The 100th episode of ECW

Live (so they claim) from London, ON

The program opened with a vignette highlighting the first ninety-nine episodes of the WWE’s version of ECW.

Mike Adamle got his own entrance to begin the show while Tazz began the show from the desk at ringside. Adamle walked into the ring and addressed his behavior last week. He apologized for walking off last week and began to run down his resume including playing in the NFL (true) and covering the Olympics. He admitted to making mistakes, expressed his love for WWE and its fans, and claimed he would try his best from now on.

Stevie Richards, as an ECW original, joined Tazz and Adamle for the first match.

Extreme Rules: Tommy Dreamer v. Mike Knox

Considering Knox squashed Dreamer last week, who would want to see a rematch? Dreamer clotheslined Knox to the floor to start and fired him into the stairs. Knox took control with a clothesline and a hanging vertical suplex. Knox went outside allowing Dreamer to go work with a garbage can and hockey stick. He then used a Singapore cane and an oar to draw some ECW chants. He brought in a shopping cart but Knox countered and slammed Dreamer on top of it. The back and forth match went Dreamer’s way and he rammed the cart and garbage can into Knox in the tree of woe. Tommy set up a table in the corner but Knox came back again and suplexed Dreamer into the table. Knox then brought a chair into the ring and hit his swinging neckbreaker (the Knox out) onto the chair for the win. Genuinely, this may have been Knox’s best match ever. Stevie Richards actually did a nice job on color commentary and not just because he reduced Adamle’s time on the microphone.

Knox d. Dreamer, Pin, 6:27, **.

They featured a segment from the first ever ECW (the SciFi/Global version, of course) where the Sandman beat up a zombie. Kelly Kelly came out and did a dance. Thankfully, they did not reair her first ever appearance in front of a live crowd when she couldn’t unhook her brassiere when she had the exhibitionist gimmick. Anyway, Layla interrupted and the girls tried to outdance each other. Finally, they got into a little catfight before referees broke it up (to a decent amount of crowd heat).

From ECW 16, they revisited when Bob Holly suffered that nasty, lengthy gash on his back when the sharp rim of a broken table cut him. From ECW 55, Roddy Piper and the Boogey Man ruin Matt Striker’s birthday.

Backstage, the worthless Lena Yada could not even convincingly deliver her only line: “Chuck, looks like you gave as good as you got.” Palumbo, perhaps a bit flustered by Yada’s sheer ineptitude, paused and then vowed to knock out CM Punk.

Kofi Kingston v. Matt Striker

Shelton Benjamin did commentary for the bout. Kofi landed a dropkick and the double legdrop right off the bat for a near fall and won just a bit later with the Jamaican buzzsaw. After the match, Shelton charged in and hit his inverted bulldog on Kofi to extend their program to a third match.

Kingston squash, 1:10.

Backstage, several wrestlers applauded Colin Delaney as he prepared for his match. From ECW 43, the New Breed defeated the ECW Originals in an extreme rules match.

Colin Delaney v. Armando Alejandro Estrada

Delaney has no entrance music, which is a nice touch. Estrada is very likely not well. Delaney tried to steal the win early with a roll up but Estrada rallied back with a clothesline, stomps and a hip toss for a near fall. The GM then went to a rest hold. Estrada dragged Colin to the apron and as he was playing to the crowd, Delaney hit a sunset flip for the win and his ECW contract. Colin did a victory lap before doing an interview with Tazz. Colin did a fine clichéd sports promo, thanking everyone including Tommy Dreamer, the doubters, the fans and the Tazz.

Delaney d. Estrada, Pin, 2:24, ¼*.

Kane & CM Punk v. Chavo Guerrero & Bam Neely

John Morrison and the Miz did commentary. Neely now wrestles in generic wrestling attire. The faces worked over Neely to start before he tagged out. Punk landed a snap suplex for a near fall. When Chavo landed a quick uppercut, Miz asked Adamle to call the move resulting in silence until Tazz stepped in. In a quick segment before a commercial break, Punk cleared the ring of Chavo by back dropping him out of the ring and onto Neely on the floor. Returning from break, Punk was pounding Neely with kicks until Chavo tagged in and assumed control. He worked a chinlock as the crowd rallied behind Punk. Neely tagged in and did some generic brawling to keep the advantage. All the while, the tag champs did a good job playing obnoxious heels burying Adamle frequently and hyping the Dirt Sheet on WWE.com. Chavo scored a near fall off of a gutwrench suplex. Punk finally made a comeback after the fairly dull heat segment with a springboard forearm. Kane received the hot tag and landed a back drop, side suplex and threw Chavo over the top rope and to the floor. After clearing out Neely as well, Kane landed a chop off the top onto Chavo, though Kane sold the knee as if he landed awkwardly. He then tagged out. Punk held the advantage and after his usual array of knees, set up Chavo for the go to sleep and the win. After the match, Miz and Morrison held up the tag team championships to mock Kane & Punk as they teased a program between the two teams.

Kane & Punk (x) d. Chavo (o) & Neely, Pin, 13:28, **.

Final Analysis: The WrestleMania buyrate came in well below expectation today, at approximately 1.055 million worldwide buys. That’s approximately a 12% drop from last year, even though the international pay-per-view market has expanded. It also comes on the heels of what were ambitious (and as it turns out erroneous) predictions of record or near-record business from the most respected wrestling writers, WWE itself, and the not very reputable Floyd Mayweather camp. It’s also worth noting that the buyrate is also artificially high as WWE paid a large premium for the services of Floyd Mayweather. When you consider his salary, it likely equals a whopping loss of 120,000 buys (assuming WWE received $25 per buy and Mayweather earned $3 million). I’d comfortably wager that WWE could have done 935,000 buys easily without him, so using Mayweather has to go down as an enormous mistake. As one of the few writers to predict a low buyrate (proving even a broken clock is right twice a day), I would like to revisit my rationale at the time for that prediction.

First, had the Big Show-Floyd Mayweather match drawn very well, it would have been the first time the Big Show has ever drawn an appreciably above average buyrate since he left WCW. Many correctly pointed out that Big Show was the wrong opponent for Mayweather because the size difference disrupted Mayweather’s natural role as a heel. However, I would argue that Big Show’s lack of significant drawing power despite repeated major efforts to push him should have been an even more overriding concern. Imagine WWE booking Mr. T with John Studd or Nikolai Volkoff at WrestleMania 1. Or imagine using Mike Tyson at WrestleMania 14 as the guest referee for the Triple H – Owen Hart match. Both of those enormously successful ideas would have been wasted had WWE not placed the celebs in there with their biggest draws. Mayweather’s commercial appeal was not enough to draw money, combining it with John Cena’s (for example) may have been a different story.

Secondly, the most underreported story in wrestling this year was the fact that WrestleMania was nowhere near sold out days before the event. I identified blocks of eight tickets available five days before the event. Comparatively, the last few dome WrestleManias sold out well in advance. The value of this fact as predictive tool should not be understated. As an analogy, when you want to best predict an election, you poll only high-propensity voters not merely registered voters of whom a majority do not vote. Likewise, when you want to predict WWE’s business, only the behavior of habitual buyers of WWE product matter. And there was and is no better gauge of their interest in the event than looking at ticket sales. Consider that the only other WrestleManias in history that have not sold out or barely made it because of late papering all did disappointing numbers (II, VII, VIII and IX).

The combination of these two observations plus my own subjective evaluation that the build up to the Raw main event was underwhelming (almost everyone agreed with that) led me to my prediction of a low number. The good news for WWE is that over a quarter-century they have built up a significant amount of market value in the WrestleMania brand such that even the most poorly built show will do at least 550,000 and 900,000 buys domestic and worldwide respectively. With that being said, there was the potential here for another marginal 400,000 buys and $10 million in profit had they done everything right. And that opportunity went for naught.

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