Looking At One Night Stand

world wide · 06-12-2006, 04:08 PM

Credit: PWinsider.com
by Dave Scherer @ 1:05:00 PM on 6/12/2006

Quote:

It's baaaaaaaccccckkk. After a five year absence, the ECW brand returned with a show that was representative of what the company used to be and also where it's going moving forward. As I have said many times, the ECW of yesteryear is gone and it's not coming back. That is something that everyone needs to realize going in so that we don't have to mention it in every article that we write about the new brand. That's not all bad either, since at the end ECW had a lot of problems (mainly with lack of money and all of the problems that come with that) so being backed by a company with the war chest of WWE isn't the worst thing in the world. The fact is that the company is a new brand and needs to be judged on what they do now, not what they did then. It's even unfair comparing it to last year's One Night Stand because that show was a tribute broadcast and a vehicle to tie up loose ends and provide closure. This was a vehicle to provide a new start for a resurrected, but somewhat different, brand.

For the new ECW to succeed, first and foremost WWE needs to let them be different from Raw and Smackdown. Last night's show certainly was just that. How you felt about it probably depends on what you like out of wrestling. If you appreciate crazy spots, violence and an almost out-of-control anything can happen atmosphere, like I do, then you enjoyed last night's show. If you don't, you probably didn't. Given that ECW went out of business more than five years ago, I am sure that there were some never fans that were shocked at some of what they saw last night, and that's a good thing. The ECW concept could have worked in the 90s with money behind and it can do the same in 2006, as long as it's allowed to be the different product that a lot of fans are looking for.

As I said on the post game show last night, overall I enjoyed the show. I gave it a 6 out of 10 last night. That may have been a little low and I will raise it to a 7 today. I know some people will get (and have already gotten) a little miffed that I didn't give the show a ten, but my job is to be fair and that is what I do here.

The best part about my problems with the show were that many of them were the result of the recent inactivity of the wrestlers and the fact that the show was thrown together so quickly when WWE decided to bring the brand back full time. Those are problems that will be easily fixed as the talent gets more work and the creative direction can be planned out a little further once creative knows who will be where.

The best parts of the show were obvious. The effort level from everyone involved was off the charts, as was always the case back in ECW's heyday. The fans were incredible as well. They were vociferous, creative and a valuable part of the show. They were just outstanding and they made their impression on some WWE employees in the back who had never seen anything like them before. The other great thing about the show was that it was just so much different than the current WWE product that it made the show fun to watch. That is a trend that absolutely has to continue for this to be a success. The second it becomes Raw Light, it's done.

Let's get to my thoughts on the show.

Wow, how about that open? Paul Heyman was off the charts in doing a promo that his fans totally got, and totally expected. Hell, sitting in my living room, I knew pretty much everything he would say and everything was exactly what I wanted to hear. It was a great way to kick off the show.

Tazz coming out to his old music was awesome. His mix of "War Machine" was always one of my favorite entrance songs ever and it was great to hear it. As soon as it hit everyone popped, and rightfully so. ... Damn, did Lawler's gut look huge when he hit Joey Styles or what? Why would you pull the strap down and show that thing off. Tazz is bigger than he used to be too, but he wore the right ring attire. ... The segment, with Tazz making Lawler tap out, was perfectly booked. It was exactly what it should have been. Some people were ticked that they didn't get a match but as we reported for weeks now, it was never scheduled to be one. It was a confrontation and WWE shouldn't have promoted it as a bout.

Kurt Angle vs. Randy Orton was a solid match that went a little too long. It was great when Angle was in control, but no one in the building (or myself at home) wanted to see Orton get in much of anything on offense. I appreciate, and agree with, WWE's attempt to get Angle over as a "pure wrestler" and not a pro wrestler, especially given the shape of his body, but this match shouldn't have gone as long as it did. Orton should have done a fast job quickly for two reasons. For one thing, it's what Angle's character called for since a mat technician should have dominated his opponent quickly. Two, it's what Orton deserved for the behavior that got him suspended for almost two months. He definitely had a penance to pay and he hasn't done so yet. As I said, it was solid but would have been a lot more effective if it went 8 minutes. ... I liked the placement of the match. Angle is part of the new ECW but this show should have let the old ECW guys have the bouts later in the show. Kurt can main event from now on. ... Joey Styles' line about "fireworks at ECW" was great, and so true. ... I was really happy to see the hardcore fans "accept" Kurt Angle and pop for him when he came out as "one of their own". He is now and frankly, he's a guy that would have been great in the wrestling side of ECW back in the day. ... The fans were awesome during the match. Every chant I heard was like a case of deja vu for me.

Super Crazy and Tajiri vs. The FBI was a good, fun match most of the way, with a lot of big spots. It got a little sloppy at the end but again, that is understandable. Then, Big Show came out and laid out the five guys in the match, which I didn't like and didn't see the point of. It just said that those guys were nothing.

JBL had no business being on the show. He brought nothing to the table and we didn't need to be told he was the new Smackdown color guy last night. I really didn't like that segment.

Sabu and Rey had a typical Sabu ECW, plunder style match, right up until the finish. Sorry Vince, ECW would never let a match end on that kind of lame ass finish though. But again, this is Vince's ECW now and frankly, there is no way that anyone could have expected WWE champs to lose both matches. ... I kind of liked that Rey wore the mask. I know that tradition in Mexico says that he shouldn't, but that ship has sailed. Now, why he had "ECW" written on the back of his mask after putting the mouth on them on Wednesday's special, well don't ask me to explain that.

The Dreamer/Funk vs. Edge/Foley match was pure psychotic ECW plunder. My God, that was some stiff, sick stuff. The barbed wire spots were ill. Then, we had fire. I was thinking to myself, "You couldn't pay me enough to do that kind of stuff", which is why I respect those guys so much. My wife even said, "This is brutal" and meant it in a good way. I know there are people who probably didn't like it, or thought it was contrived at points (and I can't argue with that) but it was the kind of psycho ECW stuff that was always unique and still is. If you like the style, you just accept the things that lead up to the big spots. And, it was exactly what the fans wanted to see. ... I liked the finishing sequence. It made a lot of sense (like Edge pinning a woman because who in right mind wouldn't want to do whatever it took to get out of that match) and it kept everyone strong. ... Did you notice that Styles called it the "Dreamer Driver" instead of the "Spicoli Driver"? That had to be a WWE call.

Balls Mahoney and Masato Tanaka had a short, really stiff match. The chairshots that they hit made me cringe. Big time. It's hard to say much more about it because it was so quick.

I was hoping that when Eugene came out it may have been to drop the goofy character he had been doing and show us that he was working everyone on Raw. Instead, Sandman killed him. I hated this segment, for a few reasons, and it's a part of why my grade for the show was lowered. Eugene is the kind of character that needs to be kept far, far away from ECW. He just doesn't fit in there and the whole segment was out of place. Then, Vince went cheap and didn't pay for the rights to "Enter Sandman", which really, really hurt Sandman. His entrance is so important that WWE is making a huge mistake not paying for the rights fees for the song. They really need to reconsider this.

I loved the RVD vs. Cena match. I was especially impressed by how hard Cena worked. The guy catches a lot of flak from people but I think he is undersold as well. He went into the belly of the beast and showed a lot. ... I got the feeling at the finish that even though RVD won, the fans didn't really believe it. I know I kind of didn't. I was waiting for the overturn to happen and I am glad that it didn't. ... Following up on an earlier item, I get that the fans hate Cena and all, but I think they went a bit overboard in dogging the guy. He worked really hard and back in the day, the ECW fans would have given the guy props for working hard as the match went on instead of dogging him the whole time. ... It was so great to see my buddy Tony Lewis at ringside wipe his butt on Cena's shirt and throw it back in the ring and lay a hardcore welcome on the WWE champ. What made him doing it so special was there is no work there. Tony, who almost single handedly got ECW on PPV though his rallying of the internet (despite claims from some other people who have tried to revise history and take credit for it) pretty much stopped watching wrestling when ECW went out of business, so what he did was truly heartfelt. Great stuff.

On another note, I think Tazz and Joey Styles did an excellent job calling the matches. They both get what the product is and did a fine job in getting it over to the fans. By the end of the night, I found myself looking forward to tomorrow night's debut on Sci Fi. At this point in time, the sky's the limit and anything is possible for the brand.

world wide · 06-12-2006, 06:24 PM

Credit: PWinsider.com
by Mike Johnson @ 4:15:00 PM on 6/12/2006

Quote:

Last night's ECW One Night Stand PPV was the true birth for the new version of Extreme Championship Wrestling. Going into the show, I had my doubts as I felt the build on Raw and Smackdown had been half-hearted and haphazard at best. Things began to look up at the WWE vs. ECW special last week, with several good matches and an overall fun two hour special.

So, that led to the next step, last night's One Night Stand PPV, which was going to tell the true tale of what this "new vision of ECW" was going to be. Was it going to be "Raw with Vampires" as I proclaimed last week? Was it going to be true to what ECW was? Would fans accept the new WWE entrants on the ECW roster? Was it going to be a good show? Those were all questions I had walking into the Hammerstein Ballroom last night, as a writer and as someone who wouldn't be where I am today if it hadn't been for the original ECW company. Good and bad, these are my observations:

ECW IS DEAD, LONG LIVE ECW

The old ECW Audience is gone. During several points of the show, I turned around from my ringside seat to face the audience in the balconies, specifically to see what the crowd reaction would be for Kurt Angle, Big Show, Eugene, and Randy Orton. I expected a crowd of rabid ECW fans to reject the Superstars, showering and pelting the ring (well, not Angle, but you get the picture). What I saw instead was the realization that the original ECW audience is no longer around. This is not only a whole new ECW, but a whole new ECW audience.

Yes, there are familiar faces that are attending and some fans have come back because it's "ECW" but unlike last year's PPV, this wasn't a celebration of old friends converging for nostalgia. This was a uniquely different set of fans in comparison to a year ago. This was a gathering made up of old ECW fans, some fans from out of town (as far as Japan, the UK, and Germany), and a large majority of WWE fans. There was a large amount of WWE shirts in the audience, from Undertaker to Steve Austin to even Eugene. If you pay attention to the show, the WWE "heels" were indeed booed, but it was not to a fevered pitch of red hot heat that Eric Bischoff and his band of merry men received last year. These weren't ECW fans rejecting the WWE performers. These were WWE fans booing the heels and cheering the faces.

Big Show, the one wrestler I expected to be rejected the worst of anyone on the show, was instead cheered by the majority of the crowd, despite the fact he was beating down a quartet of ECW wrestlers who had just put on a great match - that the same fans were appreciative of! I expected the fans to act disgusted and reject the fact he was even considered to be part of this new ECW. Instead, it was the exact opposite. The lesson to be learned here? The days of the "us vs. them" fan mentality is long gone. The ECW fans of yesterday are gone and instead, good and bad, it's WWE fans who go to ECW as well. It truly is another WWE brand now. The idea of Hulk Hogan or Triple H one day stepping into an ECW ring isn't too far fetched in 2006.

The new ECW audience, however, loved playing into the mindset of what ECW was in their eyes. Although based on their ages, many of them never could have attended an ECW Arena event, they were loudly supporting anything pro-ECW. They chanted for their heroes and booed their perceived villains, but beyond a few downright evil chants ("Hepatitis" at Randy Orton, for one), it was fans simply out to have a good time whole doing the same old chants they knew were part of the ECW show.

These weren't the fans that were there when being an ECW fan knew you were part of something secret that meant something special to you and a few select others. However, being an ECW fan to them means that they have something different that WWE gives them that want to like and support. They have taken ECW and made it something of their own, which is great. WWE has a hell of a base to build from.

ECW truly is dead, but long live the new ECW.

ONE NIGHT STAND THOUGHTS

The PPV itself was a solid PPV, but it felt completely different from previous "ECW" efforts. It is hard to not compare it to last year's One Night Stand show. That said, anyone who does is being completely unfair. In many ways, WWE made a mistake by keeping the name, because there will be an automatic association and comparison with the 2005 event, which was one of the great PPVs of all time and one hell of an emotional ride. Like ECW's first PPV, Barely Legal, in hindsight, the One Night Stand title should have been retired.

Paul Heyman's opening speech was exactly what the audience wanted to hear. I thought his crack about having a better TV deal now was pretty funny. If there is one thing you can always expect from Heyman, it's that he'll always be as passionate for his ECW as he can be. That was the perfect way to pump up the audience.

Tazz vs. Jerry Lawler was exactly what it should have been, although the involvement of Joey Styles was a nice twist. That was some shot Styles took from Lawler. It was cool to see the "old school" Tazz for a few minutes, although his in-ring career is in the past. If that's the last time he has a "match", I was happy to see it end for him in the ECW environment.

Kurt Angle vs. Randy Orton was OK at best. The two have had much better matches in the past. Again, I really thought the crowd was going to violently reject Orton and other other WWE talents, but it didn't happen. It was really odd to see pyrotechnics on an "ECW" show, but that's going to be one of those changes that happen with the WWE influence. You could see the new vision for Angle is to be the ground and pound MMA hybrid badass.

I enjoyed the FBI vs. Tajiri and Super Crazy. As one of my friends joked, "OK, finally the ECW show starts." These four haven't lost a step, and while it didn't touch the level of what they are capable of, it was fun to see them work one more time. I really miss watching Tajiri work. I got a big kick out of seeing Tajiri and Crazy do the 1-2-3 HUSTLE step from Japan, but it went over 99% of the audience's head. A good match that spotlighted the ECW work ethic of having a good athletic match for the sake of letting talented athletes have a good match.

The Big Show's cameo was done to obviously get him over as a monster. I figured he would be taking out Big Guido, but was surprised when he laid out everyone. That harkens back to my thoughts last week on building the new brand. If you are going to use these talents as the backbone of the ECW tag division, why have them decimated by Show? Paul Heyman is always great at hiding weaknesses, but that segment just exposed four talented wrestlers as puppets being tossed around. I wasn't too thrilled with that, but the crowd loved it, so I'm obviously in the minority.

The JBL appearance seemed to be treated by the crowd as, "This again?" I don't know why they would have him show up and use ECW PPV time to get over a Smackdown angle, but again, it's the WWE influence.

Sabu vs. Rey Mysterio was a really good match, but while the finish looked amazing, it was a horrible one. One thing that ECW was always good to it's audience about was giving them a finish to the match that they paid to see, or giving them a surprise that surpassed the audience's expectations. Here instead was a dream match that was literally over 10 years in the making, and to not do a finish here really irked me. The actual body of the match itself was unbelievably fun. I thought the Thesz Press through the table and the Sabu DDT of Rey looked awesome. It's really surreal for me to watch Sabu working on the WWE platform, but I am happy to see it finally happen for the guy. A lot of fans have crapped all over Rey's World title reign since he's done so many (really, too many) jobs, but his work is still really good, especially when you factor in all the injuries he's working with. God bless both those guys. I didn't care for the finish. It's possible they are going to announce tonight that there will be a rematch on ECW TV, but even if that's the case, it would be a typical WWE move of using PPV to build TV, which has always been the opposite of what ECW as a concept was about in the past.

The best match on the show, in my opinion, was the six person mixed tag match. Tommy Dreamer and Terry Funk did a hell of a job. Edge took another step towards being the Ric Flair of this generation by showing what a true slimeball his character can be by spearing Beulah and then humping her as he pinned her. Lita is awesome in her role. For someone who has no interest in being in the business, Beulah did one hell of a job last night. Although I wish for his own good, Terry Funk would get out of the ring, I loved watching he and Mick Foley go at it again. I had a bad feeling when I saw Foley's shirt start to go up in flames but thankfully it wasn't too bad. The image of Funk and Foley laying in the barbed wire at the end just made me wonder if they were teasing a barbed wire match for a future PPV. In the end, it wouldn't truly be ECW without Tommy Dreamer fighting the good fight and coming up short. In the end, he was beaten, his mentor bloody, and his wife speared, pinned and disgraced as Dreamer carried her out with tears in his eyes. The spirit of ECW was never more alive then it was during that match. Kudos to everyone involved.

Balls Mahoney vs. Masato Tanaka was disappointing on many levels. Without knowing for sure, I am assuming they had their time cut during the match as they were just starting to build, only for Tanaka to be taken out and pinned after ONE chairshot? It seemed so wrong that Tanaka came all the way from Japan for just that, especially after the vibrant performance he put in at last year's PPV. I'd like to see them have a rematch with more time down the line, because I have no doubts they could recreate some of the great matches they've had.

The Eugene thing was the lowlight of the show, because it was the type of thing that most ECW fans "should hate" in theory, but this crowd seemed to just have fun booing it. The Sandman's entrance loses a lot of it's luster without Enter Sandman. I know that WWE had been trying to work out rights arrangements and it's likely too cost prohibitive, but they really should at least play the song live and then edit it off later. Hell, I would be willing to wager that most fans would be willing to pay a few more dollars for the DVDs if it meant keeping the theme. I didn't care for this segment but Sandman grabbing the second Singapore Cane from the fan in the front row and wailing away on Eugene with two canes as he ran away was pretty funny.

While WWE as a whole hasn't done the best job of launching ECW over the last several weeks, you can't ask for a better gift then to have ECW's top star beating the WWE champion on ECW's home turf. John Cena is very much a polarizing personality, but the bottom line is that he is able to pull off whatever situation WWE puts him into. Much like Wrestlemania against Triple H, the story of the match was the crowd as much as the action in the ring. When fans care that much about you, love or hate regardless, you have done your job and I'd go as far as to say that the fans cared about crapping on Cena more then they cared about cheering for Rob Van Dam. The fans crapping all over Cena was something else, between throwing his hat and shirt back at him, the "Same old sh**" chants, and more. The match itself was solid but the crowd took it and gave it that something special that will make it remembered. Although the Edge interference wasn't needed to explain the loss (not in front of that audience anyway), WWE needed to do something to fire up the Cena vs. Edge storyline and now Edge can claim he took the WWE title from Cena again.

The post-match celebration was well done with "Team Extreme" hitting the ring to celebrate. I loved Van Dam scampering to the top of the Manhattan Center to hug his wife. I thought that was a great moment. It was something to sit there and see all these talented performers, who five years ago lost their dream, back together again, in the same building, as part of "the same company", having defeated the WWE champion. It was history. The Van Dam fan in me just wishes he had been given a chance 4-5 years ago, but that's ancient history and I hope WWE finds the proper window to showcase and maximize RVD.

I'd also love for someone to explain why the heck Trinity was out there, but that' just me.

In all seriousness, while this show couldn't have touched the end of ECW a year ago, it will be remembered as something different. The start of ECW anew. I don't know where they will go from here, but it will be interesting to see what pops up on Sci Fi Tuesday night. Whether this new ECW lasts six weeks, six months, or 60 years, who would have thought it would ever happen? Once again, those three little initials make history.

06-13-2006, 11:27 PM

My favorite part was the Cena TSHIRT segment. Classic... will remember it for years to come.

Looking At One Night Stand

This is a discussion on Looking At One Night Stand within the WWE Pay Per View forums, part of the Wrestling Forums category; Credit: PWinsider.com by Dave Scherer @ 1:05:00 PM on 6/12/2006 It's baaaaaaaccccckkk. After a five year absence, the ECW brand ...