Was ECW better off dead?

Being an ECW fan has been something of a rollercoaster ride over the past week and a half. I've wanted to sit down and write this column for the past few days, but each time something has happened that changed my mind. I have gone from cautious opitimism, to genuine excitement about a new brand to complete and utter bewilderment at just what the powers that be thinkg ECW should be.

The week began with the WWE vs. ECW special which I finally got to watch this weekend. After having done a decidely average job building up ECW on Raw on Smackdown, this was the moment it really felt like they might do something interesting with this brand. John Cena and Sabu had a really fun match while the product as a whole just felt really different and exciting. The build to last year's One Night Stand pay per view was decidely erratic but in the end the show was very entertaining so I could only assume that the same would happen this year.

It's just a shame that One Night Stand really didn't deliver the kind of exciting alternative product that it did last year, or that it even managed to with the WWE vs. ECW special. For everything that was great; Terry Funk being a crazy bastard one last time, the first half of Rey vs. Sabu or John Cena's interaction with the ECW fans. There was also the nonsensical and down right baffling. Orton vs. Angle was not looking good on paper, however for it be given almost 15 minutes was an insult to the ECW fans that paid a lot of money to see an ECW show, not a Smackdown one. The fact that Rey vs. Sabu ended in a no contest - this is Sabu the man who managed to finish matches with broken jaws and lacerated arms wrapped in barbed wire, yet he was done in by a DDT through a table? I don't think. Plus, JBL, announcing he was the new voice of Smackdown. Really, who in that crowd cared?!

When all was said and done, this show has almost many plusses as minuses and at least it was something different, so hopes were high going into the debut of ECW on Sci Fi. But that was all to change over the 60 minutes that this abomonation of a show was on. In one night, ECW was emasculated and not even on love TV because the new network was too scared by the pay per view and wanted to keep them under control. This was more of an advert for WWE's Vengance pay per view than it was for the new show. The ECW talent were made to look second rate to the WWE 'superstars' and the few moment ECW guys were allowed to shine were in contrived scenarios that just them look like the bingo hall workers WWE has always stereotyped them as being. Sandma and a zombie was never going to be good, but without his siganture entrance and without anything else of note to counter balance this moment of MacMahon inspired stupidity it summed up what was a truly awful hour of TV.

The weekend of One Night Stand, two of ECW's strongest characters in the final months, Matt 'SPike Dudley' Hyson and Rhino, voiced their disgust at WWE brining bakc ECW and Hyson went so far as to tear up his WWE contract. What seemed like a moment of impetuousness that may have cost Hyson a lucrative pay deal has now become one of the most ballsy, pragmatic decision anyone has made in wrestling so far in 2006. We can only hope that in the coming weeks and month, ECW is give the chance to create a genuine alternative program. However after that first week of ECW's resurrection, you can't help but with that it had stayed dead and buried in that Philly bingo hall wear it was concieved.