ECW 2.0 Failed, so What's NXT?

After the financial success of The Rise and Fall of ECW and the ECW One Night Stand PPV's Vince McMahon decided to try and milk a dead cow dry. Partnering with the Sci-Fi Channel, ECW was reborn and put before the hungry public, filled with ECW Originals along with the occasional vampire and mummy. An argument could be made that the "New" ECW was destined for failure. The argument could also be made that they never recovered from having their first new Champion, Rob Van Dam (who at the time held both the ECW and WWE Championship) losing the title as punishment for a drug arrest. Their is also an arguement that by sigling out specific matches to be "HardCore" matches, they watered down their product to much to appease the original ECW fans, but most of the performers were too unknown to the typical WWE fan to keep them happy either. Then there is the arguement that by not allowing the "Father" of ECW Paul Heyman free reign the new brand was doomed from the start. There are many more arguements to be made, most of them have valid points, but I'm just writing a BLOG, not a book.

It wasn't too long into the run of the "New" ECW when the Originals started to fade away, the monsters were gone, and in an effort to return the shows rating to the 2.9 ratings the initial airings garnered bigger names started to appear on the show. Big Show, Kane, Chavo, CM Punk, Matt Hardy, and Mark Henry to name a few. Of course the names weren't big enough to detract from RAW or Smackdown. That's not to say that as the show got over it's growing pains that it wasn't good. There were many weeks where the match content far exceeded that of RAW. But as word began leaking that both SciFi and the WWE were unhappy with the product's rating and a change would be coming, the show quickly started lacking in any quality what so ever. It seemed that each show was worse than the one before it.

Looking back it speaks to the nostalgic memories of wrestling fans. As a group we always hope tht lightning can be bottled twice, and we all learn almost everytime that it can't. We all hoped against hope that a. ECW would return to it's former glory and b. that Vince wouldn't screw it up. Really we should have known better, for in the end Vince doesn't have a love for wrestling, he can't or he wouldn't allow such terrible product to see the light of day. Vince doesn't care about the history. All he cares about is money and being the last man standing. The one line from Conan sums up how he feels, "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women. ". Yet even after that is done, he's not happy. Look at how he, still almost ten years later still craps on WCW. You think I'm wrong? How many Champions with successful runs in the last ten years had runs in WCW? Two, three, maybe four? How many from ECW? One? Look at how he treated a former TNA World Champion. Christian was sent straight to the C show. He's not happy with crushing his enemies, he wants all trace of them gone, all memories of them tarnished.

So now with the impending demise of ECW I wonder will they be given a decent sendoff or will they just fade away like ash, never to be seen from again. That also begs the question, so what's NXT?

Word is that the new show will focus more on young up and coming talent, with a verteran or two thrown in the mix. (Wonder where Christian ends up, I bet he don't move far) The segments are supposed to have a "conspiratorial slant" whatever the hell that means. Is that even a word? Could this succeed? Maybe, who knows. They have to find a way to introduce new talent to a wider audience than FCW does, to see if the fans will accept them. If NXT becomes an extention of the farm system with FCW being AA and NXT being AAA it could work. Maybe we will finally see Brian Danielson and Low Ki. Maybe we will see Joe Henning and Bret DiBiase. Personally I want to see the Rotundo brothers who look different enough that they could be the new Dudley Brothers.

I think they could have come up with a better name. Something like WWE Evolution or Revolution or Power Plant, for all us old WCW fans.