10 Times WWE Couldn't Repeat Success

WWE actually did manage to recreate the success of ECW. It's just - as per the pay-per-view's name - it lasted for just One Night.

Technically, they caught the barbed bolts of ECW's late-'90s lightning in the unlikeliest of bottles twice. 2005 and 2006's ephemeral extreme revivals understood and renewed the raucousness of Paul Heyman's defunct pioneer perfectly, suffusing them with modern interlopers which only added to the 'us-against-them' spirit of the hardcore original.

Crucially, the royal 'they' of the previous paragraph was Paul Heyman himself. Helmed by their creator and proprietor, the two specials were an overwhelming, surprising success - to the extent that a permanent comeback on weekly TV became a reality.

And that's when the good times ended. ECW was never birthed to become a 'brand'; designating it as such gradually diminished any of the appeal. The new version was slowly sanitised until it became just another WWE show, Metal with a different ring skirt. There were some highlights - it begrudgingly made a star of CM Punk ahead of Bobby Lashley - but otherwise it shambled along like the debut episode's incongruous zombie. WWECW was finally put out of its misery in 2010.