OAO ECW Thread for 1/2/07

[uhftv 0]

I really dont know the extent of the argument b/w Heyman and Vince but it had to extend beyond the title scene. I was normally used to the old ecw around the late 1990s where they could take midcard or lower talent from wwf and use them correctly in ecw. and when they were really catching on they would be taken back and again they would not know what to do with them and they'd start losing almost immediately.

 

In that sense ecw was like a developmental league, which is the same problem they have now with ovw, nobody seems to watch that show so they give guys bad gimmicks or the opposite gimmicks of the ones that worked.

It was like a running joke Paul would take someone Vince didnt care about like Al Snow and get him over to the point of having to headline 2 ppvs because of his popularity, coming back with some of the gimmick intact, and then I cant remember him ever winning. I think his first match back involved HEAD getting pinned with a shampoo bottle. Yes 2000 was not a perfect year for wwf despite what we want to remember.

 

Heyman even took stiffs like Sid Vicious and Brakkus (who?) and gave them something to do. The problem, up to his dismissal, was as people posted above, no one was getting over AT ALL, both new talent or reused old midcarders. I'd put more blame on Vince and some on Heyman, due to the fact that the roster was so small there were only so many jobbers to be squashed. I dont know what the benefit was to have the FBI under contract just to be squashed on tv, when they would set aside network time to have REAL JOBBERS to put over the winning streak of VITO for godsakes.

 

Aside from Punk, there were taller stiffs like Thorn and Knox getting used, but I think that was a compromise that, even if they didnt work, they were tall so might have a better chance than the usual great workers that Heyman would normally push. (Remember that article where Heyman said he'd like to bring in Dragon Gate guys? There's your nail in the coffin right there) I think Vince is really sick of wrestling in general, and he's just treading water, with his illusion of having 3 shows and 30 ppvs a year, when there is less variety than you'd think was possible right now. Just look at the current 3 champs.

[Thanks for the Fish 0]

The mistake that doomed ECW was Big Show as champion wrestling in every damn main event. He's just not that compelling in the ring, and shoudl have been used as a special attraction as opposed to the overexposed and limited weekly main event worker. If you had him defend his title once a month, you could have built up the contender to the point where the show could have been "mini-ppv" calibre. Also it would have freed up 20 minutes each of the other three weeks where Big Show was absent to better establish the under and midcard, maybe even opening the way for a midcard title or tag titles.

[Enigma 0]

Your timeline is way off. Al Snow returned to the WWF with Head in June 1998, a month after his final ECW show at Wrestlepalooza. Nowhere close to 2000.