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I’m not going to get into the whole rise and fall here, I think that has been covered in length in great detail already, all I want to do is offer my two cents about how I might have done things a little differently had I been involved in a creative aspect back then. Obviously, it's hard to say without knowing the situation exactly, which wrestlers were leaving for WWE or WCW at the time, but based on what I saw of who was there I can say a few things I would have liked to have seen.
Shane Douglas was a great ECW champion. I wish we could have had more time with him in ECW. I think he was completely wasted in WCW, as most wrestlers were. I would have loved to have seen him feud more with the likes of Tommy Dreamer, Raven, and the Sandman. I think that is the direction the main event scene should have gone in at that time. Those were the faces of ECW. I loved the feud between Raven and Tommy Dreamer, and I thought the moment they became tag team champions was incredible storytelling. I would have really wanted to see them feud more of the ECW Championship and trade it back and forth a few times. Including the Sandman into that feud would have been great, imagine a triple threat match being the final culmination of that feud at the biggest ECW show of the year!
Not to knock any of those guys but I think we can all agree that the high point of ECW came when Taz became the ECW Champion. Having a man like Taz as the new face of the company really put ECW over as a major player and a different type of wrestling company in my opinion. Before the days of Brock Lesnar in the WWE, Paul Heyman was the first promoter to really have a legitimate badass as his champion. This was a guy that could believably kick anyone’s ass in my opinion. I loved the look as he came to the ring with the towel over his head, it just gave him this aura like he was more of a UFC prize fighter somehow. ECW wasn’t about goofy storylines, it was about extremely exciting 5 star matches, and I think that all started with Taz. At a time when WCW was represented by Hollywood Hogan, and the WWF was represented by Shawn Michaels… ECW had Taz!
Sidenote: could you imagine at that time, Taz running out and attacking a prime Shawn Michaels, suplexing him all over the ring and Shawn selling like only he could, Taz could have looked like a monster!
Now where I think ECW went wrong… it's not really avoidable that they were going to lose Taz to the WWE, though it’s worth mentioning that the WWE completely dropped the ball and wasted Taz arguably more than they wasted any other wrestler in history! In his debut match he ended Kurt Angle’s undefeated streak, making him a main event player on day one, only to lose matches to Hardcore Holly because of a candy jar… what a complete joke.
The mistake in my opinion for ECW was how they chose to replace Taz. Heyman chose to launch new faces in ECW with Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka. Those two put on incredible matches, but they were new to ECW and not over enough at the time to take over the title and the main event. The most over stars in ECW at that time in my opinion were Rob Van Dam and Sabu. So the dream match I would have made for the end of Taz in ECW would have been to have all the gold on the line in one epic match, the biggest in ECW history. Taz as the ECW Champion, Rob Van Dam as the ECW TV Champion, and just for the hell of it, have RVD and Sabu win the ECW Tag Titles at that time as well just to include them. Then just as this fateful match happened originally, have RVD and Sabu team up to defeat Taz and send him off out of ECW. Then the main event would have continued as a title match between RVD and Sabu.
Now I would have had RVD win the match making him the new ECW Champion. This was a title he never got to win in ECW and I think that is a huge mistake because he was the biggest star to ever come out of ECW. This also would have brought a better end to his TV title reign, rather than dropping the belt due to injury he could have vacated the title because he became the ECW Champion instead.
The new main event feud would have been between RVD and Sabu, ironically the tag team champions now feuding over the ECW Championship. Obviously they would drop the tag titles soon after. Here’s where it gets interesting, you could have Awesome and Tanaka debut by winning the Tag Team Championships. Meanwhile you could create a new superstar by having a tournament to crown a new TV Champion, ultimately by having Jerry Lynn win the belt, a title he desperately deserved to win.
From there I would have followed the original timeline and had the Impact Players take over as the new face of the tag team division winning the titles. With the loss of the Dudley Boys to the WWE I think the Impact Players were the next best tag team in ECW history. With the loss of the tag titles, I would have Awesome and Tanaka split up and start feuding over the TV Title with Jerry Lyn. I’d even like to see Sabu win the TV Title at least once, as well as the ECW Championship from RVD.
Ultimately, a dream match I desperately wanted to see back then as an ECW fan was Mike Awesome vs Rob Van Dam title for title ECW Champion vs TV Champion. In my version of the timeline however it would be RVD as ECW Champion, and Mike Awesome as TV Champion. Still, I’d love to see that match happen in any timeline.
When ECW lost Mike Awesome to WCW while he was still ECW Champion, to me this felt like the shot that killed ECW. I was shocked when they worked out the deal to save the company and the title by having WCW wrestler Mike Awesome fight WWE wrestler Taz in the craziest match in wrestling history. However, none of this would have had to happen if ECW had just gone with Rob Van Dam as the face of the company. I think WCW also might not have gone after Mike Awesome had he only been the TV Champion. So ultimately, for many reasons, Rob Van Dam being the ECW Champion could have saved the company!
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