The Complete History Of WWE ECW

The original Extreme Championship Wrestling held their final show on January 13, 2001 with a non-televised event in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in front of 1,300 fans. Though not officially advertised as the trailblazing group’s swansong, there was a definite sense among the wrestlers and staff that this was the end of the road. 

ECW was haemorrhaging money in 2001 and had been struggling for some time. Mounting debt, coupled with their inability to secure a new television deal and the departure of most of their top stars, meant that the promotion could no longer conceivably continue. When ECW owner Paul Heyman showed up to replace the recently departed Jerry Lawler on commentary on the March 5 episode of WWE Raw, the death of ECW was no longer in doubt.

Three weeks later, World Championship Wrestling would be sold to WWE and the world went from having three major North American promotions to watch to a solitary one. 

Vince McMahon had a monopoly and, soon enough, many of the remaining ECW stars signed on with his outfit for the ill-fated Invasion. The ECW and WCW Alliance lost that war, too, and everyone officially became WWE Superstars by the end of the year. 

Fans continued to chant ‘ECW' as Rob Van Dam, Tommy Dreamer and The Dudley Boyz performed in WWE, while a handful of independent companies like XPW, 3PW and early MLW tried to recapture the spirit of the much-loved outlaw organisation. 

There was still an audience for ECW in the 2000s too, something that WWE was well aware of when they purchased the promotion's trademarks and tape library during protracted bankruptcy proceedings in 2003. This meant WWE had the footage, the names and likenesses, and all sorts of other intellectual property, along with a bunch of wrestlers who performed in the original ECW under contract.  

ECW One Night Stand

Four years on from the demise of ECW, WWE produced an exceptional Rise and Fall documentary released in November 2004, and the enthusiastic response to the DVD led to ECW One Night Stand from the Hammerstein Ballroom on June 12, 2005. Featuring a snapshot of everything that fans loved about the original, One Night Stand had high-flying lucha libre, outstanding technical wrestling, wild brawling and over-the-top characters.

The show attracted 340,000 pay-per-view buys, a number stronger than many of WWE’s pay-per-views in 2005, and was nothing short of a home run. 

With the DVD, pay-per-view, and ECW merchandise printing money for WWE, it was clear that there was still a market for Extreme and rumours began circulating not long after One Night Stand that WWE were considering bringing ECW back full-time as a third brand. 

The idea was ECW would come back and sit alongside Raw and Smackdown, but WWE would keep the integrity of the original alive by scaling back the production, running smaller venues, and allowing the talent more creative freedom when it came to laying out their matches and storylines. 

Though the discussions were reported about for months, the news wasn’t confirmed until May of 2006. ECW was coming back under the WWE umbrella and, not only was it coming back, it was going to have its own live one-hour show on the Sci-Fi channel, owned by WWE’s TV partner NBCUniversal.

Premiere Episode of ECW On Sci-Fi

The series was initially greenlit for a 13-episode run throughout the summer of 2006, with ECW on Sci-Fi premiering on Tuesday, June 13 on the same week as a WWE vs. ECW special and the second One Night Stand pay-per-view, which was another successful outing capped off by Rob Van Dam defeating John Cena for the WWE Championship.

Commercially, the debut episode of ECW on Sci-Fi was a huge success, generating the best ratings on cable for any show in the same time slot. Sci-Fi executives were so happy with the numbers that they happily extended the order for the number of episodes.

Artistically, however, the show was a disaster. The first issue was that WWE stars in Edge and John Cena were all over the show, while new acts like Kelly Kelly and a vampire in Kevin Thorn failed to impress, as did The Zombie, who made an appearance at the behest of Sci-Fi network executives who wanted to throw a bone to their usual audience. 

The premiere episode was then main evented by an awful Extreme Battle Royal featuring Tommy Dreamer, Sabu, Balls Mahoney, Little Guido, Al Snow, Danny Doring, Roadkill, Stevie Richards, Tony Mamaluke, Big Show, and Big Guido. 

There were a couple of positives from the premiere, like RVD’s presentation with the ECW World Heavyweight Championship and Kurt Angle looking like a million dollars during his squash Justin Credible, but that was it. Already, the cracks were starting to appear and it was plainly obvious that this version of ECW would have WWE’s fingerprints all over it. For fans of the original, it was a sobering wake-up call as they realised the thing that they loved so much would be the same in name only. 

Behind-The-Scenes Issues Lead To December To Dismember

Behind the scenes, trouble was also brewing. Paul Heyman clashed openly with WWE executives over the direction of the show, creating a tense backstage atmosphere.

Rob Van Dam was then suspended and forced to drop both the WWE and ECW titles in the same week – less than one month after winning them – after he and Sabu were pulled over and arrested for driving with drugs in their possession. Kurt Angle, one of the real ‘gets’ for the fledgling brand, left the company in a cloud of controversy just a couple of months in too. 

WWE also continued to be as tone-deaf as you could imagine, booking their own guys like Kevin Thorn, Mike Knox, Hardcore Holly and Test as the true stars ahead of the ECW originals who were brought in to be little more than glorified jobbers. 

One of the few early positives included the debut and rise of CM Punk, the surprisingly strong push for the enigmatic Sabu, and the occasional decent match, but that was about it. Before long, WWE felt the need to bring in the likes of Batista, Booker T and D-Generation X as protecting the integrity of the original ECW and building the company around a new group of stars turned out to be hollow promises.

A turning point arrived with the December to Dismember pay-per-view at the end of 2006 as the show was nothing short of a catastrophe. There were only two advertised matches and the rest of the card that WWE cobbled together was an insult to the 90,000 fans who actually paid to watch the show at home.

December to Dismember’s main event was a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with WWE ECW. Sabu, who had apparently been causing headaches backstage, was removed at the last minute and replaced with Hardcore Holly, and the match was won by Bobby Lashley, a demonstrably less popular choice than CM Punk or Rob Van Dam.  

In addition to the 90,000 PPV buys being the worst in company history until the advent of the WWE Network, Stevie Richards and Tommy Dreamer asked for their releases, while Paul Heyman was sent home following a furious argument with Vince McMahon over the booking of the show and direction of the brand as a whole, with Heyman lobbying for CM Punk to win the title, while McMahon wanted Lashley.

Shockingly, Vince McMahon initially believed December to Dismember was a good show until DirecTV was flooded with complaints about the pay-per-view, according to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

WWE ECW - Developmental

Following December to Dismember, the brand was built around Bobby Lashley, Test, WWE guest stars, and an originals versus New Breed feud that was designed to get the likes of Elijah Burke, Matt Striker and Marcus Cor Von over. 

Just one year after ECW's hopeful unveiling, Rob Van Dam, The Sandman, Sabu, and a lot of the other originals were gone, Vince McMahon had been ECW World Heavyweight Champion, Lashley had moved to the main roster, and Big Show had left WWE altogether.

From late 2007, ECW on Sci-Fi adopted a new look and feel. The hardcore matches were toned down and then phased out, while the programme was built around potential future stars like CM Punk, Elijah Burke, John Morrison, Kelly Kelly, and The Miz as the show very much served as the developmental brand where prospects could go and learn under less pressure, before the eventual call-up to Raw or SmackDown. 

Over the next couple of years, talents like Kofi Kingston, Sheamus, Evan Bourne, Jack Swagger, and Zack Ryder would get an opportunity to shine in ECW, while established pros such as Christian, William Regal, Matt Hardy, Shelton Benjamin and Mark Henry would be on hand to aide their development. 

It was far removed from what fans had seen for those first few months in 2006, but the newer ECW was, in its own way, a success. Though ratings had dipped, they remained steady, and when it came to tri-branded pay-per-views ECW was always represented. 

The End

Interest was undoubtedly waning, though, and on February 2, 2010, Vince McMahon announced that ECW was going to be cancelled, with its last show taking place two weeks from then, to be replaced by a new, supposedly ground-breaking show. 

On the final episode of ECW on Sci-Fi, The Big Show and The Miz retained their WWE Tag Titles over Goldust and Yoshi Tatsu, while Ezekiel Jackson (a WWE pet project if there ever was one) downed Christian to become the last ever ECW Champion. 

And that was that. Like the original ECW, WWE’s version of the brand had went out with a whimper. Having initially started out as an alternative, it limped to a finish that had been a long time coming. 

WWE ECW was then replaced by the game show version of NXT that teamed up rookies and pros and introduced WWE fans to the likes of Daniel Bryan, Wade Barrett, AJ Lee, and others. Table breaking had been replaced by barrel racing. Thumbtacks and barbed wire by obstacle courses and kissing contests. 

The decision to revive ECW as a third brand was something that, on the surface, made sense. It was still popular, a lot of the principals were still around and willing to contribute, and with it WWE could present a different type of product that served a niche. We can’t forget that TNA was gaining traction in the mid-2000s and WWE may have been feeling the heat a little. 

It was horribly mishandled from the start, however. WWE may as well have introduced a completely new third brand so as to avoid comparisons to a promotion that had such a strong, almost cult-like following. WWE ECW could never have lived up to something that grew so organically and was so influential during a much different time in the business. 

WWE ECW’s Legacy 

The legacy of WWE’s ECW is that it gave starts to some talents who would go on to be main event players in the business, while offering second chances for others who were perhaps on a downswing in their careers, but were still able to contribute in a positive way. 

The relaunch of ECW also serves as a cautionary tale for anyone trying to recreate something that belonged to a specific place and time and the intangibles of which cannot be offhandedly explained. 

WWE ECW wasn’t all bad, but the company was maybe a little foolish to think they could take the concept and make it their own while matching, if not bettering, a product that was genuinely cutting edge and left a distinct mark in the industry. 

It has been two decades since the original ECW closed its doors and fans still chant ECW to this day. None of them are chanting it because they have fond memories of Gene Snitsky or Ricky Ortiz.