10 Times WWE Destroyed Something Brilliant
3. The ECW Revival
ECW wasn't meant to be relaunched on network television.
The original brainstorm would have seen it debut as a WWE.com exclusive, free to operate as its own adult-oriented entity removed from the confines of TV regulation and sponsorship. In short, we were close to an episodic continuation of the awesome WWECW One Night Stand events. The brand would have shifted slowly from nostalgia festival to something closer to the progressive zeitgeist of Ring of Honor, spearheaded by Paul Heyman Guy CM Punk.
That didn't happen.
What did happen, when WWE learned that there was interest from a wide-reaching basic cable network, was an abomination. The show debuted on Sci Fi (later SyFy) on June 13, 2006. It was filmed prior to SmackDown, instantly stigmatising it as inauthentic, corporate. The Sandman was despatched to clobber the fantastical "Zombie" in the first match - proving that WWE couldn't even grasp the needs of the network, much less the ECW fanbase.
A halfhearted attempt was then made to recapture the magic, but the Hammerstein Ballroom stage of episode 8 was window dressing. As if proving that Vince McMahon had neither the inclination nor ability to book outside of his comfort zone, Batista and the Big Show headlined it. It didn't go particularly well.
When Heyman left, his faded fingerprints went with him. The brand became even more WWE-lite than it was already, essentially acting as a glorified developmental territory before its sudden mercy killing in 2010.