[MovieStarR™]

Been watching the rise and fall of ECW and i must admit I really warmed to everyone involved in that promotion when viewing. It did sort of anger me the lack of praise Bischoff and Mcmahon seem willing to give to Paul heymann despite clearly stealing a large number of principles and ideas.

My main question is that could ECW of become as big as the other two if they had someone with more of a financial brain working whithin the company at the time or did they rach a plateau and like all glorious failures are now over rated?..... and on a side note I now think steve austin stole the base of his gimmick from the Sandman from his time in ECW.

Anyway apologies if this has been done to death im sure it has, but i am new so bare with me.

HHH stole Shane Douglas's gimmick.

 

[Oh Lymping Hero!]

Bah who cares every idea or gimmick is stolen from something else, it's how far you take it with your own talent is what counts.

Steve Austin had/has 20 times the skills Sandman did in every area and thats why Stone Cold was the biggest star in WWF since Hogan and the Sandman never got past smoking, drinking and hitting people with bits of wood.

Paul E would've looked at the hardcore japanese products and all the pop culture of violent movies, video games etc and that would've influenced how he booked ECW.


I think because ECW was so far out there in terms of violence, sex etc it could never have appealed to as broad an audience as the big 2 or attracted the sponsors, merchandising deals etc to make themselves into a big international force.

 

[Hajduk1911]

I know hindsight is 20/20 but I think ECW should have never "over-expanded". I know Paul made arguements about how ECW needed national TV and they needed to do shows all over the country but I think they were doing ok financially when they stuck to the Northeast and the occassional shows in Florida.

I remember a quote from Shane Douglas saying how when they were doing two shows a week and one of those shows was in front of 400 people they were getting paid every week and then all of a sudden they were doing four shows a week with a couple thousand each show and checks were starting to bounce. They just over expanded and their expenses expanded with it, and it didn't help Paul E. was not good with money and a liar

I honestly don't think they would ever overtake WCW/WWE, but they also should have survived longer than what they did. They were still selling out shows in their final weeks, it wasn't like WCW where fans just stopped caring

 

[StingerSplash91]

surprised no one has mentioned the biggest gimmick steal of all time Ric flair stealing from buddy rodgers lol
in my mind i think ECW reached asfar as it could go it died at the right time unlike wcw who got really shit before it died
still i'd still love to have both ECW and WCW around today give wwe some competition hopefully TNA will fil the void

 

[Olympus]

surprised no one has mentioned the biggest gimmick steal of all time Ric flair stealing from buddy rodgers lol

Nobody EVER brings that up. EVER. Thank you. Rep for you, sir.

 

[alejbr4]

if heyman hadnt tried to get a tv deal with spike and just stayed the course. once wcw went out he could have gotten some of the backing that roh had to start. ecw would still be around. imagine heyman booking cm punk and brian danielson in the early days. hey in the end all the ecw guys got a few good yrs in wwe with much larger paychecks, got their one night stand, have their following, i mean in the annuals of prowrestling history no one will forget ecw. so i dont feel too bad about it. better to go leaving them wanting, instead of wanting you out the door