A Fan's Hope For Closure

So Tommy Dreamer cuts a promo on TNA and actually made me cry a little bit.



Now everyone and their dog who's following this TNA/ECW development has an opinion, ranging from hell yeah to please God fuck NO! about whether or not this One Last Stand idea for Hard Justice is a good idea or a trainwreck waiting to happen.

The feeling Im getting from this TNA/ECW thing is that Tommy wants one night to remind the fans what Vince spent three and a half years doing his damnedest to make people forget; The heart and spirit and creativity of the original ECW. One Night Stand SHOULD have been ECW's closure, it SHOULD have been their last stand. But then WWECW came along and while yes, a handful of new stars emerged from the wreckage, WWECW was a trainwreck from beginning to end. It made Paul Heyman so bitter he left wrestling altogether. His only wrestling connection now is occasionally ranting in Britain's the Sun paper, and he mostly runs Girls Gone Wild/Maxim type stuff now.

WWECW all but destroyed ECW's legacy. Up until late 06 you would still get ECW chants like wildfire when a badass spot was pulled off that reminded fans of ECW's heyday. But by early 07, the chants were dwindling. Younger fans disregarded WWECW as a B-Show and barely paid attention. Older fans migrated away with a sour taste in their mouths. And ECW was forever stained by the stink of Vince running it, and very few people believe that wasn't Vince's intention all along, to bury it.

Tommy Dreamer doesn't want the fans to remember zombies and vampires and Abraham Washington. He wants people to remember this.



And I can't fault him for that. The real ECW can't ever truly be revived nor should it, but as a hardcore ECW fan from as early as I could figure out which pub carried the MSG network on Sattelite, I do want the blasphemy that was WWECW (On SyFy!!!) to NOT be the last thing fans associate with ECW. If Tommy and company can pull off one night, and be at the top of their game and do the best they can to just entertain the fans without any agendas, they will have succeeded in providing a little syrup to sweeten the mouth after the bad taste Vince left in it.

So Tommy and his friends want one night to undo the damage and have the send-off that ONS was supposed to be. I can get behind that. And if it organically grows into better long-term booking for TNA and a stronger company direction, I'm all for it. And on the off chance it succeeds and Dreamer can cinvince Paul to come run the booking and convince Dixie to give Paul full unhindered creative control, we will see something new and exciting emerge from ECW's last smoldering ashes. Because Paul is smart enough to not try and recapture the past, like Bischoff and Hogan and Russo keep trying to do. Paul will look towards building the future. Will there be traces of ECW in anything Paul does? Of course, he was the force behind it. But Paul will not try to turn TNA into ECW Version 3. Paul will make TNA a better version of TNA.

IF Tommy can convince him to try.