Year 3 of the ECW/Sci-Fi Channel Experiment

Happy Anniversary, ECW! You defied death and destruction once again to give us another iteration of your life. This time, the WWE has put you on the operating table, sewn together some rather questionable body parts, and struck you with lightning to bring you back to life. It’s been 3 years since Vince McMahon and Paul Heyman decided that ECW return to television for the good of the wrestling world and its fans. So, how have those three years been? Let’s take a retrospective look:

As previously stated in a past analysis, the first day of the revival of ECW was headlined by vignettes of Test and Kevin Thorn, a wrestling zombie getting caned to a pulp by Sandman, Kurt Angle running through Justin Credible, an extreme battle royal showcasing the ECW stars of old and new brawling it out and Sabu winning, and, lastly, RVD getting crowned ECW champion along with the WWE title, only to be embarrassed by Edge and Cena and made to look like a weakling. You’d think it wouldn’t get worse from there but 2006 was good for many things, but bad for most other things. The good would include stars using the ECW brand as a platform to re-apply themselves as stars in the WWE, ECW originals continue their hardcore lifestyles in the ring, more chances to see RVD wrestle, and the debut of C.M. Punk: one of the guiding and shining lights of the WWE today with his straight-edge lifestyle, sardonic demeanor, and his rather amazing wrestling style. The bad would include failed attempts at putting WWE stars over as ECW products, the constant departure of ECW originals for one reason or another, ridiculous attempts to make the show more adult, title reigns that many fans looked down upon not just due to the wrestler, but who they fought, and the lowest of the “low-lights”, a PPV that qualitatively stunk match-wise, length-wise, and any other way possible. Those reasons, along with the slow gentrification of ECW as a whole to make it more “WWE-related” (ex. “Hardcore Rules” being implied changes to “Extreme Rules” being stipulated) made 2006 a very tumultuous year for this brand. To make matters worse, their top star was picked off by police for speeding and possession of drugs. Since he could no longer rep the brand as champ, it would make sense that an ECW original win the belt or something, but that never happened. At the end of the year, the man responsible for the ECW side of the decision-making process, Paul Heyman was relieved of his duties, paid for his employment, and the reins of the show were firmly placed in WWE hands.

In 2007, many more sweeping changes were made. First, many more originals were fired, along with stars looking to revamp their careers on the ECW brand. This was done at the beginning of 2007 as well as in the middle of the year. C.M. Punk lost his first match, deflating whatever push he had for major title contention for about 6 to 8 months. Also, two big storylines took form that year along with two major changes to ECW as a program. First, there was a faction war between ECW superstars, pitting the “New Breed” (Matt Striker, Kevin Thorn, Marcus Cor Von, and their leader, Elijah Burke) vs the “ECW Originals” (Sandman, Sabu, Tommy Dreamer, and their leader, RVD). It started with a random attack on Burke involving a table in January. It then ballooned into straight up factional warfare with the added elements of other wrestlers coming into play, one of which was C.M. Punk. The issue resolved itself when Punk decided to join the New Breed, only to cause dissension within the ranks. They later disbanded, Punk continued his run for stardom, and the ECW Originals also went about their business. Another major storyline involved ECW draftee Bobby Lashley and Mr. McMahon. Lashley was chosen by Donald Trump to face Mr. McMahon’s hand-picked wrestler, Umaga in a “Hair vs. Hair” match at Wrestlemania 23. Upon his defeat, Mr. McMahon waged a personal war on Lashley that ended up with the unthinkable happening. As Lashley won the ECW title at the only ECW PPV of its 3-year tenure, Mr. McMahon defeated him for it, making himself ECW champion. Even though the ECW originals were mad at it on-screen, I could tell they weren’t too high on the idea, but had to exert their feelings constructively. So, RVD, Sabu, Sandman, and Dreamer each had video responses to it. I had a feeling that what they did and said had some grains of truth to them. The belt that symbolized a wrestling revolution was being worn by the chairman of the company that bought them. It was being worn by someone who hated what ECW stood for. It was being worn by someone who despised the acronym of ECW. If the belt had any value, it was long gone after that. Lashley would reclaim the title, then vacate it after being drafted to RAW. However, even as a new champion was crowned in the form of John Morrison in June of 2007, the title would never be the same again. John Morrison was formerly Johnny Nitro of M-N-M, drafted to ECW and placed in the finals for the vacant ECW title for a wrestler who couldn’t make it ( that wrestler was Chris Benoit, and we all know why, by now, right?) Still, this occurrence proved to be helpful to Morrison as well as his opponent at the time, C.M. Punk, as they used the situation to their advantage. As for the two changes that year, they only helped to try and protect ECW for the future. One such change was the replay of ECW without commercials on WWE.com, in case the show was to be canceled. Another change was ECW’s exchange of talent with Smackdown, and later, Raw to help provide the viewers of said brands a chance to see what ECW had in store for you if you watched it. All this did was provide a platform for ECW’s better stars to get over on for the future. This was probably the best answer as to why the Miz and Morrison became rising stars. This was also spear-headed by the then-ECW GM, Armando Alejandro Estrada (I miss that guy). Other than that, a new talent initiative was being situated for the brand, where stars like Kofi Kingston began their slow ascent to excellence in the WWE, and Colin Delaney, who started his fast descent to mediocrity. ECW was on the fast track to change, and the WWE had to be ready for it.

2008 would be a bit of a calendar year for ECW. Many major moves were made to make ECW watchable, let alone exciting, or at least different. The first move involved the removal of Joey Styles from the announce position in an attempt to improve the WWE website after years of tumult and low quality. In his place came the latest hire to the WWE, Mike Adamle. He came from a world of broadcast, including collegiate sports, local sports, and even American Gladiators. The pay he received had to be earned and being a broadcast journalist and backstage interviewer wasn’t just going to cut it. His time on ECW was mired in vast controversy as his quality and expertise was challenged on a number of occasions. He was very green, inexperienced, and error-prone. Instead of improving his craft, the WWE made him the GM of Raw. This left ECW with no play-by-play man, for about a moment. The new team then became Matt Striker and Todd Grisham, as Taz was returned to SmackDown to commentate with J.R. You would think this whole story about announcers wasn’t important, but it became the focal point of many discussions during the year. Another set of big moves that happened to ECW included not just a few firings, but the drafting of Kofi Kingston and C.M. Punk to Raw. Two of ECW’s top stars were gone, leaving room for others to step up, if at all possible. Enter Matt Hardy. He was drafted to ECW to fill in Punk’s spot, which he did excellently. The talent initiative continued that year with great highs (Evan Bourne, Jack Swagger, Tyson Kidd), some tough lows (Gavin Spears, and the infamous Braden Walker), and some in-betweens (Ricky Ortiz, D.J. Gabriel, Paul and Katie Lea Burchill). As the title kept changing hands, including with Jack Swagger going undefeated before winning his in a few months, and Mark Henry’s reign of terror, Theodore Long took over as the G.M. Under his watch, some key things happened, like the return of Christian, which should have been lauded with great attention, but it wouldn’t be so. This was Christian’s new home and virtually no one cared in the WWE offices. The final big move was to put ECW at 9 P.M. to not just appeal to the younger fans, but to also garner better ratings. The one thing I didn’t mention this whole time was how the ratings took a nosedive after the first show, and never rose again. When it debuted on Sci-fi, to some curiosity and fanfare, it reached a 2.7. Through and including 2008, the ratings dropped dramatically from the low 2s to the high 1s, to the low 1s, to even the high 0s. It came to the point where this show was comparable to a 2-hour TNA show, which didn’t say much since that show was starting to improve and maintain a low 1 here and there. 2008 was a great year for talent on ECW, but a bad year for content as the show had many stumbling blocks creatively, but different high points athletically.

As for this year, here’s what we have been exposed to for the first six months: the Miz and Morrison break-up during the WWE draft which sent them to RAW and Smackdown, respectively, Jack Swagger’s continued reign as top heel, Matt Hardy’s departure to SD to terrorize his brother, Christian’s short reign as ECW champion, the disappearance of a few in-between talents by draft or by lack of creative storylines, Theodore Long’s departure as G.M while his assistant, Tiffany, assumed power, a middling mix of athletic competition and bad entertainment, Finlay’s return to being a mean wrestler, the emergence of the Hart Dynasty, Mark Henry’s terrorizing of Evan Bourne which included Tony Atlas’ return to the ring (Tony became Mark’s manager as of 2008), and lastly, Tommy Dreamer’s recent win of the ECW title. How did the fans react? Positively in person, but on television, not so well, as the ratings are the lowest they have been. This is still a high for the Sci-Fi channel, as it still reigns as the highest-rated show on the network. In fact, ECW might be the reason for the imminent name change of the network to “SyFy”, to employ a more casual approach to the subject matter. In other words, the name change is to show that they are more than just science fiction media. There’s still room for growth, in all honesty, for ECW, but I think the fan support has just about disappeared. That, in many short words, was the history of ECW on the Sci-Fi channel up to this point.

Now, I was going to end on this note, but then I got a glimpse of Paul Heyman’s “Heyman Hustle” article for The Sun newspaper. He started talking about how he was not impressed with Dreamer’s title win and how it was meaningless as compared to back when ECW was its own entity. He was actually more impressed with Dreamer’s winning the attention of Vince McMahon with his “ultimatum” (I blogged about that twice, if you need further reference). This was a big thing to Paul because Vince is a hard person to not just impress, but catch his attention. FYI: in the article, Paul Heyman stated that Tommy Dreamer is supposed to be like the John McClane character from the “Die Hard’ movie franchise. John was just an ordinary cop pushed to his extremes due to circumstances beyond his control which forced him to do very extreme things to survive. That’s exactly how Tommy started in ECW. He was an average Joe, whom no one liked, pushed to his extremes by many things (Sandman’s canings, Raven’s mind games), until he finally pushed back. However, what caught my eye in this article weren’t Paul’s views on Tommy. It was his views on ECW.

Paul Heyman made it clear what his vision was for ECW. He wanted to break away from what wrestling was in 1993 and start a revolution. He didn’t want to take part in the way the WWE or WCW did business, and he didn’t want to do what the independent feds did: get local talents to job to the castaways of the WWEs and WCWs that came to this small independent federation. Instead, Paul took the local talents and pushed them as the top and new talents of the federation. Instead of making the local guys lose to established stars that came in, he made them the established stars. This would hopefully set a trend in the business, and it did. This became evident in many independent wrestling companies that existed at the time of ECW or after it, like Jersey All Pro Wrestling, Combat Zone Wrestling, All Pro Wrestling, and the most prominent of the bunch, Ring of Honor. I say that for ROH because, like ECW, it is becoming a new sensation overnight and has become the #3 organization in the world, if not the U.S. Did ROH follow that mindset? Absolutely! In fact, half, if not some of the stars that you see rise into power these days in the WWE has spent time in ROH building or re-building his or her craft. The #2 organization of TNA had this in mind, until the mandate was passed to make their shows more star-heavy for ratings purposes. We now have something of a “WWE Lite” in TNA, but that’s not to say that TNA is not remotely decent at times. They still find ways to put together an athletically-sound wrestling card every now and again, so there’s something there. It’s their lack of re-focusing on the talent that made TNA big in the first place that leaves people disheartened to the product.

Now, does Paul’s vision still exist in this iteration of ECW? I want to say….no. In fact, it is even within ECW where we see new stars get beaten by established WWE stars. But, then again, we do see established stars get beaten by the new talents every now and then. However, can you really count that, since this ECW is a branch of the WWE? Evan Bourne once said recently that this version of ECW is much better than the original. I have to believe that when he said that, it was through his overall love for WWE and need to be a company man. He couldn’t be any further from the truth, especially since they aren’t very similar in most tastes. It’s like comparing apples to grapes. The mentalities were much different, let alone the ownership. What’s so much the same about this ECW when compared to the original except the need to push new stars?

It’s been three years, and this version of ECW has endured many, many things. It has endured many title changes, leadership changes, successful new stars, failing new stars, old stars rising, old stars falling, plummeting ratings, and a general malaise from the viewing public. Yet, like the “little engine that could”, it continues to keep rolling on and on. All us viewers can do is either go along with the ride or just get off at the next train station. Like it or not, this ECW will be what it is until someone decides to pull the plug. You can hope for a resurgence of the original, but the likelihood of that has been all but decimated. All you can do is either change the channel or take pride and joy in what makes you happy about this version of ECW. I’m not going to lie. I do like some things about ECW, and I don’t like some things about it. But, I still watch it, for the good things, because for what it’s worth it shows that the WWE might very well be listening to what the fan in me wants. But, just as suddenly as that can be true, it can be rendered false with a lot of nonsense. To sum this up, it’s been 3 years, and ECW might not have found the true identity it needs to separate it from its other brands, except maybe its ratings. The best one can do is just accepting this as ECW’s identity: an ever-changing brand, far departed from its hardcore roots. What a difference 3 years can make, right?