10 Times WWE Lost Their Minds

Given how many times the corpse of ECW has been molested over the past decade and a half this is almost hard to believe, but in the mid-2000s, there was a very real market for "Extreme" nostalgia. WWE's first reunion show, One Night Stand 2005, was considered a success from every angle, and the follow-up the next year was a launching point for a revived ECW brand.

Things started off on the right note - Rob Van Dam, who was also WWE Champion for legitimacy purposes, was crowned the first revived ECW Champion. Sabu was there, Tommy Dreamer was there, heck, the FBI were there. And while there was a WWE influence, nobody really complained about Kurt Angle being part of the brand. Add in CM Punk - whom everyone agreed would have been a perfect fit for the original ECW - and there was something for both new and old fans.

Once RVD got caught with marijuana, though, the company lost all faith in the revived ECW. The title was put on The Big Show, Angle was released, and following December To Dismember - which some called the worst PPV of all time - Paul Heyman was fired.

From that point on, the revived ECW bore no resemblance to the original one, and they soon had to drop plans for additional brand-specific PPVs and house shows. Nevertheless, the brand lingered on until 2010, serving as something of a feeder for Raw and Smackdown - it was like an earlier version of NXT, but bad. Some even speculated that WWE's long-term motivation for the revival was to kill "ECW!" chants once and for all - which, needless to say, means it was pretty poorly handled.