In 2006, WWE announced the launch of its own ECW brand, riding on the positive reception from two preceding One Night Stand pay-per-view events.
Rob Van Dam, on a recent episode of his “1 of A Kind” podcast, enlightened listeners about his experience with WWE’s version of ECW. Initially promising, he explained that the quality and appeal rapidly deteriorated.
He reminisced, “When we first brought ECW back, it was cool. People forget, at first, you know, I had some memorable matches in the new ECW, against the likes of Test, Bob Holly, Big Show, Sabu. People seem to overlook some of those, especially during the first few months, and then, unfortunately, they just ran it into the ground.”
He carried on discussing, “Possibly they always had plans to, or perhaps there was a divide, with some parties wishing to proceed in this direction, others in another, and maybe even some hoping to revive it just to quash it.”
The WWE version of ECW managed to persevere until 2010. Post this, it was transformed into the brand popularly recognized today as NXT.