Double Impact 10.17.07: Even Jesus Only Died Once

WWE.com has learned that several meetings have taken place between Acting SmackDown General Manager Vickie Guerrero and ECW General Manager Armando Estrada that, if ratified, would allow SmackDown and ECW Superstars to compete on Tuesday and Friday nights.

While nothing is signed as of yet, locker room sources say that this open door agreement between Vickie and Estrada will be discussed tonight, live on ECW on Sci Fi.

Now, the sometimes-kayfabe nature of WWE.com’s articles is well-known. Any dummy that reads them and keeps up with sites like ours knows this (at least they should). If it wasn’t apparent already, I noticed this article about the same time I noticed a news post on 411 that revealed that CM Punk’s “mystery partner” in the ECW on Sci-FI main event was set to be…Kane, a member of the SmackDown roster. Mere minutes after that, another post appeared here that cleared it all up (again, excerpted below):

– The reason for this is that Sci-Fi is not committed to continuing to air the ECW show. In the best-case scenario they hope to make ECW more appealing to Sci-Fi so that they do pick the show up at the end of 2007. But if not, WWE is preparing themselves in case they lose the one hour on Sci-Fi and have to run the ECW brand as part of Smackdown.

The hard fact of this I’m willing to take at face value. It’s the speculation as to why that I’m not. Nothing against any sources involved, but this, to me, looks like the perfect opportunity for WWE to eliminate one of their brands and cut their losses. Why not the one that never fit in the first place?

A good chunk of this, admittedly won’t be their fault. It’s documented that the USA Network and WWE are in negotiations about the renewal of Raw and WWE programming on their networks as a whole. This looks to stem from that, as ECW started out well, but has been rather underwhelming as far as ratings go. (Although it should be noted that ECW is still one of the networks highest-rated shows). Those negotiations looked great at first (with Bonnie Hammer wanting Raw to go to 3 hours much more often than they do now), but have since taken a downward turn with the recent drops in ratings. Part of that looks to be aimed at ECW, which has seen the worst hit; Sci-Fi is now balking at renewing ECW for the coming year because not nearly as many people are watching the show.

On top of that, take a good look at ECW’s current roster. Once you remove the GM (Estrada), Extreme Expose (because, really, what do they contribute again? If they actually wrestled, then they could and would be included in this count), the announce team of Joey Styles and Tazz and ring announcer Tony Chimmel (yes, they even included the ring announcer in the active roster, for some odd reason), that leaves you with a grand total of thirteen wrestlers, including ECW Champ CM Punk. By comparison, using the same criteria, Smackdown currently has 35 active competitors and Raw has 30. Looking around the current landscape, I can’t think of a single promotion that’s running on a roster that small.

Even with these two factors in place, there’s enough reason for them to cut their losses without even looking at the product itself. Personally, I believe (and I know full well I’m not alone in this; hell, I may not even be in the minority) that WWE took a once-revered brand that was an edgy alternative to what we see on mainstream wrestling television and, for all intents and purposes, turned it into WCW Worldwide (would that make the ECW Title no more then the old Television Title, perhaps?). ECW once featured ultraviolence and solid wrestling as an alternative to the larger-than-life goofiness of the WWE product at that time. Both of those main selling points were neutered by, respectively, the phasing out of “Extreme Rules” matches (it should have been a clue when “Extreme Rules” matches were differentiated from other matches in name alone, something the old ECW never bothered to do) and by the appearance of larger-than-life characters like Bobby Lashley, Kevin Thorn, and Big Daddy V. Guys that may or may not be able to work a decent match, but, in the end, defied the grittier, more realistic approach that ECW originally took to being an alternative.

Vince McMahon has certainly been known for taking ownership of things he did not create and showing us all why they were “inferior” by dooming them to failure. I’ll give him credit for this – WCW didn’t even last this long under his watch. However, neither will ECW. Between pressure from the Sci-Fi Network, a paper-thin roster and a clear disdain for what the brand originally stood for, the clock is now officially ticking on the cult-classic that became a joke.