Through The Ropes

Well, so much for listening to me. Rob Van Dam showed up at RAW on Monday, and my powers of prognostication officially fell from bad to non- existent. I really thought World Wrestl-ing Entertainment was setting up for its SmackDown! program to become the new ECW, so Van Dam certainly wouldn’t be packing his bags for RAW if that were the case.

That said, Van Dam showed up in an ECW T-shirt and talked up the company as if he were running for its Grand Poobah. Vince McMahon had just recently learned the preliminary buy rate for the “One Night Stand” pay-per-view, and he wouldn’t have had Van Dam going out in his Ex-treme persona unless he was planning to do a heck of a lot more with the brand name thanks to a successful show.

And maybe it’s best if the extent of ECW is the occasional pay-per-view, with maybe a syndicated show that can run at 11 p.m. somewhere. As excited as I was to see Extreme’s return, for it to get too big is the exact opposite of what the company is all about. For an earlier show once at the Manhattan Center, ECW stars did one segment for their TV show where they were slumming it in a Lower Man-hattan bar. Their theory: that they wouldn’t be caught dead at a sissy, themed restaurant like WWE New York.

ECW without a major network or cable slot is what it always was: a beaten down group of underarmed freedom fighters taking shots at “The Man” whenever possible. In WWE, “The Man” is McMahon, so as much as he supported ECW’s return from the outset, watch for the billionaire corporate chairman to quickly have the lot of ECW’s talent turn against him. That could produce some of the best television in years. McMahon’s last champagne-vs.-six-pack feud was with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, quite possibly the greatest feud in the history of professional wrestling.

Van Dam has taken credit for putting the ECW reunion in McMahon’s ear, so eventually the boss will tire of one of his underlings attempting to take too many kudos. Vam Dam will be given the option to give McMahon his due or be beaten senseless by half the locker room, and Vam Dam will happily take the pummeling.

The next week, the Sandman and Tommy Dreamer will come out of the stands to exact revenge, setting the storyline for the next ECW pay-per-view. McMahon can take Eric Bis-choff’s spot as the bad guy on the next show. Throw in Austin to take out Vince one more time, and the buy rate should dwarf whatever they accomplished for “One Night Stand.”

It doesn’t matter where ECW is. The point is that it’s here and can be used to rejuvenate wrestling’s most loyal fan base while at the same time bolstering what can be a stale television product. Why kill the Smack-Down! brand when ECW can just make it better? John Bradshaw Layfield has so much real-life heat with ECW’s Tracy Smothers (because Layfield cowardly cold-cocked The Blue Meanie during the pay-per-view) that you know WWE won’t let that die.

Smothers at SmackDown! sometime soon. Count on it!

You can contact Josh Stewart at throughtheropes1@cs.com.

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