The Head Gets Blamed for the @ss's Decisions

So someone had to take the bullet for the ECW PPV stinking up the airwaves last night.

Unfortunately, that someone turns out to be Paul Heyman.

For the uninitiated, Heyman is the mad scientist behind ECW. He didn't create the company, but created it what it became. He was the driving creative force behind the movement which would change the wrestling business forever. And now he's been canned, apparently for booking an exceedingly awful pay-per-view - one which many are saying he may not have even booked himself.

The WWE has put on truly awful shows before, without Paul Heyman's involvement. They will continue to put on truly awful shows, without Heyman's involvement. In this case, they put on an awful show, and Vince McMahon needed to blame someone for it, so Heyman took the bullet, because lord knows he can't fire his daughter or his son-in-law or any of the rest of the people involved in creative. Nepotism does wonders for job security.

I've often wondered what Heyman thought of the "new vision" of ECW. At a show over the summer, as he addressed the fans in ECW's hometown of Philly, some were calling him a sellout for the new direction the legendary name had taken in its revival. Heyman looked to the crowd and said that certain compromises would have to be made to appease the wrestling establishment, and then asked the fans a question: If any of them could have given anything to bring ECW back, wouldn't they?

I'm not sure I would have gone that far, but yes, I would have given an awful lot to bring ECW back. The REAL ECW. The ECW that ran in that dingy little bingo hall in front of 1500 fans and created a passion so deep it was felt throughout the wrestling world. The ECW which saw performers go out and bust their *ss and give 100% no matter if there were 5000 fans or 50, because they loved what they did. The ECW which made wrestling fun again, something to be passionate about again.

But I think Paul Heyman knew all that. I think he knew that his name was being stamped on a bill of goods that was so far from his original work that he either didn't have his heart in it or knew he truly was selling out. Either way, I can't see Heyman being too terribly upset at this outcome. My gut tells me that the mad scientist had lost control of this particular creation long ago, and it was never coming back.

As for where the brand goes from here...no idea. The ratings have been sloping downward, the show's quality has done the same, and now the man whose involvement is pretty much the only thing which even remotely "legitimized" the new ECW is gone. They have a contract with Sci-Fi which runs through the end of 2007, but at this point, unless something drastic happens, I can't see the brand surviving that long.

It's a shame, in a few ways. There are some good people working for the ECW product, many of them who aren't getting a substantial push on television. Past history (WCW) shows that when a WWE brand name gets disbanded, a select few get cherry-picked and re-positioned in the main roster, while the rest get released, regardless of how talented they are or how hard they worked. A lot of folks who I really enjoy as performers and who have a lot to offer the business may end up out of work if this goes down.

As for Heyman, who knows. Maybe he'll end up at TNA, but putting Russo and Heyman AND Cornette in the same company at the same time might cause a massive collapse in the space-time continuum. Or maybe he'll try to get some cash together and start a brand new promotion, but given that Heyman is a creative mind, not a financial one, we can't be that optimistic about success. Maybe this is a temporary event (it has happened before), and we'll see Heyman back in a WWECW ring. Or maybe the mad scientist, the man who in many ways is the most important wrestling personality of the past ten years, is done with the business.

And given the way he went out creatively, that is a true shame. It's just too bad the horse's head got all the blame for decisions that were made primarily by the horse's *ss.