In the year 2001, Extreme Championship Wrestling held what many believed would be its final Pay-Per-View, Guilty As Charged ’01, at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. Four years later, on the heels of a widely successful DVD called The Rise & Fall Of ECW World Wrestling Entertainment put together the ECW: One Night Stand Pay-Per-View, which was also a success, so much so that in 2006, another ECW Pay-Per-View was announced. Ticket sales for the 2006 Sequel to One Night Stand were rather impressive, and the follow-up ECW DVD, chronicling ECW’s Most Violent Matches, quickly became a best-seller. On the heels of the continued financial success of ECW-Themed ventures, World Wrestling Entertainment announced in May of 2006 that Extreme Championship Wrestling will be returning full-time as a branch of WWE’s Sports Entertainment Conglomerate. While many of its critics may balk at the idea that ECW, a promotion that was best known for its rebellion against companies such as the WWE, is now being sponsored by the very entity it was seemingly out to destroy, others eagerly anticipate the return of ECW and its unique take on Sports Entertainment as we know it today. So now, sit back and relax as World Wrestling Entertainment presents ECW… on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Yeah, ECW is going to be on the Sci-Fi Channel. While this may sound about as out of place as The Ultimate Warrior at the GLAAD Image Awards, there’s already a plethora of “experts” waiting to tell you how ECW and Sci-Fi have similar target demographics. Unfortunetly, all of these “experts” forget one important key fact about wrestling that, due to their love of this non-sport, they completely ignore – most people outside of wrestling’s core fan base think wrestling is f*cking STUPID!!! Yes, the idea that wrestling is for inbred rednecks and children is still rampant. It’s the major factor which has halted TNA’s growth, impeded WWE’s attempt to infiltrate other forms of media, and, ultimately, what keeps wrestling, and us, its fans, from being taken seriously by anyone, including other people in the wrestling business. Sci-Fi fans may incorporate the same age-bracket demographic, and there may be a fair amount of cross-over between the two fan-bases, but, at the end of the day, putting a wrestling show on a science fiction-themed network is little more than attempting to mix oil and water. Already, the sci-fi fan elite is at war with the wrestling fan elite on whether this is a good idea or not, and the show hasn’t even debuted yet. This is not a good sign. This, though, does not mean that “ECW is doomed!”. In fact, this right here may be the least of the new ECW’s problems.
ECW isn’t doomed by any means, at least, not in the sense that it will eventually disappear. When the Brand Split first happened, most fans on the ‘Net were giving it six months to a year. Many of us were convinced that the split would fail miserably, and that WWE would eventually kill it off. Hell, some of us still expect the split to come to an end any day now! Unfortunately, the split has not only endured the past four years, but with the addition of ECW and the extension of SmackDown’s contract for two more years on the CW Network, there is evidence that the WWE believes the spilt has been a success. Now, we could argue over the critical success of the brand spilt for weeks and years on end, but financially, the split hasn’t been the bomb many would make it out to be, especially internationally, where WWE enjoys most of its success at the moment. ECW, whether it is a critical success or not, will more than likely endure. The only thing that stands in the way of ECW’s continued existence past the “Summer Trial-Run” is the Sci-Fi Channel’s audience. Sci-Fi fans are extremely vocal, to the point where they have been known to save shows from imminent (and oftentimes well-deserved) cancellation. Since the Sci-Fi Channel caters to these fans, they are more than likely to listen to a vocal uprising of their fans. So, if these fans aren’t all on the ECW bandwagon, ECW may have a problem. At the same time, I think the potential problem may just be overstated. Star Trek fans never did save Enterprise after all. There may be a overly vocal sect of Sci-Fi Fans who will protest, but it won’t do much good. In the end, it won’t matter if ECW is widely successful, or even all that good. It’ll endure as long as ECW merchandise sells and the ratings are high enough. Truth be told, this is the Sci-Fi Channel. If ECW pulls anything over a 0.5, they’re in the clear.
For reference, TNA has been averaging a 1.0 lately. ECW did that without breaking a sweat when it was on TNN, and they did so without any advertising support from TNN whatsoever. ECW has nothing to worry about as far as ratings go, even if the show sucks. The worst show WWE produces is SmackDown, and they’re hovering around a 2.0 right now. WCW, at their worst, hovered around a 2.0. Worst case scenario, ECW turns out to be pure crap, and it’ll still pull a 1.0, easy. There is NOTHING to worry about, kids, at least not on the ratings front. Once again, as long as the merchandise sells, ECW is going to stick around. SmackDown has.
Actually, ECW’s main problem is whether it will please the fans who have been begging for this ever since ECW shut down in 2001. This past Monday, Paul Heyman kept bringing up how this revival is going to be a “New Vision” of ECW. This is the point where fans ought to start worrying.
We could argue about this “new vision” for weeks, but, so far, we have no clue what this “new vision” actually is yet. This “new vision” may be nothing more than an over-stated way of saying “we’re going to have new wrestlers on the show who weren’t in ECW originally”. Of course, if all Paul is doing with ECW is throwing in a few new talents and Kurt Angle and calling that a “new vision” for ECW, I don’t see it going over too well. See, the words “new vision” don’t imply “new faces”. It implies “new direction”, and the last thing ECW fans want from the new ECW is a “new direction”. ECW is an established brand with its own take on wrestling, which ECW’s most loyal fans relate to and believe in. If the “new vision” of ECW doesn’t live up to the established vision of ECW already held by its fans, they will alienate the fans ECW was revived to appease in the first place. But, by the same token, if you keep warning people that you have a “new vision” for ECW, and then, all that “new vision” ends up being are a couple new faces and Kurt Angle, that could end up pissing fans off even more. You have to be real careful with words like “new vision”. On one hand, you deliver on the implied meaning, and you piss off fans who don’t feel the new direction matches up with the established concept. On the other hand, you deliver on what you actually meant, rather than what was implied, and you still end up pissing people off. At best, the words “new vision” are a mistake, scaring ECW fans who are already more than paranoid about the possibility that WWE could ruin ECW. At worst, this “new vision” is a new direction, a more WWE-friendly vision of “sports entertainment”, which will alienate the audience that ECW was being revived to appease in the first place. It would have been better if Paul never used the words “new vision” at all, really. The last thing you want to do is scare off a skeptical audience before the show even reaches air.
The whole Kurt Angle thing isn’t helping maters, either. It’s only fueling the fire that says the new ECW won’t be the ECW we loved. Let me put it to you this way: putting Kurt Angle in ECW is like putting Shawn Michaels in the Hart Foundation. At best, it’s extremely awkward, and at worst, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. I get that putting Kurt in ECW is supposed to be akin to Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko and Eddie Guerrero being in ECW, but when Benoit, Malenko, and Guerrero went to ECW, they weren’t going in as established WWE Superstars, and none of them were on the Rise & Fall of ECW DVD trashing ECW because of a crucifixion angle they didn’t want to be associated with, nor were any of them a vocal part of the WWE Invasion of the ECW One Night Stand PPV in 2005. It might make sense if Kurt Angle is supposed to be a heel for ECW, but then why portray him as a willing draftee? I didn’t see him looking all pissed off at Heyman for drafting him. In fact, on Monday, it looked more like Angle was all for being in the ECW Army when he laid the smackdown on Mick Foley. Some people have praised this move, citing Angle’s injuries and star power as reasons why such a move would make sense, but I just don’t get it considering the way it’s being done right now. If Kurt were pissed off about going to ECW, it would make sense, both from a character standpoint as well as the established image of ECW, but he doesn’t seem to mind it too much. To me, it says one of a couple things. One, it says that ECW is going in a new direction, which, based on Kurt Angle’s image and reputation in the WWE, is likely to be a watered-down “sports entertainment” product, rather than the hardcore wrestling ECW is known for. Or, it could say that no one in WWE or the new ECW gives a f*ck about character continuity, and feel that fans are too dumb (like I said earlier, even people in the wrestling world think wrestling fans are stupid) to know or care about how contradictory Kurt’s current ECW compliance is to his established character.
Fans expect a lot from this ECW revival, which will explain why so many people are already panning it. There is so much the WWE could get wrong, from little things that WWE might not see as important, such as Sandman coming out to anything other than Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”, to major issue that will most definitely effect the product, such as WWE’s tendency towards having the agents control every detail of every match, rather than allowing the wrestlers the freedom to put their own matches together. It’s not just who’s booking the show, but what goes on in the ring that is important. A major reason why WWE programming is in the shape its in is because the WWE tries to control too much of the in-ring action, which leads to boring, predictable matches, where even the best workers can become stale (Benoit, for example). I’ve heard so much emphasis on whether Paul Heyman is going to control the booking or not, but absolutely no one commenting on how much influence the road agents should have on what goes on in the ring. Right now, in WWE, you do what you’re told, unless you’re Undertaker, Triple H, or Shawn Michaels. Everyone else is under a very tight grip of what they can and cannot do in the ring at any given time. Just ask Matt Hyson or Billy Kidman. They’ll tell you. If the first match we see on an ECW shows comes off looking like a warm-up match on Velocity, that in itself will do more to kill the brand in fans eyes than anything else. It doesn’t mean the show won’t last, or the brand won’t keep chugging along despite it all, but it will mean that the ECW we loved, the ECW we’re hoping to get, is dead.
Maybe its too much to expect the WWE to get ECW right. Then again, this is ECW. If WWE didn’t expect us to have such high expectations, they shouldn’t have tried to revive ECW. They’d had been better off getting four new guys and trying to re-create the Beatles…
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