>>14944392ECW was an awful smark fed. It had its moments, but it was overall fucking terrible.
"Fed bad" promos were abundant, and they had two yummy feds they could shit on, as opposed to one.
They pretended to like workrate, except didn't actually know what it meant and didn't actually appreciate it. For example, Paul booked Doink as a WWF effigy to beat over with 911, and it completely worked since the fans would 100% shit all over Doink, even though Matt Osborne was a great performer, worked the gimmick in a more nuanced way than anyone after, and would've completely fit the ethos of ECW at the time.
The fans were clearly retarded WON readers. Whenever Japanese talent like Hayabusa would come in and botch all over the fucking place, the crowd would sit on their hands and politely clap, despite giving vicious "you fucked up" chants to every single little botch every other time. This is because they were told that Japanese wrestling was this high brow fucking performance art without actually really watching it and being able to identify the Japs who were great, versus the ones who were mid or worse.
This is all just shit off the top of my head. If you go back and watch ECW (there's definitely shows and individual matches worth watching) you'll start to see the patterns. It was ECW, and then the X Division in TNA that really paved the way, though both were better than what they spawned, much like the boring HBK and RVD imitators.
