10 Things You Didn't Know About ECW One Night Stand
5. The Concept Was RVD's Idea
You might think that creative genius Vince McMahon came up with the idea for ECW One Night Stand. After all, Vince is happy to exploit anything and everything in order to make money. But it wasn't Vince's idea. How about Paul Heyman? He was on the creative team around the time.
No, it wasn't Heyman's idea, either. It was actually Rob Van Dam, one of the company's biggest stars, who first pitched an ECW reunion show. RVD rose to prominence in the group, but had felt shackled by WWE's ring and promo style.
Although still popular, RVD yearned for the days of the original ECW. During a December 2014 interview, RVD shed some light on the process:
It was my idea actually to do the ECW pay-per-view. And that process involved me going back and forth to Vince every day for a while with different ideas. Look, youve got all these wrestlers on your payroll, but they used to be in ECW. Let us do a reunion show, itd be awesome! Youve got Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Chris Benoit, Spike Dudley, I give him this big list. And he goes, I didnt realize that! I said, You dont have to bring anybody in, just let us do what we wanna do one night, the way we wanna do it. And he went for it, it happened obviously.
Although it was RVD's idea, he wouldn't get to wrestle on the first incarnation of the show, since he was recovering from major knee surgery at the time. He would bounce back the next year, however, to win the WWE Title from John Cena in a blistering match.