PWP’s Sam Thorne is back and he’s doing something very brave: he’s revisiting the 2006 brand of ECW.
Extreme Championship Wrestling has always been something of an unknown quantity. Many know its reputation, but most modern wrestling fans haven’t actively engaged in ECW for any considerable length of time. Many know it as the place that popularized hardcore wrestling, even though the actual severity of weapon or gimmick matches in ECW were generally quite tame compared to the likes of CZW (Combat Zone Wrestling), FMW (Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling), or that of your typical backyard federation. In short, there was a lot more to Extreme Championship Wrestling than the ‘Extreme’ preface, that’s just what people tend to focus on.
As for the infamous WWE rebirth of ECW, the same situation occurs. Many know the troubles that Paul Heyman faced during the resurrection of his wrestling baby, many know that it didn’t pan out, and many know that it didn’t really reflect the original image of ECW. That being said, almost no one bothered to watch it past a few episodes, or the two initial One Night Stand Pay-Per-Views.
In order to shed some light on WWE’s first attempt at a third brand, I’ll be reviewing episodes of the weekly ECW show on Sci-Fi to really see if it’s as bad as the general consensus claims. Most tend to share the thought that it could have been great if given the resources it needed, but was this really the case?
From a talent perspective alone, there were very few available ECW originals that they could have based the brand on in 2006. Raven, Rhyno, Jerry Lynn and the Dudleys were in TNA, Mike Awesome had recently retired, and many other ECW alumni had already had lacklustre runs in WWE and weren’t likely to come back. Likewise, anyone else who could have been a figurehead for the brand was already in another company, or already working on RAW or Smackdown. That being said, there were still a few decent ECW originals that made it for the brand launch, but we’ll get to that later.
Another huge problem with the ECW rebirth as a whole is simply that it would involve putting another company’s brand above that of the WWE, in order to sell the product or put it over. Historically, most talent or things affiliated with competition such as WCW or ECW has been buried, with very few exceptions.
In the Invasion angle of 2001, WCW and ECW talent invaded the WWE, but by the end of the angle, most things actually related to WCW or ECW had been phased out. Booker T and Rob Van Dam were the only ones to really reach any long-term success out of the angle at all. Looking back at this, surely we should have known history was doomed to repeat itself in a similar fashion?
Even if you did in theory have the original ECW talent, or the willingness to put it over as a brand that’s on par with the WWE, there’s also the fear that it’d become diluted. It’d need to look like an ECW show without pyro and a huge stage, it’d need to look like ECW in its trashy and low-budget style and presentation. Ultimately, we’d get a compromise of both, with a few little things paying homage to ECW on TNN, but the show very much evolves over the four years of its lifespan.
Instead of diving right in to the first Sci-Fi episode itself, it’s only fair that I re-cap and review the RAW and ECW head-to-head and ECW One Night Stand 2006 as they were the true start of the brand. To bring you up to scratch briefly; ONS 2005 got higher-ups interested in the selling potential of a brand new ECW, as it drew surprisingly good numbers when the first reunion show happened. On the back of its success, RVD and Heyman pitched a second show and a new brand which was green lighted.
The RAW/ECW head-to-head showcased some of the ECW originals returning while also spoiling which draft picks Heyman would get for his new show, while One Night Stand 2006 crowned a new ECW World Champion and ignited some feuds for the next week. Please tune back in for my first review in this series, as I take a look at the RAW/ECW head-to-head episode of RAW.
