Tim's Take 4.22.08: The Slippery Slope That Is ECW

Posted by Tim Livingston on 04.22.2008

If you think that Mike Adamle is the sure sign of ECW's demise, you're probably right. But before we go putting all the blame on that, realize that perhaps ECW was cursed from the beginning...

-Alright. So my big plan this week was to (surprise, surprise) talk about the lack of smarts that TNA has been projecting lately. Even with Samoa Joe winning the World Heavyweight Title, they seem to get it wrong. But I'll talk about that at a later time. Right now, I'm gonna try to talk about something else besides TNA for once. And yes, you CAN breathe that sigh of relief.

Mike Adamle. Michael, Michael, Michael…

For those of you who don't know, my life aspirations are in the broadcasting industry. I've been a play-by-play broadcaster for the last four years of my life, and I am hoping to use that to get me to a higher level in my career. In fact, I would love to be a wrestling broadcaster in the vein of a Gordon Solie, who, even though I only caught him near the tail end of his glorious career, is still the pinnacle of wrestling broadcasting, and rightfully so. It's something that I continue to work at on a weekly basis. So needless to say, my ears perk up at the sound of someone like Mike Friggin' Adamle getting the chance to do ECW.

Now, 411 has been covering all ends of this ordeal. Everything from JR's takes to the immediate reception from the great bastion of wrestling journalism over at the Wrestling Observer, to, most prominently, the comments that Paul Heyman made in his column for the UK Sun. The story is that Joey Styles, the ONLY voice ever in the history of ECW, took over the website dealings for WWE, leaving Adamle as the only "suitable" announcer to take his place, never mind the fact that he has been lost during basically every broadcast he's ever been in since he made his appearance at the 2008 Royal Rumble. He has no presence, and the only reason he was made to sound anywhere near bearable during his American Gladiators run was because it was a taped show and everything was prepped beforehand.

Now fast forward to this past week. ECW was TAPED in London, England. This was obviously done because if they wanted to allow him an easy transition, Adamle would have to get a good taped run in before going live the next week. It was a HORRIBLE taping, with him not getting the hang of anything, and not being able to call moves at all. Hell, he called Tazz, "The Tazz." (To all my Boy Meets World fans who obviously posted last week in my column, anybody else get flashbacks to Cory "The Cory" Matthews with that line?) Tonight, when you watch ECW, Adamle will be thrown to the wolves. He'll be in a situation that he has rarely seen, and he is not going to be in a situation that many would envy, including Josh Matthews and Todd Grisham, who even though they don't have the delivery, have been working their asses off to get better, and that's with Grisham holding two jobs as part of Fox Soccer Channel. And while the talk of Adamle's performances are many, I for one am more deeply ingrained into why the move was made in the first place, including one conspiracy theory thrown out by Paul Heyman that makes me smile, and, sadly, also doesn't surprise me.

It's the fact that when it all comes down to it, Joey Styles had never appealed to Vince McMahon at all. Paul would go on to talk about how they didn't want Joey to call the first One Night Stand PPV in 2005, where ECW would be making a return to PPV, and they wanted Jim Ross to call it. Now, I don't know about you, but there are certain things that just happen to stick with you when you watch certain wrestling matches, and for some of them, the call is most memorable. Who can forget Jim Ross calling Stone Cold Steve Austin's first title win over Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XIV? Or Tony Schiavone calling "The Legdrop Heard Round the World" and him swearing big time after the Hogan promo at Bash at the Beach 1996? Or ANYTHING that was called in the Florida territories and into some of the bigger NWA events in the 70s and 80s thanks to Gordon Solie? Regardless of what you think of them as announcers, you will always have an announcer whose call tied together memories of when you watched wrestling, whether it was Solie for the NWA, Styles for ECW, Schiavone for WCW, Gorilla Monsoon for the WWF, or Jim Ross for WWE.

I'll push the theory that Heyman brought up one step forward. Adamle's obviously horrible presence as an announcer is plain to see. There is something about this that screams "horrible experiment just to mess with the fans." But what about a subtle element that for some reason seems to be overlooked by the fans, even the diehard fans that almost want to cast a blind eye to this whole ordeal because they don't like to deal with it.

What if the switch to Mike Adamle and the inspired backlash to follow was only the first step in Vince McMahon wanting to shut down the ECW brand altogether? This is never out of the realm of possibility. For one thing, since ECW was reborn, the brand had some seriously bad karma. RVD's problems after becoming the double champion aborted a serious push. Kurt Angle's departure left a huge void in what ECW would be about, moving over The Big Show into a position where he would have to take big steps in order to carry a brand. And we can't forget about Chris Benoit, can we? Could ECW have been cursed from the start? Could the slow demise set up by the removal of the singular voice to every ECW match ever up until last week spell the end for a brand that (and let's be quite honest here) Vince McMahon never truly liked that much in the first place?

We all know how WCW turned out after it was bought back in 2001. The idea of an entirely separate brand to allow WCW to live on its own was laughable at best, mainly because they tried to push it as its own entity, and not part of the WWE brand, which, in my mind, is the reason why the current ECW product is on there in the first place. It was presented as the third WWE brand, and has been presented as such since its inception.

As fans, we had been talking about it for a long time. This was not the old ECW, and, rightfully so, I must say on the part of WWE brass, it was never presented as such. It was ECW in name only, using some of the old ECW stars to present some sort of bridge to the old guard, only to see it never really be accepted as such. Instead, it's become some sort of mutual admiration society, where guys who were extraneous on the other two major brands were sent down so that they still got their screen time. Regardless of how you see the SmackDown!/ECW "talent exchange," it's all about ECW being inferior to the other two brands.

I'm not looking for ECW to last much longer. I think there is talent on that show that can easily be transferred to the other brands, and nobody would blink at the loss of ECW. What was supposed to be some type of feeder show for younger talents to show off their merits has instead been this type of safe haven for the underutilized veterans and the younger guys who won't get a shot anytime soon, if ever. In the two years that they have been on the air, you've only got three guys worth a damn when it comes to young talent thanks to ECW: John Morrison, The Miz, and CM Punk. What about all these guys down in FCW? They aren't able to come up and stir a ruckus? You can't POSSIBLY think that Colt Cabana is worthwhile to team with Punk, but Mike Knox gets umpteen chances to show his moxie and Koslov debuts to…well, crickets, really?

And that's what REALLY gets me. ECW is being treated like the C show, but they're still trying to hang with the brands that are established. Why not use ECW as the home of the hungry youngsters looking to take a bite out of the big boys instead of jobbing Colin Delaney out every week? If it's the C show, treat it like one. Make ECW a stomping ground for guys to prove their worth before taking on the two primetime brands. Is CM Punk really going to be your only singles star out of the whole ordeal? ECW seems to be treading on the cut line. The Adamle arrival seems to be just another nail in the coffin. It's not quite closed yet, but there's only so much time until ECW runs out of air completely.