10 Fatal Mistakes Of WWE's 2001 Invasion

6. Merging ECW And WCW

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WCW and ECW joining forces was also an early panic move to try and save the Invasion angle. It didn't work that well either. It would have been one thing if when they merged, they gave us a lot more former ECW wrestlers, but we only got two: Rob Van Dam and Tommy Dreamer. By that point, The Dudley Boyz, Raven, Tazz and Rhyno didn’t feel like ECW guys. They were the mid-card of the WWF.

To make the angle feel more authentic, Vince should have opened up his wallet a little and brought in some identifiable ECW names that fans would have been excited to see. Sabu, The Sandman, Masato Tanaka, Super Crazy, James Mitchell, Balls Mahoney, Kid Kash and Nova would have all added a boost, and could have been booked as a dangerous NWO-like wildcard in the angle. Most of those guys were hired full-time by the company anyway, so it’s not like they weren’t talented enough.

While Van Dam added a lot of excitement to the Invasion (Dreamer was essentially a jobber), he was nowhere near enough to make it feel like an a real ECW stable had formed.

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