The Attitude era can officially come to a close; ECW is finally dead. Yes, the little promotion that could is on its final legs, as in three weeks time, the Land of Extreme will finally close up shop. We for one, can't wait.
Brief history lesson: ECW started in the early 1990's out of Philadelphia, PA. They mostly ran out of bingo halls. They produced a few stars (like Rob Van Dam, Lance Storm, and "That 70's Guy/Fat Chick Thriller" Mike Awesome), but mostly disgusted any sane person with their antics. There was cursing, blood, violence against women, and sexuality rampant through their shows. You could usually only see it at 3 am on the MSG Network in New York. However, TNN eventually gave it a TV time slot as a lead in for their popular Slamball and Rollerjam sports series. It was soon canceled and Monday Night Raw took over.
As part of the deal to get Raw on TNN, ECW producer Paul Heyman became the new color commentator next to Jim Ross. ECW remained dormant until one fateful day in summer of 2001 when Shane McMahon's WCW merged with ECW (now owned by Stephanie McMahon-Helmsly) to create an Alliance to rival the WWF!
They then put their company stock on the line at the Survivor Series and lost.
ECW would be forgotten until 2005 when a bunch of old timers had a bake sale or something, and ran the One Night Stand pay-per-view. The show did a decent enough buy-rate, but WWE Producer Kevin Dunn rightfully hated the show. The highlights of the show were when Joey Styles said live on-air that he hoped Mike Awesome's dive to the outside "killed him" (Awesome would commit suicide soon after) and when JBL legitimately beat up the Blue Meanie. Fast forward a year and Rob Van Dam's title win over John Cena relaunched an ECW television series on Sci-Fi.
The show stunk. Hard.
The same old ECW shenanigans started up again as The Sandman beat up The Zombie and Balls Mahony hosted some strip poker segment that was so boring the Laugh Twins were only able to masturbate to it twice. The Miz became the The Miz there and Chris Benoit murdered his wife and son and committed suicide (clearly an ECW tradition) because he was drafted to ECW.
On the plus side, both CM Punk and Mark Henry became awesome while in ECW. Also, Christian is there and he rules.
ECW is also responsible for giving us the following talents with their "New Superstar Initiative": Jack Swagger, Abraham Washington, Tommy Dreamer, Tyler Reks, Evan Bourne, and DJ Gabriel.
Still, the luster of these "stars" was not enough to sustain this little promotion. Fact is, people don't watch minor league baseball.
That is to say, until now. What pray tell is replacing ECW? Why WWE Next Generation, or NXT for short! This is awesome! The stars of the future...today! What kind of set will this show have? Will Josh Mathews be there? Will the NXT also have that cool razor blade logo?
We think WWE.com summed up our feelings exactly with a little poll buried over at their ECW subpage.
What do you think about Mr. McMahon announcing the end of ECW?
1) This is great! Mr. McMahon promises us the next evolution of WWE in its place!
2) I'm disappointed but excited to see what will replace ECW.
3) I'm not sure. This raises more questions than it answers.
Ummm...obviously #1. NXT question!
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