ECW in its original format will never return. You've got companies like CZW and JCW that focus a great deal, if not all, on the hardcore style of ECW and neither of those companies are going to be big deals outside of the independent scene. A big reason why is because, frankly, television as a whole has changed.
As a whole, the country is far more politically correct now than it was during the mid to late 90s. That's a good thing in some ways and a bad thing in others. ECW was pretty damn raunchy at times and almost always controversial. That raunchy, hardcore style mixed with controversial angles is what got ECW noticed but, at the same time, is one of the key factors that limited it & ultimately led to its demise. Even when ECW landed a deal with TNN, which is now Spike TV, a lot of the heart of ECW had to be cut in order to be shown on television.
Personally, I was never a big fan of ECW. When I first discovered it, it had a novelty about it in that it's hardcore style was different from what we saw in WWE & WCW at the time. The novelty, for me, soon wore off when I saw that ECW was pretty much a one trick pony. Every match was under hardcore rules, every match was filled with wild or crazy spots, there was blood all over the place in damn near every match and the few matches I saw that weren't all that hardcore flat out sucked because the VAST majority of the ECW roster couldn't do anything but hardcore wrestling. I soon lost interest.
Another problem is Paul Heyman, as has been pointed out, is a terrible businessman. Heyman has a lot of creative ideas, some of them good and some bad just like everyone else, but he had a poor head for business and that was another big reason why ECW kicked. I like Paul Heyman as a on-screen character. He's a lot of fun and he did have some innovative ideas but, personally, he's not some godlike figure in my eyes as he is to some.
As I alluded to earlier, you couldn't put a lot of stuff on television that made ECW what it was without pissing people off, or pissing people off who run the network your show is broadcast on. Heyman said it best on Raw this past Monday during the CM Punk celebration segment at the end of the show. Fans use Twitter and forums to cry about the good old days of ECW and the Attitude Era, but look at all the whining that's taken place over segment with Jerry Lawler's return a couple of weeks ago. It was genuinely controversial because it made people uncomfortable. That's usually what real controversy does and is supposed to do. It's supposed to shake you up. Most wrestling fans don't seem to want real controversy, they want tired old cliches of the wrestlers swearing with every other word, women wearing as little as possible and blood in matches. Compared to some of the stuff that went on in ECW, Punk & Heyman poking fun at Lawler & Heyman faking a heart attack was tame. Just imagine the kind of outrage it'd spark if they did something like the crucifix angle way back when in ECW. It offended Kurt Angle so much that he threatened to sue if his likeness was broadcast on ECW, as he was at that particular show.
On top of it all, there's all that we've come to learn about the true amount of wear & tear wrestlers go through. We've learned more about concussions and head trauma since the Chris Benoit murder-suicide, we're more aware of the physical effects wrestling has on the wrestlers and that goes especially for hardcore wrestling.
ECW is gone and it should stay gone. It wouldn't fit in with wrestling today, a lot of what made it unique wouldn't make it onto television and hardcore wrestling is basically like fighting chickens, only using people instead.
