Philly on Fire: The ECW Arena in Flames

Brian Damage

ECW was known to push the envelope with certain matches and storylines throughout their history.  Hard hitting chair shots, blood and men on women violence seemed to be the standard with the Philadelphia based promotion. In the mid 1990’s, ECW was the hottest wrestling company in the United States. On one particular evening, that was meant more literally than figuratively…

On October 28th, 1995 during a TV taping at the ECW arena, things got hotter than they ever have before. That night, saw the main event featuring the Innovator of Violence Tommy Dreamer with the Hardcore legend Terry Funk in his corner versus Cactus Jack with Raven in his. The culmination of that match, saw Raven and Cactus Jack take a towel soaked in lighter fluid and wrapped around a steel chair and then set on fire. The idea for the fire spot came from both Cactus Jack and Terry Funk who did versions of it while wrestling in Japan. Paul Heyman agreed to allow it to happen on the show as a big “Holly Shit!” moment. 

After the chair was set on fire, Cactus Jack attempted to strike Funk with the burning chair, but Dreamer stepped in and used his own body as a shield to protect Funk. Dreamer was struck and caught on fire. At this point, the chair was burning uncontrollably and Cactus Jack was finding it difficult to pick up. The original plan was for the chair to bounce off of Dreamer and ricochet back on to Jack. Instead, the burning towel fell off the chair and onto the prone back of Terry Funk. Funk caught fire and began flailing around the ring to get himself extinguished. During the melee, the flaming towel flew into the stands where the fans were. 

The ECW ring crew rushed in with fire extinguishers and began spraying inside the ring and into the stands to put out the fires. At this time, with the entire ECW Arena in smoke and extinguisher spray, most of the fans rushed for the exits. A few fans suffered injuries including burns, smoke inhalation and a broken leg. As chaos ensued, the lights in the arena went out to further an angle involving Dreamer and Raven with Raven Crucifying Dreamer. That led to even more panic and anger from the fans. Heyman realized that the situation was getting worse, ordered the lights back on.

Tommy Dreamer suffered a broken nose and minor burns to his back. Terry Funk suffered the most with second degree burns to his right arm and back and needed to be hospitalized. After the incident was under control, several fans swore that they would never attend another ECW show. As medics were attending to Funk backstage, Cactus Jack apologized profusely to his mentor Terry Funk. Funk legitimately got up and started throwing chairs and garbage cans in a fit of rage. 

After being released from the hospital, Funk apologized for his outburst and insisted that he be a part of the next ECW show to make things right with the fans. The Pennsylvania Athletic Commission investigated the incident and questioned Paul Heyman about it. The video of the incident was supposedly “accidentally erased.” Heyman apologized to the commission and swore that the company would never pull a stunt like that again. The commission gave him a slap on the wrist and a simple warning that if this happened a second time, they would shut down ECW for good. 

A fan did end up suing ECW for his injuries, but the case was ultimately thrown out of court. The only evidence of this incident taking place are pictures from fan accounts and photographers that were ringside during the melee. Despite Heyman’s promises to never use fire during his shows again, that was eventually forgotten and used fire several more times in ECW’s existence.