Wrestling redundancy

I went to ECW ONS II Sunday night. It was the first time in a long time that there was a truly hot crowd throughout the show. The crowd made that show a must-see.

Following what may have been the show of the year, Vince offered the worst ECW show ever. It wasn't Extreme Championship Wrestling. It was World Wrestling (barely) Extreme Entertainment. The show opened with a 10 minute interview segment with Heyman, Van Dam, Edge, Lita and John Cena. It was Raw Redux.

From there, it got worse.

Because WWE did not want to pay Metallica the rights to "Enter Sandman," Sandman comes out to bad WWE music and beats the crap out of gimmick designed to piss of Sci-Fi Network. That was funny, but it does Sandman no good. "The Zombie" ain't gonna be around for long and no one is going to care.

The blonde "exhibitionist" was a bad imitation of Kimona Wanaleya's bump-and-grind on top of the ECW Arena a decade ago. It was WWE's soft-core porn.

The main event wasn't fun. Battle Royal's usually suck to begin with but this was garbage wrestling, guys hitting each other with stop signs and chairs for no reason. When ECW first existed, they built to the violence. The tables and chairs and signs didn't come out until the story was built. The only thing that match accomplished was putting over Big Show and Sabu.

The biggest problem with last night's show was the venue. You can't tape ECW before Smackdown. It's two different fan bases. Smackdown is a kid's show for the most part. ECW is--should I say was?--an adult oriented show. It does the new ECW no good to have children in the crowd. They won't be able to push the envelope with regards to language (last night's show was taped before Smackdown because Sci-Fi was shocked with the fans' language Sunday night), violence and sexuality. If the revived ECW is going to be successful, it needs to be taped at the ECW Arena, Queens Elks Lodge, The Hammerstein Ballroom, the multitude of smaller arenas in the midwest. It needs to get back to its core crowd. It hurts the product when Joey Styles begs the fans to watch their language prior to the show going on the air.

Mystery_Meat: I don't think WWE did a good job developing RVD's character. Angle and Show are easy characters. Angle's a legitimate wrestler who can hurt people with his hands, a la Taz. Show's a big monster. It doesn't take much to develop those characters.

They completely fucked Van Dam up, though. ECW fans cared about RVD winning the belt Sunday night. The casual fan had no reason to. All they had to do was a series of interviews/historical vignettes detailing his 16 years in the business. The fans would have cared. They would have wanted to see him win the belt. Instead, he's a champion that only ECW fans care about.

 

For what it's worth, ECW was shown live last night AFTER the Smackdown tapings were over, so any parents concerned about exposing their kiddies to a more mature product could leave for the night once Smackdown was over and the setup for ECW began.

That show was awful, but I think the real problem is that they basically said, "Hey, everybody loved ECW! Let's bring back ECW!" and then they did without having any sort of a real plan in place. It's like they've got three or four basic things happening with ECW right now, and none of them are progressing and they have no idea where to go with it. Great, ECW is back on TV. Now what? They appear to have no clue.

I was as big a wrestling fan as anybody growing up, but watching it now, I can't help but wonder if WWE falls under the same ownership umbrella as the Kansas City Royals. Their decision making and management are spectacularly awful sometimes..

 

Citizen Tino, according to Dave Meltzer, the show was taped before Smackdown. http://www.wrestlingobserver.com/wo/news/headlines/default.asp?aID=16554

I think Vince saw dollar signs with ECW after the success of The Rise And Fall DVD and last year's One Night Stand PPV. If ECW is to be successful, he can't book the show. Vince has to let Paul E. book the shows.

 

Vince is never going to present something that wasn't his brainchild as superior or even equal to his own stuff.

Based on last night, it's obvious he's willing to kill ECW if it means some quick paydays.

Remember, tickets for all these ECW shows have been on sale for a while. Even if they all suck from here, that money's already been spent, and that's money in his pocket.

 

Wow, I stand corrected. How lame. What's wrong with a 5-second delay like pretty much every other live event shown these days?

 

I grew up on the Von Erichs, Devastation Inc. and the Freebirds. I'd love for McMahon, who now owns the world's largest rasslin' videotape archive, to start a 24/7 Professional Wrestling Channel to show some of those old matches.

 

Sci-Fi wanted it to be "family friendly" or something like that. And that's bullshit. EC fucking W isn't meant to be family friendly. That's what Smackdown is for these days.

And they should never tape ECW and SD on the same night. I know it's a lot easier in terms of booking arenas, but the beast that is ECW needs to be unleashed for it to be successful. Paul E should have all the booking rights and not Vincent Kennedy McMahon. All Vince is doing so far is running ECW and Heyman into the ground.

Another thing, keep RAW wrestlers off ECW programs from now on. Cena, Edge and Lita never should have been there last night...

 

Sarcasm, Inky?

 

Did you buy ONS II? It would be almost impossible to edit that crowd's reaction.

 

A pro rasslin channel would be a good idea. Personally, I'm tired of all these new young bucks who can't wrestle. Where is the Living Legend, Bruno Samartino and characters like adullah The Butcher and the Iron Sheik. Now that was rasslin brother!

 

No. I'd dig being able to watch old matches from the 70s and early 80s. McMahon has bought up tape libraries from across the nation, he could do it. But it would mean he'd have to acknowledge wrestling existed before he bought the company from his father.

 

This is where WWE 24/7 comes in. If you have Insight, it's only 10 bucks a month to add it to your cable. I don't know about other cable providers...