17 Ways WWE Has Changed Since It Was The WWF
14. ECW: Dead AND Buried
The less said about WWE's ECW the better, so this entry will only feature the abject failures rather than covering the litany of lowkey losses felt by long standing fans of the Philadelphia brand.
Vince McMahon's vision of Extreme Championship Wrestling first peered through the cracks of an otherwise-enjoyable One Night Stand 2006 when he had Paul Heyman parrot platitudes about a "New Breed Unleashed" and The Big Show batter a bunch of original harcore cast members to establish him as one of the most brutal threats on the brand.
Between the relaunch and a rather undignified demise in 2010, the brand morphed from diluted and dilapidated tribute act to misunderstood C-Show before settling into life as a developmental-to-main roster midpoint that in reality failed wrestlers at both ends of the spectrum.
It was different enough from the original to ensure that the 1990s creative chaos curated by Paul Heyman remained encased in nostalgic glow by those that lived through it, but the visceral loyalty to the three letters (so often expressed via crowd chants) was lost to the total bastardisation of the branding.