ECW! ECW! ECW! In the late 90s, early 2000s, that chant echoed throughout bingo halls across the northeast. Sometimes, at a WWE or WCW event where a chair or table were used, those three letters would be chanted and all who joined in felt a sense of camaraderie. During that time, everyone chanting the letters that stood for Extreme Championship Wrestling, were part of something special - an in-crowd of sorts, the cool kids. ECW was the edgy, punk rock wrestling company that rounded out pro wrestling "big 3." Fast forward a few years, ECW goes bankrupt, closes down, is purchased by Vince McMahon, and pretty much done for good. Then a glimmer of hope. A 2005 ECW One Night Stand PPV is produced by the WWE, but is pretty much strictly run as an old ECW event, and it is awesome. A second ECW One Night Stand follows the next year. This one, much more indoctrinated in the WWE style with less ECW 'Originals' and more WWE Superstars. However, it works. That summer, Vince McMahon announces ECW will return as a regular weekly series. Without any real direction and an insistence to go against everything that made the old ECW and even the 2005 and 2006 WWE ECW PPV's successful, WWE's ECW debuts to mixed reaction. It eventually carves out it's niche as definitely not "ECW" but "WWECW." It's not what we hope it would be, but it's still wrestling with some of our old ECW favorites. Before the NXT developmental organization and before NXT the "reality competition" show, there was WWECW. Little by little, those old ECW favorites went away and the WWECW roster wore thin. To solve this issue, the WWE announced ECW would be home to their new superstars initiative, debuting completely new superstars every Tuesday night on the then-named Sci-Fi channel. You are unlikely to remember a single one.
