One Night Stand

[cabbageboy 0]

Exactly and in this case wouldn't it be kind of a just desserts anyway? I do think that Vince is getting off easy here, since in my opinion he hurt ECW more at critical moments than Bischoff. Bischoff took guys from ECW yes, but he actually is correct in saying that some ECW guys were dissatisfied with their pay and/or wanted to be seen on national TV. I don't think there is anything wrong with recruiting talent from what was a glorified indy fed...it's when you have Bischoff getting Tod Gordon to be his mole that he went over the line.

 

But to me the single biggest dicking ECW ever got was in roughly Sept. 1999 when they first got on TNN. What does Vince do? He snaps up the Dudleys and Taz like it was nothing. That to me sent ECW reeling and led to Heyman panicking and putting the belt on Mike Awesome (who then defected to WCW while still champ) and the promotion was screwed.

[Dangerous A 0]

I read a mailbag on the Observer site that summed up the talent raiding situation of ECW. Basically Vince nicely told ECW he was taking so and so while Bischoff didn't say anything when he raided the talent. They both were taking their talent, just Vince was more cordial about it it all. Once fans started getting the drift that ECW was basically a farm system, that was the beginning of the end. If you catch your fan base wondering what how it would be if the top stars of your organization were feuding with other wrestlers from your competition, you have a big problem on your hands.

[Guest Ransome]

Once fans started getting the drift that ECW was basically a farm system, that was the beginning of the end. If you catch your fan base wondering what how it would be if the top stars of your organization were feuding with other wrestlers from your competition, you have a big problem on your hands.

Say what? What about fans dreaming of the possibilities of an Austin vs Goldberg match in 1998? When you've got wrestling companies in direct competition, every fan imagines interpromotional rivalries. How is this a bad thing?

 

And I hardly think ECW being a 'farm system' had anything to do with their collapse; if people did perceive ECW as a 'farm system', why wouldn't fans be drawn to seeing the company and watching future stars of the industry grow from the ground up firsthand? The real damage to ECW came when they would spend so many months building up their top stars only to have them suddenly snatched away, forcing them to start from scratch with new or untested (often inferior) talent - not because of being seen as a 'farm system' by fans.

[nl5xsk1 0]

Because it would be hard as hell knowing that every guy that becomes a standout, and appears to have "future star" written all over him, is going to leave sooner, rather than later.

 

It's like small market sports teams ... as soon as their good player becomes a great one, they know that he's leaving, and it takes away from the joys of watching them get great.

[Dangerous A 0]

Once fans started getting the drift that ECW was basically a farm system, that was the beginning of the end. If you catch your fan base wondering what how it would be if the top stars of your organization were feuding with other wrestlers from your competition, you have a big problem on your hands.

Say what? What about fans dreaming of the possibilities of an Austin vs Goldberg match in 1998? When you've got wrestling companies in direct competition, every fan imagines interpromotional rivalries. How is this a bad thing?

 

And I hardly think ECW being a 'farm system' had anything to do with their collapse; if people did perceive ECW as a 'farm system', why wouldn't fans be drawn to seeing the company and watching future stars of the industry grow from the ground up firsthand? The real damage to ECW came when they would spend so many months building up their top stars only to have them suddenly snatched away, forcing them to start from scratch with new or untested (often inferior) talent - not because of being seen as a 'farm system' by fans.

The difference is when people would imagine an Austin v. Goldberg dream match, they would still envision both guys returning to their respective promotions after the match. With the ECW guys, people knew they weren't going to come back because ECW was small time. They knew ECW wasn't profitable enough to keep guys, so fans stopped investing as much into the product. This perception also limited growth for the company.

 

Your bit about ECW developing talent only to have WWE and WCW snatching up the talent is a prime example of the farm system I am talking about. At first, when guys would jump to WWE and WCW, it didn't hurt so bad. Once it started happening regularly because of the Monday Night Wars, ECW started being viewed as a farm system because people knew that the stars were basically just buying their time until they could be called up to "the big leagues", WCW and WWE. Instead of being viewed as on level with the competition, they soon became the farm system.

 

To answer your question as to why wouldn't fans be drawn to seeing the future stars of the industry grow from the ground up firsthand? Well I don't see OVW as a big profitable promotion. WWE is keeping that alive financially. The answer is the perception of the organization. Why do you think more people go to MLB games and not AA or AAA baseball games? Why do more people watch NBA instead of the NBDL? It's because people want to watch athletes perform at the highest level, not the percieved minor leagues, which is what ECW was to the casual fans and marks.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

I don't think ECW collapsed due to content reasons, or which wrestlers they had or were pushing. They still managed to draw strong crowds on a consistent basis, so their popularity was there even if "the buzz" wasn't. They collapsed due to financial reasons when they decided to compete on a national level with WCW and the WWE. If you look at all their debts, the biggest one was to Acclaim for the videogame. Why did ECW need a videogame? The strong crowds were strong for a small independent company but couldn't sustain a national promotion. So you didn't have a large enough audience to buy that videogame. You didn't have enough fans to pay $100,000 contracts. You didn't have enough fans to warrant advertisers to pay money to be featured on your television show, or to have a network pay enough to have you, and it wasn't enough to cover television production costs. ECW didn't die because the fans weren't there, they died because of stupid marketing decisions by Paul. They'd still be alive and kicking if he didn't actually try to compete with the WWE and WCW, rather than just pretending he was when the company was at it's "peak".