Last night, Tuesday February 2, on WWE's SyFy Channel program, ECW, Vince McMahon made a blockbuster announcement concerning the future of the company's third brand.
SyFy has long been displeased with the ratings performance of ECW, which have dropped from 2.8 when it premiered in 2006, to a dismal 1.0 for the Tuesday 10:00 pm timeslot. A major retooling of the show has long been rumored.
Vince McMahon pulled the trigger on taped television.
He came to the ring in the middle of the program and announced the ECW brand was on the clock. There would be four more shows until the program would be retooled as a developmental brand for new talent entitled 'WWE NXT'.
This development is interesting for two reasons. First, this marks the official and final death knell for a brand that was purchased by WWE in 2001 after a successful run as the most popular independent promotion in the United States. The original ECW, based out of Philadelphia, launched the careers of such wrestlers as the Dudley Boys, Tommy Dreamer, Sabu, Taz and Rob Van Dam. It also, at various times, featured such veterans as Terry Funk, Cactus Jack, Steve Austin, Shane Douglas, Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit.
After WWE purchased the brand rights, they retooled it originally as part of the WCW/ECW invasion of the WWE, which bombed. Then, in 2006, after the brand had posted successful reunion pay-per-views for WWE, ECW was relaunched on SyFy with Dreamer, Van Dam, a handful of other originals and vampires and strippers. Not sure why it didn't work out, either.
The second interesting part of this story is that there already exists a wrestling promotion called NXT Generation Wrestling in Europe. Seems as though someone should have told Vince this, since his European trademark history isn't that good, losing the rights to the WWF in Europe to the World Wildlife Federation.
The new and improved program is set to debut in April, 2010.
SyFy has long been displeased with the ratings performance of ECW, which have dropped from 2.8 when it premiered in 2006, to a dismal 1.0 for the Tuesday 10:00 pm timeslot. A major retooling of the show has long been rumored.
Vince McMahon pulled the trigger on taped television.
He came to the ring in the middle of the program and announced the ECW brand was on the clock. There would be four more shows until the program would be retooled as a developmental brand for new talent entitled 'WWE NXT'.
This development is interesting for two reasons. First, this marks the official and final death knell for a brand that was purchased by WWE in 2001 after a successful run as the most popular independent promotion in the United States. The original ECW, based out of Philadelphia, launched the careers of such wrestlers as the Dudley Boys, Tommy Dreamer, Sabu, Taz and Rob Van Dam. It also, at various times, featured such veterans as Terry Funk, Cactus Jack, Steve Austin, Shane Douglas, Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit.
After WWE purchased the brand rights, they retooled it originally as part of the WCW/ECW invasion of the WWE, which bombed. Then, in 2006, after the brand had posted successful reunion pay-per-views for WWE, ECW was relaunched on SyFy with Dreamer, Van Dam, a handful of other originals and vampires and strippers. Not sure why it didn't work out, either.
The second interesting part of this story is that there already exists a wrestling promotion called NXT Generation Wrestling in Europe. Seems as though someone should have told Vince this, since his European trademark history isn't that good, losing the rights to the WWF in Europe to the World Wildlife Federation.
The new and improved program is set to debut in April, 2010.
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