Professional wrestling legend and WWE Hall of Famer Rob Van Dam who is a former WWE World Champion recently talked about the resurrection of ECW in 2006 and gave his opinion on why it failed. He said that he had a very balanced feeling about it.
WWE decided to resurrect ECW in 2006 with some of the originals from the promotion. ECW was one of the most famous professional wrestling promotions of the 90s which was the ultimately purchased by WWE back in 2001. WWE made sure to buy both of their competitions during the time one of them was ECW, of course, the other one was WCW.
Rob Van Dam Recalls The Resurrection Of ECW
ECW became famous because of its hardcore wrestling style. You will still hear fans throughout the wrestling arenas chanting “ECW.” The craze of the promotion was such immense. But the resurrection of ECW did not work pretty well, and there were multiple reasons behind the failure of the resurrection of ECW.
The biggest reason behind the failure of ECW was, WWE never wanted to be give much priority in it. There was only one championship and that was the ECW title. A brand cannot stand on only one title. Apart from that there were not enough originals either. Another big thing missing was the hardcore matches. WWE mostly treated it as one of their development territories.
The brand was in existence for nearly four years and in early 2010. Vince McMahon announced the end of ECW and as a replacement, he introduced the NXT. Back then it was more of a talent hunt competition like Tough Enough. Later, it became the top development territory of WWE.
Rob Van Dam who is a former WWE World Champion recently spoke to WrestlingNews.Co where he talked about the resurrection of ECW in 2006 and gave his opinion on why it failed. He said that he had a very balanced feeling about it. He said;
“I have a very balanced feeling on that because I have pros and cons that I feel. At the time, especially when I was in that competitive state of mind of being in the dressing room, [I’m] feeling like the writers are fucking with me, for me, totally different state of mind then I have now with this happy time in my life.
“At the time, I looked at it defensively from ECW. I thought he was making a mockery of ECW, I thought he might of even brought ECW back to destroy it because he didn’t like the fans chanting EC-Dub. I’m like ‘Wow man, this dude’s crazy, maybe he brought it back just to..’ and he did, he completely wiped out the extreme theme to it.”
H/T and transcribed by Fightful