Rob Van Dam Recalls WWE’s ECW As Being ‘Cool’ At First

The WWE era of ECW is not looked back upon fondly, but Rob Van Dam thinks that it got off to a solid start before things went south. WWE launched their own ECW brand in June of 2006 following the success of two One Night Stand PPVs, but the show quickly went downhill and is considered to have been a failure. Van Dam spoke about the experience of being on the brand on the latest episode of 1 Of a Kind.

“When we first brought ECW back, it was cool,” Van Dam noted (per Wrestling Inc). “People forget, at first, you know, I had some great matches in the new ECW, with the likes of Test, Bob Holly, Big Show, Sabu. People forget about some of those, like the first few months, and then, yeah, they just destroyed it.”

He continued, “Maybe they always wanted to, or maybe they was split, maybe some of they wanted to do this, some of they wanted to do that, and maybe some of they wanted to bring it back just to bury it.”

The WWE ECW brand lasted until it was finally shut down in 2010, at which point it was rebranded as NXT.