Twilling's Blog: Will the new WWE show replacing ECW be a poor man's version of ECW, which in itself was a poor man's version of ECW?

Wednesday, FEBRUARY 3 - 5:43 P.M. (CT)

-Earlier, I wrote a blog basically saying goodbye to Extreme Championship Wrestling, even though it, in its truest form, has been gone since 2001. WWE Chairman Vince McMahon announced that a new show would air in the place of ECW. "WWE NXT" is the current plan for the name of the new show, if WWE can work out the copyright issues with the "NXT."

When ECW was relaunched, everyone was very excited. However, after The Zombie made his long awaited debut and The Sandman could not come out to his classic Metallica theme, ECW became just another show. In fact, it was not even good enough to be "just another show."

I am never negative for the sake of being negative, and nobody would ever excuse me of being overly positive either, but damn, how could anyone be excited about this new show that Vince said would be the "next evolution in television." Given the rumors and name of the show, it sounds an awful lot like, hmmm, the current ECW show.

WWE has their flagship show, Raw. They have their number two show, which in terms of quality, many feel is the number one show, Smackdown. The two top champions come from those two shows, respectively. Champions from both of those shows have headlined WrestleMania. "ECW on Syfy" was never looked at as being on the level of those two shows.

In fact, ECW was just an extension of Florida Championship Wrestling, WWE's developmental territory. Over the past couple of years, new WWE superstars would first go to ECW to see if they could work a WWE style match, to see if they could cut it on television, and to see if they could connect with the television audience. On paper, it's a smart concept.

In all actuality, it is still a smart concept. WWE didn't really care about the show and oftentimes, it made the show relatively decent and fun to watch. However, if you missed it, you didn't care. Also, the execution sucked. Like I said earlier, the only positive product to come out of what they were trying to do with ECW was C.M. Punk. So, what are we to expect from the new show?

Here is how it will probably go: A lot of fans will be interested to see what the new show is going to be. What will the opening video look like? Who will announce? Who will appear on the show? Will there be a champion on the show and who will that be? Those are all fun questions that will be answered on that first broadcast. After that, it will just be ECW with a different name.

Who knows? Maybe I am completely off base and Vince McMahon has been holding onto this evolutionary concept for years, and he has waited until "a few weeks time" to unveil it onto the world. Perhaps this will be the concept that will thrust Vince out of professional wrestling and permanently into mainstream media and entertainment.

Will the FCW guys and girls be ready to go on this show? Will the current ECW roster be eaten amongst the sharks on the top two shows? Will anyone watch a show with no established talent and with a roster full of wrestlers that are most likely not ready for television? Will it be a WWE reality hour and an extension of those bad Raw shows around Slammy Awards time?

Only time will tell and if I've said this once, I've said it many times: I hope I am proven wrong. I want this to be a good show. I want those who are given an opportunity to make the most of said opportunities and really shine on a pretty big stage. I will blog about the first show after it airs. That blog could possibly have a positive tone to it. If I write a blog with positive tones about this show in six months, that would be a very good thing.