When people look back at the great venues in the history of professional wrestling, they list places like Madison Square Garden, Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall, the Cow Palace in San Francisco, and lucha libre’s cathedral, Arena Mexico. But any real list also has to include a crumbling, dirty Philadelphia warehouse on the corner of South Swanson and West Ritner Street.
The 2300 Arena (formerly known as Viking Hall, and, most pertinent for today, ECW Arena) found itself at the forefront of two pro wrestling revolutions. First, it was the home of ECW—Extreme Championship Wrestling—the foul-mouthed, bloody alternative to the sanitized mainstream wrestling of the 1990s. Later it became one of the hubs of the indie wrestling boom of the 2000s, where promotions like CZW, Chikara, JAPW, and ROH blazed their own path.
Last week, AEW—All Elite Wrestling, the mainstream alternative to WWE—began a residency at the 2300 Arena. For two weeks in Philly, it will tape its main shows, Dynamite and Collision, as well as ROH (formerly an indie, now a subsidiary of AEW), and ACTION DEAN (the third in a series of tribute shows with a 2000s underground sensibility). In recognition of that, here are the 10 greatest matches in the history of the 2300 Arena.
10. Bryan Danielson vs. Shingo Takagi, Dragon Gate USA (July 24, 2010)
This match took place during the two months in 2010 when Danielson was temporarily fired from WWE for choking Justin Roberts with his necktie during the first Nexus angle. Danielson went on a 17-match run in the indies, and this was his most high-profile bout: the main event of Dragon Gate USA at the Arena, an attempt by the Japanese wrestling company to run shows in the U.S. The match was a big-bomb-throwing workrate clinic, full of big suplexes, hard strikes, and counter-heavy near-fall sections. These two names on a poster promised a specific kind of thing, and their bout delivered exactly that. Both guys executed their offense with power and precision, and by the end the crowd was on their feet. This type of match is pretty standard in current wrestling, but this was one of the style’s formative moments—and it still feels high-end 15 years later.
9. Claudio Castagnoli vs. Darby Allin, AEW Dynamite (August 27, 2025)
You can certainly call it recency bias, but ECW Arena has a long history of classic David-vs.-Goliath matches, and last week’s Dynamite showdown felt like the natural evolution of those. Darby is today’s greatest punching bag—a modern version of Spike Dudley or Mikey Whipwreck—a little guy who’s willing to take horrific punishment and keep clawing his way forward. Some of the spots in this match felt straight out of a Pantera-scored ECW intro clip from the late ’90s: Darby flying out of a grocery cart into a set of chairs, his Coffin Drop from the top of the steel girder, and Claudio’s running press slam through the ringside announce table, which was an even crazier version of Bam Bam Bigelow throwing Dudley into the crowd. Claudio is awesome at being a sadistic prick who pulls wings off butterflies for fun, and Darby has come down off a mountain more determined to die than ever.
8. Team Ca$h (Chri$ Ca$h, J.C. Bailey, Nate Webb, and Sexxy Eddy) vs. Team Blackout (Ruckus, Sabian, Eddie Kingston, and Jack Evans), CZW (December 11, 2004)
Combat Zone Wrestling is the post-ECW pinnacle of inane pro wrestling violence, and this match was truly the height of the indie’s reckless disregard. It featured eight of the most unhinged kids around trying very hard to outdo one another with masochism. This Cage of Death match had a set of rules similar to a WarGames match, with two cages and staggered entrances, although instead of only one person taking the pinfall for his team, it used elimination rules. (Being thrown off a cage was one official way to get eliminated.) There was nothing traditional about this match, though—this was as 2004-baggy-pleather-pants as it gets, and I mean that in the best way possible. The whole thing was strictly about how over the top they could go, and it’s never been topped. It had an uncountable number of unprotected chair shots, cage dives, and dangerous suplexes into chairs, ladders, and thumbtacks, in addition to four of the most wild bumps in professional wrestling history. Sexxy Eddy did a moonsault off the top of the cage with a garbage can over his head, and landed so hard that the can warped and split; Jack Evans missed a Phoenix Splash from the top of the cage, landed with his face on a chair, and was later thrown off the top of the cage 18 feet down onto the concrete floor; and Ca$h hit a Cash Flow (a flipping double-stomp throw) off the top of the cage through a table, driving Sabian through another table (this is hard to describe, but just look here—it might be the craziest spot I have ever seen). Every six months, clips of this match get dragged out on Twitter, and people make the same six jokes about how these kids ruined their careers for a hot dog and a handshake (even though, 20 years later, six of the eight are still wrestling). Whatever you say, this match has endured. Honestly, it might work better as a four-minute highlight video set to nu metal than as an actual match—but it would be the greatest four-minute highlight video set to nu metal in pro wrestling history.
7. Tommy Dreamer vs. Raven, ECW (June 6, 1997)
At its most transcendent, ECW was maximalist insanity, overstuffed and overloaded, and this might have been its most overloaded moment. First, we have the end of the yearslong Tommy Dreamer vs. Raven feud. Raven was heading to WCW, and Dreamer had one last chance to finally pin him in the ring. What resulted was a greatest-hits Raven vs. Dreamer match, with table spots, chairs, blood, referee bumps, and catfights, all leading to Dreamer’s long-awaited victory. Then, because ECW never gave one ending when four would work, we had three straight “lights out” surprises, with Rob Van Damn, Sabu, and Jerry Lawler all invading the ECW arena waving the WWE flag. They took out the entire ECW roster while Lawler cursed the crowd, until Taz finally came in to run them off. This kind of everything-including-the-kitchen-sink booking has been used over and over in the decades that followed, but rarely with this kind of sublime (irate) reaction.
6. Tajiri vs. Super Crazy, ECW (January 15, 2000)
Tajiri and Super Crazy were frequent dance partners in ECW, wrestling each other more than 60 times in the promotion. This was their most memorable meeting—a Mexican Death Match that added blood and violence to what had mostly been a technical wrestling-centric feud up to that point. It’s an incredible Tajiri performance; he was just a nasty, contemptible prick here, contrary to his more well-known comedic persona in WWE. He cut Crazy up, then seemingly tried to decapitate him by throwing chairs right at his head from point-blank range. (Crazy ducked, and the chairs went careening into the crowd. Liability laws apparently hit different back then.) Tajiri mocked his bloody, staggering opponent and looked like he was trying to rip his mouth open with a wrench. By the time Crazy made his comeback, the crowd was rabidly behind him as a rallying babyface, an impressive reaction for a promotion full of cool heels and irony-soaked fans. By the end, they weren’t just chanting for cool spots but fully wanted to see Crazy triumph, a magic trick that is harder and harder to pull off in a 21st-century wrestling environment.
5. Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Psicosis, ECW (September 16, 1995)
These two kids (Rey was 21, Psicosis 25) were given a big spotlight early in their careers, and they went out and changed wrestling. This was not the best match between the two (either the AAA match six days after this one, or their contest at WCW Bash at the Beach would probably take the cake), but it was the most seismic. ECW was reeling a little from the loss of Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, and Chris Benoit, and saw these two as possible standard-bearers for the “serious wrestling” half of ECW. Before the match, ECW promoter Paul Heyman told them, “My ring is your canvas. Paint me a Picasso,” and they delivered with the kind of breathtaking speed and athleticism that hadn’t existed in U.S. wrestling before then. The whole bout was a sequence of moves that no one had seen or even imagined before. Every modern high-flying high-spot artist in both the U.S. and Mexico can begin their evolutionary tree with this match.
4. Sami Callihan vs. Danny Havoc, CZW (December 12, 2009)
CZW ran more shows in the 2300 Arena than any other promotion. A redheaded stepchild of ECW, CZW took the blood, gore, barbed wire, and glass of its predecessor and ramped it up several notches. Its annual Cage of Death match was the best example of what it could deliver, and this bout was CZW’s magnum opus. The backstory: Sami Callihan had been attacking Danny Havoc for months before this match. For his part, Havoc was the harebrained Frank Lloyd Wright behind some of the wilder construction projects in CZW history, innovating new, ghastly structures from which violence could unfold time and again. He outdid himself for his biggest match—the cage had two sides of yellow steel, two sides of barbed wire jutting out from the ring at a 45-degree angle with plates of glass on them, a scaffold with panes of glass and electrified barbed wire, and panes of glass hanging between the scaffold and the ring. By the time the match was over, the ring was littered with broken glass, and both men had thrown themselves into all of it. It was like a Jackie Chan stunt montage mixed with a violent blood feud, and it stands as arguably the greatest death match in U.S. pro wrestling history.
3. Sandman vs. Sabu, ECW (January 10, 1998)
This match features the two greatest icons in ECW history in their most foolhardy and violent match. This was a ladder match leading to a mass of barbed wire. Sabu and Sandman wrestled each other dozens of times, and the quality of the matches varied widely. But if they aligned their pre-match drug cocktail perfectly, magic would happen. This was an otherworldly and deeply berserk performance by both men. Sandman was a sneakily impressive athlete—like the beer-bellied uncle on your softball team who makes diving catches in the outfield without dropping his Coors Light—and he used that athleticism to bump wildly all over the ring. At one point, Sabu dived right into the guardrail and literally broke his jaw. His manager, Bill Alfonso, just duct-taped it up and the match continued. It was ill-advised, shockingly violent, and quintessentially ECW.
2. Eddie Kingston vs. Mike Quackenbush, Chikara (November 13, 2011)
Eddie Kingston at his best was a wrestler fueled by emotion, and this was Kingson at his most emotionally exposed. His promo before this match was his Hard Times or Cane Dewey—a monologue masterpiece, with Kingston as an open wound, conveying his sadness, anger, and fear and placing it all in this match. This fight was the final of the 12 Large: Summit tournament, named after the catchphrase of Kingston’s best friend, wrestler Larry Sweeney, who had died by suicide earlier that year. The victor would be crowned the first Chikara Grand Champion. In the final, Eddie came in with a partly torn MCL and would wrestle his trainer Mike Quackenbush. Quackenbush was placed in the unusual (for him) position of working heel, and he channeled his natural smarminess well, of course setting out to shred Kingston’s already damaged knee. Kingston is the Al Pacino of selling pain, and this was his Dog Day Afternoon. He refused to let the fans, his family, and the memory of his best friend down, fighting through incredible pain to reach his highest triumph.
1. Samoa Joe vs. Necro Butcher, IWA Mid-South (June 11, 2005)
This iconic brawl was a tsunami of violence: half Hagler vs. Hearns, half viral alleyway fight video. Necro Butcher is a wild-haired cult figure who cut his teeth on the U.S. death match scene, known for his thundering punches and willingness to absorb ungodly punishment. Samoa Joe was coming off an epic 645-day run with the ROH title, during which he’d established himself as the Mike Tyson of independent wrestling—the toughest, meanest bully on the block. When they came together, what emerged was the 21st-century Vader vs. Cactus Jack, and this match somehow exceeded that classic series. Necro refused to back down, continuously wading forward through trauma after trauma, including a powerslam on the concrete that he somehow took on his forehead. By the end, he was soaked in blood, still firing away, trying to chop down a tree with a dinner knife and refusing to stop swinging. Joe won, but Necro Butcher’s legacy was ensconced that night. It was an all-time spectacle and a perfect encapsulation of the raging id that is the ECW Arena.