Pro Wrestling/Mixed Martial Arts

[reyler]

Come on, six months from now they'll have completely forgotten about this storyline anyway.

 

... aaaand they've released Sandman. So, of all the ECW originals who they brought on board when they revived ECW (guys they weren't already employing, you know), how many are still there?

[The Outsider]

On the other hand, they are still reminding everyone that Kane and Taker are brothers, 10 years after the storyline.

 

I won't miss Sandman... he was overrated.  He got heat from his beer drinking and smoking gimmick (back when he was allowed to bring a cigarrette to ringside in the original ECW) but he was never able to wrestle worth crap.  His schtick got old a long time ago. 

 

There may not seem to be many ECW originals left, but on the other hand, the ECW roster isn't very big at all, so it is still a good portion ECW originals...  Tommy Dreamer, Stevie Richards, Balls Mahoney, and Nunzio are all I can think of.  Also, it's not like there are ton of good ECW originals out there anymore, certainly not that would have name recognition if they were brought in. Personally, I don't want to see up and coming talent get held back for the sake of keeping guys just because they were there originally.  As an addendum, I heard that Tommy Dreamer may get hired to go to Ohio Valley Wrestling and take up a full time training position there to replace Simon Dean who was fired after the steroid scandal last week.

[reyler]

See, that's what I was getting at a few pages back. The primary draw of ECW is that it's supposed to hearken back to the glory days of the brand as an individual promotion, but it hardly does any such thing. You say up-and-coming talent shouldn't be sidelined by guys with the recognition and street cred, when that's what the revived ECW was built around. Most of the people on there who have futures would have them just the same on RAW or Smackdown. Basically, ECW only has a point as a nostalgia draw, and it has largely lost that. And the roster, as you say, is fairly small, thusly it wouldn't cause too much overflow to shuffle them all into the other two brands, especially given that neither one even uses their full complement now. Maybe ECW just needs to be around in its current form a few more years before it isn't just the redheaded stepchild.

 

And it doesn't hurt to remind of the relation between Taker and Kane, considering how similar they are in methodology. I was pretty much saying that in six months time they're going to ignore this bit about Hornswoggle as a McMahon except for maybe the occasional reference. After all, can they really reconcile this with his leprechaun schtick?

[The Outsider]

I think we are really in agreement about ECW for the most part and just expressing it differently.  To me, the ECW right now could have any name.  It's not ECW though (the original), period.  Even before Heyman left, from what I understand, it wasn't ECW.  Heyman was as much a part of the cosmetics as everything else.  The heart of the original ECW was never there.  So to me, the nostalgia factor may have been the main draw when they first brought it back, but now they are no longer relying on nostalgia.  And I think its a good thing they have moved past that really, 'cause you can only live in the past for so long. 

 

Besides, the ECW of the late 90's was nothing like the ECW of the early 90's (before they became 'extreme'), so who knows that it wouldn't have changed over time had they not gone out of business anyway.  The new ECW is what it is, and since I don't relate it to the old ECW anyway, I don't really care if they get rid of all the old ECW guys and continue using the brand name with all new guys or not.  I do like having the extra hour of wrestling to watch though, and there is some entertaining storylines and stuff there... and since almost none of the matches goes to ppv other than the title matches, you actually get to see the feuds on ECW resolved in the weekly show and don't have to pay to see it, which I would think is nice for people who don't see the PPV's.  It would be cool to see a few ECW Originals who haven't been in the new ECW lured back though.  It would be great to see Lance Storm and Justin Credible make a comback for instance.  Jerry Lynn is not in TNA anymore so he could come back too...  Storm is officially retired as of last month though.. Credible is in Japan, and I don't think Lynn is held in high regard at WWE.

 

As far as Hornswoggle, I have heard other people saying the same thing I did the other day, that they may reveal that this was just a ruse by Triple H and that Kennedy got suspended for telling the truth.  It's all just fan speculation though.

[reyler]

Yeah, that's more or less where I was going with it. There isn't a whole lot of point to calling it ECW specifically aside from A) utilising the nostalgia viewership, and B) forever tying the ECW name to WWE.

 

Personally I would kind of rather they had never done this whole third McMahon storyline to begin with. If it really was intended to be Kennedy, it just says to me that they didn't know what else to do with him. Or maybe he won an office lottery or something. It wouldn't be the first silly thing they've done in the name of storyline. King Booker, anyone?