WWE's own brand of Extreme Championship Wrestling was a miserable failure - by the end of the show's run in 2010, the program resembled a minor telecast such as Sunday Night Heat or the old WWF Metal shows than an actual representation of what the original ECW ever stood for. Kevin Thorn was one of the more intriguing characters on the show, but it was hard to know who the gimmick was aimed at. Longtime ECW fans tuning into the show - out of hope it'd be anything like they remembered - didn't want to see him, and a lot of casual WWE fans didn't really watch the ECW show, so wouldn't really notice any impact Thorn did make. Originally, Thorn (Kevin Fertig) had played the whiter-than-white Mordecai in WWE, a character which was rumoured to be the promotion's attempt to create a wrestler who could feasibly feud with the darker colour palette favoured by The Undertaker. When that didn't work out, Fertig was later relaunched as Kevin Thorn, a vampire who also had the aforementioned Ariel in his corner.
