ECW debut a train wreck

Mr.Nice Guy

I imagine most of you like myself don't want to know what happened on the debut of ECW on Sci-Fi, but while I did not want to know what happened, I was keen on the reaction to the show and it appears it was an absolute disaster. From PWInsider:

Last night's show was written by Paul Heyman and then put through the tweaking process by WWE creative. For those of you who thought Heyman would have some kind of creative control of the brand, you found out otherwise last night. This is a Vince McMahon production and we saw that last night. Reports backstage were that Heyman wrote the show to meet McMahon's expectations and visions of ECW.

Speaking of Heyman, people who saw him backstage told me it was pretty clear that he thought the show was a train wreck. In fact, everyone I talked to in the company felt the same way. They all knew that the show was a complete disaster and a failure.

Don't check out the insider sites if you don't want to know more but it's pretty clear from reading fan comments that the opener was a flop and that Sci-Fi and WWE Creative are moronic c*nts.

I was willing to give Vince the benefit of the doubt but it seems I was wrong to do so.

Mossy Monk

hopefully i will be able to see it tonight, i have reservations with the whole

John Cena turning up to raise hell bull****

as that would i think ruin it

Vince135792003

Reading the reports, it really does n't look good. Heres an interesting line from the observer site report:

Yes, this was utter crap. It had nothing of what made ECW successful, everything that makes WWE suck and a good amount of what made WCW go out of business thrown in just for good measure.

The headline on pwinsider called it the "worst wrestling hour in years".

gimmick

Shock horror and surprise. The very fact that Joey Styles had to ask the fans before the show kicked off to tone down the chants etc, as families with small kids were in attendance basically sums up the entire thing.

Some people said before that ECW in small arenas was the past and moving to a bigger arena was progress, well, last night did great didn't it? I have seen a small bit of it from a torrent, and it was pants. Zombies and vampires, and Justin Credible being squashed and some stripper, and yawn yawn yawn.

I just hope Vince and others with sway see what rubbish this was, take it back to the small arenas, let Heyman have a free role, and allow ECW to thrive.

el rabitos

Train wreck? looked more like a world trade centre on a day in september

Mr.Nice Guy

I think the types of fans in attendance is a serious problem. People there aren't paying to see ECW, they are just getting it as a bonus. According to one report I read, when RVD came out there was quite a lot of boos towards him presumbaly from Cena fans.

It is just ridiculous for Rob Van Dam to be booed at an ECW show!

It seems Heyman's two main problems are Sci-Fi and Vince McMahon. Sci-Fi want to turn it into ECW with aliens, vampires etc. while Vince wants to turn it into Raw-lite.

The whole thing is a mess and as gimmick pointed out, it can only thrive if they place their faith in Heyman.

gimmick

Sci-Fi want to turn it into ECW with aliens, vampires etc. while Vince wants to turn it into Raw-lite.

On that. With it being on Sci-fi, it is going to be fairly 'supernaturally' themed, and originally, according to the gossip sites Sandman was due to beat the snot out of an Alien, but Sci-fi blocked that.

Re Raw lite, again from a gossip site, and if you think of it, it makes sense. Vince is using this current Raw Vs ECW storyline to both push Vengeance, and also, promote ECW to a wider audience in its new infancy. This is all well and good, but if i were a wrestling fan, who never saw ECW, and this was the first installment of its weekly show, it wouldnt be surprised why this company went to the wall.

One big question which needs answering for me though is this - Heyman knows what Vince is like, and in all likelihood knew Vince et al would tinker with his scripts, so why do it at all?

MNG: you might edit the title of the thread, as it may be deemed a spoiler?????

Cactus Col

watching it at the moment .... and there seems to be a good amount of booing going on for rvd ..... and cheering for cena.....

As someone said above, they need to be playing to their own audience, as the atmosphere created is an integral part of what ecw is.

the stripper not being able to take her bra off was ridiculous, as well as a waste of time, replying the taz match from sunday, pointless, the zombie and vampire, I thought this was the type of stuff that ecw was supposed to despise

Jonny Arson

Surprise surprise..... :rolleyes:

Honestly, what were you expecting from an ECW run by Vinnie Mac? No matter what this ECW ''comeback'' is hyped to up be, this is not the real ECW and will never be. I did the think the PPV the other night was good and I'm probably jumping the gun without actually seeing the first show, but we all know Vinnie's ego and there is no chance is hell of him letting Heyman runs things as he wants.... I'm just laughing at how soon things are already looking like going downhill!

I give this WWE version of ECW 9 months.


BTW when and what channel is this ECW show on again?

Mossy Monk

omg where to begin

the crowd, wtf. on an ecw show they boo RVD. i thought the crowd would be **** anyway after the PPV on Sunday. no way can you get an ECW crowd at a Smackdown taping

the zombie and the vampire. seriously WTF were they all about?

kelly the exhibitionist, give me a ****ing break. i like stripping ladies as much as the next guy but that was a load of bull****

ECW needs to have Paul Heyman in full control, be staged in small venues and have a proper crowd

what i just watched wont last 12 months

and stop the ****ing crossovers with RAW, jesus

Fozzy

I've just watched it, and my ****ing god, it was honestly the worst 45 minutes of wrestling I can ever remember seeing. Raw is generally awful these days, and I was looking forward so much to some sort of alternative, but somehow they actually made a show much worse than Raw. Absolutely terrible

The big arena didn't suit the show, but I thought they did a decent enough job with what they had. They used a different entrance and stuck the main camera up where the SD entrance ramp would be. The production was exactly like Raw and SD though. A view of the arena from outside, a replay from the start of the show before the main event, ads for DX and Raw..

RVD getting booed at the start sounded stupid. He's the most over guy in ECW, their champ, and he gets booed at the show. I understand why he was, but it takes away from ECW. Two Raw guys go over the ECW champ and owner within the first 10 minutes

At first I was thinkin "what the ****.." when the Zombie came out, but when Sandman came, I felt alright about it. To me, it was like they were putting our fears to rest about aliens and **** turnin up cos of the Sci-Fi channel, and they had this guy on for a laugh so he'd have the **** beaten out of him and that'd be the last of his and his kind. But I've read that we can expect more of him and others. So that was a ****in terrible segment. Bleedin Mordecai is back now as a vampire too. **** wrestler

Justin Credible, who Tazz and Styles went to great lengths in putting him over, jobs to Angle without getting any offence in at all. **** squash match

Some bird comes out and makes a worse job at undoin a bra strap than I usually do. If I wanted porn, I'd get some. I wanted wrestling, and obviously this is the wrong ****in show

How can Heyman book matches for a Raw ppv? Are the Raw guys really going to be afraid when ECW comes on Monday? They've all been portrayed as jobbers. Two of their lads took out the champ and the owner. Why do they have to do so much cross promotion? I'd have liked to forget about Raw when I was watchin this

Battle royal was awful. Just everybody hittin each other with signs and Big Show chuckin everyone out. Dreamer took a big bump, fair play to him. But it meant nothing. Sabu got lucky in the end and gets to fight Cena again

I'm sure I'm forgetting some more stuff that I thought was pure crap. Oh yeah, they show the full Tazz vs Lawler match from ONS, entrances and all. Worst match on the ppv gets a full airing. Why?

I'll give them a bit more of a chance, but I really don't see this getting any better. If they keep this up I think I'll just give up on WWE completely

Cactus Col

Its a sad state of affairs .... but still a very successful night for sci fi

seanironmaiden

Jeeeeeesus, what a crap show. Hopefully all the negative feedback will force WWE to pull out the finger and do separate filming for ECW shows. I'm not even going to get into all the stuff I hated about it. And Styles telling people to tone down their chants was probably unnessecary seein as it was a house full of Smackdown fans anyway...

castagnoli

What a disaster! I guess we only have ourselves to blame for hyping the return of ECW so much. Seriously, we should have expected nothing less.
The whole venue thing is the number 1 reason it sucked. The place was full of Cena fans. Did you see the kids faces when Sandman came out? [tangent] The reason Sandman can't use Enter Sandman is Metallica are looking for 10 to 13 million dollars a year. Whores.[/tangent]
Obviously the WWE watered down version of the show is the next stumbling block. Too many ads and too many WWE guys. Cena, Edge, Lita, Angle, Big Show. Why the **** is the Big Show there??? Somebody give me a good excuse, I dare ya! I liked the idea of Angle in ECW at first but god, its a disaster. I can see him squashing all the ECW guys and then going back to Raw.
The next problem is they HAVE TO drop the torch they are holding to the old ECW, meaning bring in new guys, quick, and move away from this hardcore only mentality.
Finally, quit with the ECW chants!!!!! Thats really doing my head in!

Vince135792003

The debut show got a gigantic 2.8. I wonder what they'll get next week.

Stalfos

Was probably on 10 for the first 5mins. Since i'd already seen this thread, i thought with an open mind, it might seem a bit better but than was the worst god awful piece of crap ever. Not 1 proper match and ecw guys jobbin to wwe guys??? Wouldn't even make a good raw or smackdown show imo.

evad_lhorg

sounds like its just turning into another wwe show. rvd getting booed? wtf?

Fozzy

It was WWE fans at the event, and a lot of WWE fans seem to prefer Cena to RVD, so RVD got booed by them. It's like Heyman was given a list of things he had to do within an hour, and in fairness he probably did the best with what he was told to do. Set up a match with Cena, set up a Raw invasion, use some Sci-Fi characters, get some weapon shots in. Just came across so bad though

As someone already said, apparently the plan was for an alien instead of a zombie originally, but Sci-Fi blocked it cos they didn't want aliens gettin beaten up on their channel. Tazz and Styles both called the Zombie "ridiculous" and "laughable", which is why I thought it was just a once off piss take. It had to be though..that "promo" was the most stereotypical zombie promo they could have done! Looks like this is actually going to be a part of the new ECW though. And if they ever do have an alien character, he's going to have a bigger winning streak than Goldberg

Got huge ratings for Sci-Fi though. Can't see them staying that high if they keep this crap up. So much of it just made no sense. Why would Sabu want another match against Cena on a WWE ppv? Surely he'd want a shot at the ECW title? Sabu is the only non-WWE guy they've tried to build up in any way, which is ridiculous. ****in awful show

galwaydude

I watched it on the sci-fi and to be honest i wont be watching it again. The wrestling was non existant all they had was guys hitting each other with tables and chairs.

It was a poor effort and the word cheap comes to mind. I know why jerry lawlor called ECW extremely crappy wrestling. John cena got the loudest cheers when he came in the ring. ECW sucks bigtime. I was going to go to an ECW event thats on in a few months at the local universcity sports arena but i wont waste my money now.

Even they had a near naked lady stripping when there were lots ok kids in the house.Very inappropriate for families. She was ok looking too:D

Fozzy

galwaydude wrote:

I know why jerry lawlor called ECW extremely crappy wrestling

The old ECW wasn't anything resembling this new **** though. Completely different, in a good way. The old ECW, that is

I know there were a lot of rumours about CM Punk goin to ECW and how Heyman could book him well and everything, but I'm really startin to hope Punk cops on and gets the **** out of WWE. Go back to ROH, give TNA another try, cos I've just about lost all hope of him getting anywhere in WWE


Just read that yer one that was strippin is one of the swimsuit models Johnny Ace hired. Still can't believe he did that. And Shelley Martinez is supposedly going to play a tarot card reader in ECW

All this talk of aliens and zombies and stuff has me thinkin of something Alex Shelley said once..I'll try find it


Found it..When asked "If you were booking yourself, what types of opponents and story lines would you book?", Alex replied,

Um. I never put that much thought into booking myself, honestly. I'd probably book this angle, because I have thought of this one. I'd get alien cartoonish costumes for Sabin, Sonjay, and Jay Lethal. Then, I'd get like, Army men costumes for me, Petey, and Matt Bentley. THEN, I'd have recurring matches every PPV where the Army men are constantly trying to capture the aliens! Like, the aliens could hail from Area 51, weighing in at a combined 72 moonrocks. The army men wouldn't just step over a drop down, they'd jump over it, then crawl to the next move. I think it'd be a great feud, but maybe it belongs in Hustle. I can't tell at this point

Well, I think we know exactly where it belongs now.. Shelley is a wrestler in TNA, if anyone hasn't heard of him. Great wrestler

Hoodle

I want, nay demand, that hour of my life back.