The Importance of…5.22.09: The New ECW

Posted by Mike Chin on 05.22.2009

A column three years in the making--how important is the new ECW?

In the summer of 2006, WWE announced a re-launch of Extreme Championship Wrestling. This development met mixed reactions, ranging from unabated excitement from the legions of ECW loyalists who foresaw a return to the glory days of their cult favorite promotion, to reserved skepticism about just how ECW would run under WWE control. Three years removed from the start of the new ECW, the brand has undergone several makeovers and shifts in order to arrive where it is today. The new ECW is not now, nor has it ever truly been a re-creation of the ECW of old. It has, however, carved its own unique niche as an important wrestling product.

The new ECW struggled with its identity at first. On one hand, it had original ECW mastermind Paul Heyman at the helm, Joey Styles on the mic, and a host of traditional ECW performers, including Rob Van Dam, Sabu, The Sandman and Tommy Dreamer. What's more, WWE made the effort to lend instant credibility to the brand, if diluting the purity of the talent pool in the process, when they moved such major stars as Kurt Angle, The Big Show and Bobby Lashley over. Indeed, when the new brand started with RVD winning its first title, and dethroning John Cena for the Raw title in the process, it looked as though ECW was on pace to be a new powerhouse and, in many ways, true to its extreme origins.

The new ECW was not a reflection of its predecessor, though. While Heyman was the public face of the new ECW, and had some say from the creative end, he was clearly on a short leash, and under the authority of Vince McMahon and the WWE powers that be. What's more, in striking the deal to air ECW on the Sci-Fi Network, there was an impulse to cater to the sci-fi audience, which meant a first episode appearance by a jobber called The Zombie, and the debut of Kevin Thorn as a vampire.

As if conflicting visions and managerial strife were not enough, the new ECW seemed to carry a bit of a curse. Shortly after reaching the pinnacle of his career, winning the ECW and WWE titles, Rob Van Dam was caught with marijuana, and promptly lost the push of a lifetime. He passed the ECW title to the Big Show, who was functional as a dominant champion, but didn't exactly set the world on fire, and, by the end of his title run, was ready for a break from the business, leaving WWE altogether after the December to Dismember PPV. Fast forwarding a bit, Chris Benoit was slated to take the ECW championship at Vengeance 2007, adding a combination of veteran credibility and star power to the gold. It was that very same weekend that he was scheduled to take the gold that the Benoit tragedy unfolded, leaving him and his family dead. This would not be the last of the problems for ECW champions as Benoit's replacement, John Morrison, saw his reign cut short due to a wellness suspension.

It's not as though fate, and the decisions of individual performers were all that held ECW back, though. When Big Show dropped the title, he did so to Bobby Lashley, a bright newcomer, but an unproven commodity to say the least. Most fans were not very familiar with Lashley, and its pretty fair to say that wasn't ready for quite as big of a spot as WWE meant for him to occupy. By spring 2007, Lashley was embroiled in a feud with Vince McMahon that did go a long way toward giving Lashley new exposure, but did not lend him any new credibility as an in-ring performer. To make matters worse, McMahon himself took the belt for a brief run that summer, in a move that was probably designed to generate heat, but, as a non-fighting champion, McMahon did more to de-value the title, a la David Arquette's WCW title reign.

When Morrison took the ECW title, it marked a major transition for the brand. Up to that point, Morrison was a lower-mid-card guy on Raw. In giving him the belt to run with, WWE established that it was no longer offering any illusion that the ECW title was at the same level as the World or WWE titles, but rather that ECW was its own distinct brand, that would not be defined so much by star power as by work-rate and in-ring entertainment. The Morrison-CM Punk program that followed for much of 2007 made for a lot of entertaining matches, and went a long way toward establishing a truly new ECW.

Since the start of Morrison's reign, WWE has continued to let the new ECW shine as a place for young up-and-comers to get air time, and put on some good matches, despite a lack of star power. This shift was perfectly embodied in the new talent initiative of 2008 that saw a variety of talented new faces surface, including Evan Bourne, Ricky Ortize and Jack Swagger taking prominent places. What's more, Matt Hardy arrived as, in many ways, an ideal champion for the brand—well established, very popular, an outstanding in-ring performer, but not a conventional main event talent. In many senses, Hardy seems to have been the champion the new ECW was looking for all along. Christian has since embraced a very similar role with the strap.

So what is the importance of the new ECW? In its early days, ECW demonstrated some important lessons—that it is impossible to re-create the past, and that conflicting visions for such a product will only result in no one getting what they really want. As the product has evolved, it has taken shape as an important step between WWE's developmentals and its most mainstream product, with a show that gets a lot of exposure, without being a flagship program, and that serves as a weekly exhibition of solid professional wrestling without all the star power or theatrics of a Raw or Smackdown broadcast. With just one hour a week, ECW has carved a unique niche, and has arrived as an important piece of the contemporary wrestling landscape.

That's all for this column. Next week, we take a look at the importance of Prime Time Wrestling. See you in seven.