Powell's Blog: Quick thoughts on Vince McMahon's "shocking" announcement

Tuesday, February 2 – 10:48 P.M. (CT)

I delayed watching the season premiere of "Lost" for that? Vince McMahon announced that ECW is going away in "three weeks time." Three weeks time? There's this thing called a calendar that will provide you with specific dates, Vince. I guess this was supposed to be a cliffhanger that will make us all tune in to watch the next two weeks of ECW. Good luck with that.

If the Memphis crowd's silent reaction was any indication, WWE has a lot of work to do if they want to get viewers excited about Vince's "next evolution of WWE." No one cared when he said ECW was going away, and it sounded like a only small fraction of the crowd cheered when Vince teased the new show.

Here's the thing Vince needs to understand. No one takes hyperbole such as "the next evolution of television history" serious, particularly when you're talking about a television show on the Syfy Network. I dig a couple of Syfy shows, but I think most viewers are smart enough to know that WWE isn't going to roll out their hottest concept for one of their fallback networks. Plus, isn't this the same type of lingo that Vince used to describe the XFL? Thanks for that flashback, Vince.

Vince delivered this "shocking" announcement with about as much enthusiasm as John Locke's corpse showed when he rolled out of the coffin during the "Lost" season finale. At least try to make us think you give a shit, Vince. Are you really the same guy who took part in that great verbal exchange with Bret Hart last night, or do you have some type of body snatching thing going on just like Locke does?

The rest of the ECW show was just as uninspired with three throwaway matches. Oh, I almost forgot about the "shocking" return of Hurricane Helms to WWE television. Okay, so it was surprising to see his mugshot on the big screen, but the majority of the live crowd didn't even seem to know what they were looking at. Maybe they just didn't care. I know the feeling.

ECW is going away in three weeks time? Good riddance. Here's hoping that announcers Josh Matthews and Byron Saxton follow. The only thing less convincing than Vince's half-assed attempt to show enthusiasm was the job these two robots did in putting over the announcement. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch a show that actually delivers when it teases something big.