ECW a retrospective

[Brahma Bull]

this may belong in old school wrestling, but it was not to long ago that it ended so i put it here.

just for clarification purposes, this thread is on wwe ecw, not the original.

ecw has been done for the past few months, and not too many people seem to miss it. but i want to know if you guys think that ecw as a whole was successful or not.

personally, i think it was very successful. it allowed midcarders to be tested as champions. it had some pretty good fueds such as punk vs morrison, and it helped establish many wrestlers, and reawaken others. punk, swagger, sheamus and kofi all got their starts on ecw and have all made a name for themselves. not to mention miz and morrison elevated themselves to new hights by being on ecw. it also reawakened kane's career a bit, and gave christian a big role after coming back to the wwe. i think many of the main eventers we now have is is result of ecw.

so what do you think, do you guys think ecw was a success or failure.

 

[La Parka]

It would have been a success, if it had been named something different. Like, I agree with 'NXT', because that's something WWE created. But to take the name of ECW, and just make it a pissant little thing on SciFi, I just felt was disrespectful. What if they had done that with WCW? Or NWA? Or, what if they had purchased TNA, and did it with that? It basically feels like Vince was just proving a point, by fucking the name of ECW up the ass, then when the sobbing, victimized promotion was loose enough and no longer as much fun to sodomize, he went ahead and snuffed it with a plastic bag, and had it replaced with NXT.

That's what I think. So no, I don't think ECW was successful.

 

[SirRobinTheNotSoBrave]

When it was restarted, it had me intrigued. But within a month, it was clearly a pale imitation of the ECW I remembered watching and to continue calling it ECW was an insult to Heyman's company. As the above poster said, had it been called something else than yeah it would have been easy to call a success but no, sorry.

 

[Attitude]

I put it was successful. How can you say it's not? Look at the stars it created and who came from it. Guys like CM Punk, Kofi Kingston, Jack Swagger, Sheamus, Zach Ryder, and Kurt Hawkins have come from the WWE ECW. Overall I think it was a success.

Plust everyone refers to Paul Heyman's ECW as the original ECW. It's not. But that's a whole other argument and thread.

 

[waylon p]

But to take the name of ECW, and just make it a pissant little thing on SciFi, I just felt was disrespectful. What if they had done that with WCW? Or NWA?

where to start? okay. you may think it disrespectful to revive the name of a promotion that never REALLY made it and try to update and adapt it for a much larger audience, but i do not. at worst, it is a bit mercenary, at best, it is reverential. if there was disrespect here, it was in the years long delay before executing this move.

wcw. now what vince did to wcw was far more disrespectful. trust me, i'd prefer if wcw had just became a distinct brand within wwe and given it's own show. instead, they brought in the titles, passed them around, often to people who would have had a hard time getting gold in wcw, except perhaps the last couple of years. then they just consolidated them out of existence.

NOW, that is respect, right?

god forbid vince ever gets his hands on the nwa brand.

 

[mulkeymania]

it would have to be called successful in one aspect--it allowed vince mcmahon to totally bury the ECW name.

im not sure what his issue is with wanting to rewrite wrestling history but a lot of fans can remember WCW,AWA,ECW,WCCW and JCP and i just dont understand his trying to crap on every bit of it that he didnt create.

 

[Hodgos]

I think alot of people are missing the point. The OP isn't asking whether Vince showed Heyman due respect by appropriating the name of his company and attaching it to a very, very different wrestling product. Nor is he asking if it was "naughty" for Vince to take what was essentially a WWE B-Show, and call it ECW.

It's pretty clear what Vince wanted to achieve with his 1-hour "ECW" show (and no, it wasn't to "BURY TEH ECWz OMGz!!!!"). He wanted to establish a televised show which EVERYBODY, even a 10-year-old mark who has never been on the internet, would easily recognise as a "minor league" within WWE. He had several reasons for wanted to do this; namely, it would allow him to, say, test out wrestlers fresh out of the development system, without "throwing them in the deep end" right away by putting them on RAW, to be jobbed out/lost in the shuffle. Or, say, to give popular midcard guys an experimental World title run in the minor league, in order to help him decide if they can cut it as the champion in one of the two major leagues. When discussing whether or not it was a success, THIS is what we have to look at. Heymans ECW doesnt even come into it.

That said, I don't think it was successful because I don't think they really allowed it to be. For one thing, they didnt give it enough time- you have to give a new concept 3-4 years to really "brand" itself, IMO. Those young guys I talked about, fresh out of the developmental system, were generally either jobbed out/lost in the shuffle anyway, Swagger being the notable exception (some would point to Sheamus, but I believe he would have been booked strongly even if he'd debuted on RAW, and would be in the exact same position if WWECW never existed). They dont seem to have used a wrestlers success (or lack thereof) as an ECW champion as any sort of factor in deciding whether to push them at a main event level in the "big leagues"; Christian was crazy-over as ECW champion, and he hasn't looked like going anywhere near the main event since it folded.

In a nutshell: it was a good idea (though I, too, wish they'd called it something else), but it seems like Vince never fully got behind it or really put alot of effort into making it work, so it never succeeded and probably never had a chance to.

 

[Spidey Revivey]

Depends on how you look at it really. Yes I consider the WWE ECW television show to be productive but still insulting to old nostalgic fans. There was rarely anything "extreme" on the show besides Kelly's Expose and that same old Sabu-meets-table. Every week previewed some kind of eyesore for the people that it was meant to appeal to.

Instead of setting things on fire or having blood baths, WWE focused on bumping their midcarders into a "Main Event-like atmosphere. Guys like Kane (at the time), Matt Hardy, Mark Henry, Bobby Lashley, etc were all small time before going over to the land of extreme and they all capitalized. This would be like ressurecting WCW and allowing MVP, The Great Khali, and Dolph Ziggler to take the reigns. See how demeaning this really is?


Yes, the original ECW wasn't a big promotion. But it still had a cult following and was highly regarded by other territories including WWE, who would do business with them from time to time.

Now the success of it all is the names that came out of WWE ECW that are in the limelight (or something like it) today: superstars like Sheamus, CM Punk, Jack Swagger, etc used ECW to catapult themselves onto WWE television and it was in a big way. Could they have made it as true rookies on RAW or Smackdown? Perhaps, but the fact of the matter is they recieved their break in WWE ECW. For that I give Vince McMahon props.

 

[Dagger Dias]

WWE's version of ECW was a complete and total failure. They never needed a third brand to begin with. Guys like CM Punk, John Morrison, and Jack Swagger would still have gone on to be successful without it. The ECW exclusive PPV "December to Dismember" is infamous for having the lowest buyrate in the history of WWE. The guys who were in ECW were either going to sink or swim when they got to Raw/Smackdown regardless of if they had ECW or not. Was it an interesting show and was watching it something to do on Tuesday nights? Of course! However, that does not make it a success. It was a failure because WWE never needed it to begin with, plain and simple.

 

[Disturbed]

I can't believe anybody voted for sucess. It did give mid carders television and ppv exposure but really it didn't even build them up.The only one I can think of that helped their career is Jack Swagger and maybe just maybe CM Punk but I believe they both still would have won world titles.

The only thing WWECW ever accomplished was disrespcting the ECW name and the hardwork of the ECW originals.When it first begun I was so excited. I looked forward to ECW more than any other show every week for about the first month. Then I was just in disgust. Every match in the old ECW was extreme rules, well not in the new ecw. Is Vince to good for Extreme Rules? Vince McMahon bringing back the ECW name was basically him pissing on RVD, Tommy Dreamer, The Dudleys, Raven, Sabu, Tommy Dreamer, Taz and all the other originals that put their lives on the line for that company that they loved and were so passionate about.

 

[RVDgurl]

As a huge fan of the original ECW, it took me a long time to be able to look at Vince McMahon's version with any kind of clarity. When the WWE first established ECW as a brand, it was very similar to the original ECW- it included many of the same talent and hardcore stipulations. Whether the WWE intended to stray so far from the original ECW likeness is neither here nor there, the fact remains that what it turned into was successful.

I hated the fact that the brand was called ECW and that the WWE simply used the letters as a means of name recognition. However, ECW was used as a developmental show and it was used very well. CM Punk, Sheamus, Jack Swagger, Kofi Kingston, Layla, Kelly Kelly and The Hart Dynasty are all names that can be found in the mid card - main event ranged on the current RAW and SD! rosters whom all got their intial push on ECW.

 

[jaceynightheat]

ECW was something I loved in my teens. I was lucky to see the WWEcw in a house show when it actually had ECW wrestlers. Everyone from RVD, Sandman, Sabu, Dreamer, Stevie and FBI.

I really liked how it started out, ECW classic guys, some new characters & some others that just couldn't find their niche in WWE. Which is what ECW was, hell at times it had Bam Bam Bigelow, Sid, Scott Hall & that's what I liked about it.

I really think that ECW if presented more like the original, could've filled a niche in sports entertainment. WWE has gone PG, ECW could've been it's more adult oriented program. Film it from the same place every week (manhattan center maybe?) & give it a lower production value.

Technically it was the second resurrection of ECW, since they did it during The Invasion storyline.

I think that if they did a WCW with ECW guys to boost it, it would've been an interesting idea.