Other Columns
Kevin Peel Looks at ECW: The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!
By Kevin Peel
Jun 16, 2006 - 2:06 PM

(JG Note:  This is the first guest column for longtime WorldWrestlingInsanity.com Heat/Velocity Reviewer Kevin Peel.  As a first time columnist, we have already made sure to haze him.  You should see what Uncle Ralph did to him.  Ouch.)

If you’ve visited any wrestling sites for the last couple days, you would certainly know about everyone’s displeasure with Vince McMahon’s interpretation of ECW. Internet fans are crying out that it was the worst wrestling show of all time. While it was not a good show by any means, I don’t think I’m ready to rank it among the worst wrestling shows I’ve seen. And I don’t think I’m ready to prepare the grave for the ECW brand…..at least not just yet.

The main problem that I think people have is that they so desperately want this to be just like the old ECW they knew and loved. It doesn’t help matters that WWE has had Paul Heyman out there serving his koolaid to anyone feeling thirsty for the former ECW. And when you factor in a pretty darn fun pay per view this past Sunday, expectations were pretty high going in to this past Tuesday’s ECW debut TV show. They tricked everybody, myself included into thinking Paul had control and everything would be like it was. Let’s get one point clear. This New ECW is a Vince McMahon production. If last Tuesday’s show didn’t drive that point home, I don’t know what will. In reality, they have used the past history and they have used the passion of the ECW fans to launch this new brand. The fans at the Hammerstein this past Sunday were used as the big launching pad for this third brand. But make no mistake, this is the third WWE brand, not a rebel independent anti-establishment promotion like the former ECW was.

There were things that were a part of the old ECW that probably can’t be carried over to this new brand. They can’t do things that might irritate their new network and their sponsors. Speaking of the new network, Sci Fi caught wind of some of the vulgar chants from the pay per view this past Sunday and as a result, what was originally planned to be a live show turned into a taped show so Sci Fi could edit out anything they found inappropriate. Joey Styles made an announcement to the live crowd asking them not to make any vulgar chants since a lot of families were in attendance to watch Smackdown. This really took the steam out of the live crowd, who were reportedly booing all mentions of Smackdown in the beginning. As a result, the crowd was pretty silent during the ECW broadcast which is never good. It goes without saying that taping ECW and Smackdown together just isn’t going to work. Smackdown is mostly a kid’s show. It’s very family friendly. And it’s really the polar opposite of what an ECW crowd is. This is really going to hurt the ECW brand until they get their own separate tapings. No one is going to argue that point so let’s move on.

The show itself seemed to totally lack direction. We have been hearing buzzwords such as "The new ECW vision" and "The new breed of ECW." Neither of those were seen in episode one of this new brand. Right now, I’d like to address the common complaints about the show from internet fans, so here goes:

I think that’s a fair point. If we are staying true to the roots of ECW, it plays better in the smaller venues. I think WWE did a good job covering up the set and making the arena look different from their usual Raw and Smackdown setups. I also think it might be a tough sell to get Vince to agree on smaller arenas since that’s less potential tickets sold in his mind.

"The Sandman just isn’t the Sandman without his ‘enter sandman’ music"

I totally agree there. It just isn’t the same, but WWE’s hands are tied on that one. The rumor is that Metallica was asking for over $10 million a year for the rights to use that song and that’s certainly not going to happen. It does take quite a bit away from Sandman’s character when you don’t have that entrance though.

It may be hard for the old ECW fan to understand, but this is a necessary evil. Your current WWE fans have no idea who The Sandman, Sabu, Tommy Dreamer, Balls Mahoney and the rest of the gang are. If they’ve seen these guys before, they saw them playing minor rolls and won’t understand what all the fuss is about. Believe it or not, by putting John Cena, Edge, Kurt Angle and The Big Show on the show this is Vince McMahon’s way of trying to give the ECW brand some rub off of the WWE stars. The hope is that WWE fans will tune in to see some of their favorites in something new and hopefully get to know the ECW guys and stick around.

Actually, for me the zombie was the best thing on Tuesday’s show. I was rolling my eyes too when he first came out, but when he picked up the mic and started his "Aaaaarrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhh" act I was sold. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a bunch of zombie signs at next week’s tapings. Wrestling has always been about wacky characters and I don’t see this as that bad of a thing. Edge, Christian and Gangrel started out in WWE as vampires in the brood and we’ve seen Edge and Christian go on to be future world champs. These kind of characters are the thing that could provide something marketable or even a cult type following. The thing is if The Undertaker didn’t debut until 2006, he’d probably be getting the same kind of response from net fan that these kinds of gimmicks are, in some cases he does anyway I guess. Looking at the current era The Boogeyman is a prime example of someone who can get over with a wacky gimmick if you have a guy play it right and the gimmick is pushed right. So, I’m saying it can work if done right. And just to soften the blow, you’re getting another character along those lines next week.

This is a point where I both disagree and agree. I remember how good Justin was back during his title run in ECW, but really its been a long time since he’s done anything of note. He was treated as a jobber in WWE even when he was part of the X-Factor thing with X-Pac and I can’t even remember his TNA run so he couldn’t have done much. And really, it’s no shame to be beat by Kurt Angle. That’s a guy who rarely loses anyway. I think the big mistake might have been calling Justin a former champ. It makes the brand look weak. I’m sure you’re casual WWE fan looks at it like "that guy used to be the champ?" Your average viewer at home probably thinks they could take Justin in a fight. And with this being the first episode, its hard to tell if Justin is really going to have much of any kind of role in this anyway. On a side note, they are handling Kurt’s new MMA style gimmick very well and I think its one of the major plusses in ECW right now.

That’s Barbie Blanks from OVW. Her character is Kelly. I can’t say I understand their use of her on the show when you only have an hour to fill. She probably went a little farther than the divas usually do with her little act. It’s one of those things that you’re either into or you aren’t. I was expecting someone to interrupt that, but it didn’t happen. I guess we can give them credit for at least introducing a new character, but everyone on the show should have a purpose.

It’s hard to give a true opinion of this on week one. On the surface, that statement looks true, but without knowing their vision you can’t really say one way or another. Rob Van Dam, Sabu, and the Sandman are the ECW guys that are being protected but for all we know the plan may be to use the old ECW guys to get "The new breed" of ECW guys over. I think this is one we’ll have to wait and see. If regards to Show himself, they’ve done a good job injecting some life into him as he was really stale over on Raw.

I think its apples and oranges. ECW did a 2.8 rating this week which has to be considered a success. I don’t think a bad week one hurts it as bad as most think. The majority of people watching are not former ECW fans.. What makes or brakes that rating is whether they can get the WWE fans to tune in. We’ve seen many bad editions of Raw and it never hurts the rating all that much the following week. I know I usually don’t care for Raw but I still tune in every week just out of habit. I’ll be very surprised if that number falls below a 2. Even in the dying days of WCW Nitro it was doing over a 2 and those were some really bad shows that I’ve blocked from my memory. Sci Fi has to be thrilled with that rating at this point. I think with the cross promotion from Raw, the WWE fans will keep checking it out and hopefully it will be better than what this week was. Time will tell I guess.

You’re probably wondering why I would take the time to analyze what was a bad show. Looking around the net, all I’ve seen in regards to the ECW show was just really mad, negative, whiny comments. I wanted to give an alternative look at it since I don’t have the doom and gloom viewpoint that others have. I guess what I’m really saying is it might have been a blah show, it might have been a bad show, it might have been the complete opposite of everything ECW used to be but in reality it was just one show. We don’t know all the factors involved and the network might have shot down some things they wanted to do that would have made the show much better. There’s nothing to say that they won’t come back this week and blow our socks off. You have to take it week by week. In baseball, when a pitcher gives up a homerun, he doesn’t drop to the ground and start crying. He just goes back and tries to strike out the next guy. Hopefully, they learned from their mistakes and next week will be much better. In closing, these are my positives from this week’s show:

--Kurt Angles’s MMA gimmick which is also a safer style for him

--The Zombie……Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhh

--The FBI with the addition of Trinity could be a good team to build a tag division around and a good heel faction in general.

--The use of Sabu and The Sandman as ECW legends. Who could have imagined those two as stars of a national promotion in 2006. And Sabu is even working a pay per view as John Cena’s opponent.