ECW gets a new writer

[CubbyBr 0]

"David Lagana has been replaced as lead writer on Smackdown by Alex Greenfield. Lagana will move to being a writer on ECW." -Wrestlingobserver.com

 

Brilliant move.

[Kizzo 0]

Awesome move...

 

David Lagana is a huge ECW fan......And was Heyman's right hand man when Heyman was in charge of Smackdown!!

[Hawk 34 0]

You could drag Chris Kreski's corpse out and ECW will still be doomed with you know who having the final say.

[NoCalMike 0]

This is nice and all, as long as Lagana and Heyman REALLY have the book, but right now all indications point to Heyman writing the show, giving the script to McMahon, and Vince taking liberty with whatever he wants, sending it back to Heyman and putting it on air.

 

We all know Vince just thinks ECW is WWE with more chairshots, hence, the attitude era, so if Vince and his revisionist history mind is really writing the show, I fear the future of ECW.

[Kizzo 0]

You could drag Chris Kreski's corpse out and ECW will still be doomed with you know who having the final say.

 

Good point!!

[strummer 0]

Didn't Lagana and Heyman having a major falling out a few years back?

[claydude14 0]

OK this is all great and dandy for ECW, but what the fuck about Smackdown!? It's been the most consistantly well booked brand for months, what is Alex Greenfield's notable work he brings to the brand? I fear this means Smackdown!'s depleted roster won't be used as well as it has been, meaning WWE's C-show booked as an A-show may become the C-show booked as the C-show. Although after last night's ECW show, Smackdown! is still the B-show, but I don't expect it to last.

[justcoz 0]

Lagana worked closely with Heyman on Smackdown. He was Heyman's right hand guy when he first joined the writing team. There were talks that their relationship cooled when Heyman was demoted and Lagana pretty much took his spot along with Bruce Pritchard. I also read that Lagana was looking forward to working with Paul when they brought him back on to Smackdown's creative in '04 with that real short stint. I never read of any heat between the two from that point but Heyman was fired for listening in on the Raw creative team's conference call.

[claydude14 0]

OK but what about fucking Greenfield. I'm a Smackdown! fan above all else and this effects Smackdown! the most.

[2GOLD 0]

OK but what about fucking Greenfield. I'm a Smackdown! fan above all else and this effects Smackdown! the most.

 

This pretty much confirms the feeling that Smackdown was about to drop to 3 on the importance scale. They cleared out Angle, they cleared out Orton and now they moved out the head writer.

 

I don't understand it, I don't watch Smackdown because it's on a Friday night and I always have something else going on but from what I heard it was always the consistent well done show.

[claydude14 0]

It is, I only really get to appreciate it due to Tivo.

[randomguy 0]

Smackdown is far and away more entertaining than RAW. There are no long super-boring promos, the matches themselves are good, the comedy bits work, etc.

 

King Booker has been great. Hell, even the leprechaun has been ok. Yes, I said it, the fucking leprechaun has been ok.

 

Raw commits the unpardonable sin of just being boring.

[Scroby 0]

Hopefully this turns out to be good. Its obvious that Vince doesn't trust Heyman's booking, hopefully with Lagana on the ECW writing team now, Vince will have more trust in Heyman's and Lagana's bookings.

[Kizzo 0]

Smackdown is far and away more entertaining than RAW. There are no long super-boring promos, the matches themselves are good, the comedy bits work, etc.

 

King Booker has been great. Hell, even the leprechaun has been ok. Yes, I said it, the fucking leprechaun has been ok.

 

Raw commits the unpardonable sin of just being boring.

 

So true...

[Lt. Al Giardello 0]

I think King Booker is better then any heel on RAW, including Edge. And Lashley is the best prospect the WWE has.

 

As for ECW, what they need to do is just keep ECW in the East coast, because that's were the true ECW crowds are. Only Philly, New York, and New Jersey should get ECW shows.

[Guest MrBriggs]

As for ECW, what they need to do is just keep ECW in the East coast, because that's were the true ECW crowds are. Only Philly, New York, and New Jersey should get ECW shows.

 

 

No, Vince thinks this horse shit "new breed unleashed" of his is gonna be a fucking global phenomenon.

[Guest DaGoodz]

My only hope is that once the WWE guys are out of the picture, Vince will give Heyman 100% control.

 

 

But that will never happen.

[Wrestlefreak 0]

As for ECW, what they need to do is just keep ECW in the East coast, because that's were the true ECW crowds are. Only Philly, New York, and New Jersey should get ECW shows.

 

 

No, Vince thinks this horse shit "new breed unleashed" of his is gonna be a fucking global phenomenon.

 

Exactly. Vince is actually stupid enough to think he can make ECW a global success in it's current watered-down version. Even in it's heyday, ECW had no chance in hell of ever going global.

[Guest Coffey]

Lashley is the best prospect the WWE has.

I definitely disagree with this. Lashley, so far, hasn't shown me anything. Not anything that any muscular babyface couldn't do with his push. He doesn't have the freakish strength that Goldberg or Brock had and he talks worse than both of them. He's a non-fat Mark Henry.

 

I expect WWE to gain more from Kennedy, Nitro & Carlito, honestly.

[Spaceman Spiff 0]

Didn't Lagana and Heyman having a major falling out a few years back?

Sure looks like it.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

^ can anyone copy and paste that, please? DVDVR isn't working for me for some reason.

[ChrisMWaters 0]

As for ECW, what they need to do is just keep ECW in the East coast, because that's were the true ECW crowds are. Only Philly, New York, and New Jersey should get ECW shows.

 

 

No, Vince thinks this horse shit "new breed unleashed" of his is gonna be a fucking global phenomenon.

 

Exactly. Vince is actually stupid enough to think he can make ECW a global success in it's current watered-down version. Even in it's heyday, ECW had no chance in hell of ever going global.

I dunno...

 

I thought ECW had a pretty good turnout when they did a show in Japan...

 

Or were those just ECW matches on another promotion's show in Japan?

[Guest Coffey]

^ can anyone copy and paste that, please? DVDVR isn't working for me for some reason.

Hello everyone. Sorry this took so long, but I stayed away from the board because of all the viruses. This thread gave me a massive headache because of all the complete bullshit people are spouting, but I'll try to clear this up.

 

--Paul Heyman personally hates Dave Lagana and the other writing team liaison Ed Koskey, because they are both interchangeably pawns and suckups of Stephanie McMahon and Dave Gewirtz and both fucked him in the ass and backstabbed him when the tide turned against him, backing up Stephanie when she called for him to be fired when Vince asked for opinions and then joking along about how obsolete and stupid Heyman is while in exile. What a lot of people don't understand is WWE creative acts like a group full of workers; it's a constant political battle with the McMahons literally cutting promos on those out of favor and everyone rushing to agree and work in a good punchline so they seem loyal and right-thinking.

 

--As soon as Steph suggested Ed Koskey or Dave Lagana work on the ECW writing team, Paul personally remarked to a close friend that he felt he was already dead in the water.

 

-- The WWE creative is situated like this:

 

Vince is the top of the pyramid, but he's a roided-up coked-up prescription opiate dazed old bastard. When he's lucid and interested, he's still one of the smartest people in the business, but that's rare. He's largely high, indifferent, or caught up in an emotional rage of some sort. He sort of looms over creative decisions, saying "no this, no to that, I like that, that's cool" but what people don't understand is that he has a negligible impact most of the time.

 

Why?

 

Because everything that is ever suggested is framed towards Vince's prejudices. Vince is very easy to predict, so as long as you say things in a "Vince-sensical" way, he'll agree to it. It's like with ECW: appeal to his interests as an entrepeneur, businessman, and groundbreaking cultural rebel, and he'll immediately relaunch it! Appeal to his contempt for wrestling, non-WWE wrestlers, and Paul Heyman's arrogance, and he'll send Heyman to do PR in Liberia for six months. It's all a matter of rhetoric and who gets Vince when he's weak or there.

 

On an everyday level, everything is run by Stephanie/HHH in a symbiotic alliance with Brian Gewirtz. They don't threaten each other's interests or prejudices; one shoots for melodramatic soap opera bullshit, the other for nerdy juvenile-humored comic book bullshit, and there's a little wrestling to keep HHH and the agents happy. Everyone else is jockeying for position and job security between these two, trying to get a patron like a courtier.

 

EVERYONE on the writing team who has been there for a couple years has made an enemy of Heyman, because they all ganged-up and group-raped him when he fell out of favor. They based their own capability on him being an untalented hack who didn't get the essence of "World Wrestling Entertainment!" They all suspect and dislike him because they know that, if Vince empowers him, their ideas and their job security will be fucked HARD in the ass. The second Heyman gets power, Lagana and Koskey and the rest of those numbnuts are fired or, worse, humiliated and slowly tortured by Vince and the peer pressure as being "out of favor." Being out of favor and shown less capable than another writer is worse than death.

 

Stephanie personally loathes Heyman, especially because of something that hasn't been reported where Paul literally talked shit to her face like no one else has. Her creative supremacy is predicated on him being totally wrong about booking -- more importantly, she just hates him to death. Ace hates him as well, though only because he feels his job security threatened.

 

So, in other words, this is how it goes. . .

 

Vince wants ECW to succeed, but he's in no mental state to achieve it himself and he's become so isolated by his own power structure that he doesn't even know how to go about it.

 

Everyone under Vince is directly threatened by ECW succeeding and hate and fear Heyman, who they desperately want to fail.

 

---Since Smoove asked, his view of what Paul wanted for the first show was eerily parallel to reality. You could take that on very good word. Paul got overruled and fucked.

 

**Not saying Paul Heyman is a genius or would've been a huge success. But he's definitely predictable, and anyone who knows shit knows that wasn't his style.

 

ETA: DVDVR Flashback -- I announce on the board about Heyman being fired from the writing team before anyone on the internet reports it and before the WWE lockeroom knew, then e-mail Dave who reports it minutes later, causing Stephanie McMahon to send a CC letter to everyone in the company shrieking about shutting down leaks in the company and threatening to fire anyone who is caught.

 

ETA Again: I haven't watched WWE wrestling in years, think TNA sucks, and wasn't an ECW fan.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

Thanks.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

I don't really know the credibility of whoever posted that, but I'd say it's damn accurate based on the comments of Dave Meltzer and the cryptic remarks of those in the company over the past few years.

 

It was alluded to in the previous post, but I thought Dave Lagana was the guy that Heyman brought on board because he remembered him from the ECW shows, but Dave subsequently threw Heyman under the bus and took his job because he was a major Stephanie kiss-ass.

[Guest Overworked]

So the basic premise is, if ECW's creative control is in the hands of those who would see it fail, then it will fail.

 

If they can't think to just leave Heyman the hell alone with ECW and just give him the support, then it won't be the successs it would be. If I was Paul, i'd be royally bitter too on how these chimps are bickering over his own Invention trying to get in position to control and or commit its suicide.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

Vince is the top of the pyramid, but he's a roided-up coked-up prescription opiate dazed old bastard. When he's lucid and interested, he's still one of the smartest people in the business, but that's rare. He's largely high, indifferent, or caught up in an emotional rage of some sort. He sort of looms over creative decisions, saying "no this, no to that, I like that, that's cool" but what people don't understand is that he has a negligible impact most of the time.

 

 

This explains a lot.

[Steviekick 0]

As for ECW, what they need to do is just keep ECW in the East coast, because that's were the true ECW crowds are. Only Philly, New York, and New Jersey should get ECW shows.

 

 

No, Vince thinks this horse shit "new breed unleashed" of his is gonna be a fucking global phenomenon.

 

Exactly. Vince is actually stupid enough to think he can make ECW a global success in it's current watered-down version. Even in it's heyday, ECW had no chance in hell of ever going global.

I dunno...

 

I thought ECW had a pretty good turnout when they did a show in Japan...

 

Or were those just ECW matches on another promotion's show in Japan?

 

Those shows were booked by FMW and used ECW workers who were touring Japan as part of the working agreement the two gropus had.

[Lt. Al Giardello 0]

Lashley is the best prospect the WWE has.

I definitely disagree with this. Lashley, so far, hasn't shown me anything. Not anything that any muscular babyface couldn't do with his push. He doesn't have the freakish strength that Goldberg or Brock had and he talks worse than both of them. He's a non-fat Mark Henry.

 

I expect WWE to gain more from Kennedy, Nitro & Carlito, honestly.

 

He's more over then Nitro and Kennedy, and gets louder pops then Carlito.

 

And he still sucks on the mic. He doesn't need to talk on the mic to get over, he gets over on his intenisty alone.

 

Lashley is actually very strong, just look at the RR06 for his strenght when he ran through the Big Show and Kane.

 

A non-fat Mark Henry is a horrible comparison, because Henry was never as over or as good of a worker as Lashley is. A better comparison would be Ahmed Johnson before injurys.

[Anakin Flair 0]

oddly enough, its the political bullshit like this that kills my interest in the company. Because inevitably the wrestling suffers.