1. Bringing Back ECW As A Full-Time Brand (And Horribly Mishandling It)
The original ECW promoted their last show on January 13th 2001. WWE then brought back the brand as part of the ECWCW Alliance during the Invasion. When the Invasion was over (ALL HAIL TEAM WWF), ECW was once again over. In 2005, on the suggestion of Rob Van Dam, WWE briefly resurrected ECW for the one-off One Night Stand PPV. So successful was that event (350,000 PPV buys), that WWE decided to go back to the well again in 2006 and promote a second One Night Stand event. News soon broke that not only was there going to be another supercard but that ECW would actually be coming back full-time as a third touring brand. The results were, erm, mixed (to say the least). The ECW on SyFy show was panned by critics and longtime ECW fans, who felt that characters like The Zombie and the presence of WWE mainstays like Batista and Big Show pissed all over the promotion's legacy. It was clear that WWE had no interest in promoting stars from ECW's past, with Tommy Dreamer, The Sandman and Sabu all used to help put over WWE projects such as Matt Striker, Bobby Lashley and Test. Though WWE promoted shows under the 'ECW' banner until February 16th 2010, the brand was toast as early as December 2006 and the disastrous December to Dismember pay-per-view, which was regarded by many as one of the worst of all-time and a commercial failure to boot (a pathetic 90,000 orders). While there was initially excitement at the news of the ECW relaunch, it quickly became very clear that this was ECW in name only and that WWE had made a serious mistake by bringing it back as a full-time touring brand. The shows were rotten, the live events barely drew and it failed to get over the people it was supposed to be getting over, save for CM Punk. A failure on just about every level.