographed by the ECW talent. Many of these are rare shirts on their own, let alone with the autographs on them.

Tom said that these were gifted to him by Ed Zohn, and the red shirt is the shirt made for the first ECW fan convention in 1995. According to Tom the red shirt is same T-shirt worn by Sandman to the ring during that era.

Also from Tom, the “Back to the Extreme shirt was for the summer of 95 convention. During that time, Late Night with David Letterman was so popular, we put up the top 10 list on the back. Those shirts were for the fans, the wrestlers were given a special edition shirt, with the “Back to the Extreme” logo on the back and the front featured “Hardcore Wrestler”, you can see Tommy Dreamer wearing that version of the shirt in his cage match with Raven which featured the chairshot around the world.”

Tom was kind enough to share images from some of his personal ECW memorabilia. These include match listings, an Eastern Championship Wrestling pen, and the front cover of the ECW Hardcore Merchandise catalog (November 1999).

Thank you to Tom for providing these to us and preserving some valuable ECW history.

If you wish to learn more about other ECW alumni then click this link: ECW roster and employees

If you would like to watch original ECW video content on the WWE Network (or Peacock Network) then visit this link: ECW on the WWE Network