It’s fair to say that 2006’s ECW One Night Stand was a very different beast to 2005’s inaugural show. The latter was meant to be a one off celebration of a company that is pretty much unique in wrestling history as Vince McMahon actually did his best to keep the company alive rather than killing it off as he did all his other competitors. In 2005 we saw an ECW reunion which did its best to play to the company’s strengths and hide its weaknesses. The nostalgia pop was the theme of the night and if it hadn’t been for the forced involvement of a bunch of WWE heels (and Stone Cold Steve Austin) it would’ve been the ideal memorial for the group that died slowly and painfully over two drawn out years.

But now we’re looking at the return of ECW as a fulltime company. They have TV, they have slogans, they apparently have Vince’s full support. With that in mind they presented a pay per view which didn’t look back at the glories of the past but foreshadowed the glories still to come. Except they didn’t.

1. Kurt Angle fits perfectly into ECW but only if you realise that ECW wasn’t all about chair swinging, table breaking and barbed wire fun. First Heyman tried it with Benoit and Malenko – the cold shooters who would tie you up and break you if you wouldn’t quit. Then he perfected it with Taz – an act so successful that the ECW faithful genuinely believed that Taz could’ve walked into the Octagon and beaten the best that the UFC had to offer. Now he has Kurt Angle and I can only imagine how good Kurt Angle – even a broken down Kurt Angle – will be under Heyman.

2. Randy Orton was absolutely the worst choice for an opponent. Not because Orton is a bad wrestler but because he got EXACTLY the same heat they should’ve been saving for Cena. The match sold no pay per views and served only to give Angle a win (he could’ve beaten anyone) and to take away from the main event heat.

3. Is there any reason why the Big Show came out to destroy everyone in the FBI – Crazy/Tajiri match? It seemed to be built up so BS would come out and take out Big Guido. That would make sense – Guido was beating up smaller guys because he’s a big nasty bully so out comes an even bigger, even nastier bully to save the day. Except he didn’t – he just beat everyone up and reminded the viewing several that if you’re less than 200lbs it doesn’t matter if you win or lose your match, you’re still jobbers.

4. JBL cut the same promo he cut last year on ECW. Again he did it from a VIP box so he didn’t have to take a bump. I know his back is screwed but he could at least have been the set up for the Sandman’s big spot. Or something good anyway. All he did was cut a good promo but with no obvious purpose. It sold nothing, it entertained no one and it set nothing up. All it did was fill five minutes and if that was the point of it, why not place it after an important match to be the "pillow fight" spot (so called because WWE puts a fluff match between Wrestlemania main events to give the crowd time to recover – this year it was the pillow fight).

5. Sabu vs Rey Jr was a decent enough match and had name value as a "dream match" but why oh why was it for the title? The main event storyline was that Van Dam won the money in the bank match to get a title shot etc etc etc. Sabu just seems to have been given one. I know it is a mistake to over analyse these things but two world title matches on one show makes it awfully difficult to get pumped up for the second of them being "the first time the WWE title has been defended in ECW…"

6. The Edge/Foley vs Dreamer/Funk match was one of those bouts which would be a guilty pleasure if it was actually a pleasure to watch. As it is it just left me with the guilt. I know it’s Funk and Foley and Dreamer and ECW but there was something not quite right about some of the spots. Edge putting barbed wire worrying close to Tommy’s eyes and pulling backwards was the worst. Knowing that they wouldn’t have wanted it any other way doesn’t make it any easier to watch. Maybe I’m getting soft or maybe it’s just that the picture is so much clearer than 3^rd or 4^th generation ECW videos and so everything is seems more ugly.

7. Tanaka vs Balls was exactly what it was always going to be – some stiff shots, a duelling chairs spot and take it home. I was surprised that Balls was so over – he is one of the forgotten men of ECW.

8. Then came easily the worst part of the night. Eugene came out and I hoped against hope that they were going to have Eugene break character, rip on the stupid gimmick they gave him, become Nick Dinsmore again and join ECW as one of the new breed of extreme wrestlers. Instead he read a crappy poem and brought out the Sandman. But not the Sandman’s music. Instead of the iconic "Enter Sandman" by Metallica we had some generic rubbish. Yes, if he’s going to be a regular they need something cheaper than Metallica. But give him new music starting with the TV taping. His entrance was the highlight of last year’s One Night Stand. This year he just walked though the crowd drinking beer. Utterly meaningless. He then proceeded to cane the hell out of Eugene which wasn’t cool or radical – it was a drunken bully beating the shit out of a scared retarded kid.

9. The initial heat for Cena was hardly the pit of hatred we’d been told to expect. Partly because the Randy Orton thing had taken a lot of the "we hate pretty boy WWE guys who haven’t paid their dues" and partly because we’ve heard twenty thousand people booing him so two thousand isn’t going to sound that bad. Like so much else on this show we were being promised something that isn’t unusual or special. Cena being booed is a normal part of WWE TV just as Kurt Angle vs Randy Orton is a normal part of WWE TV, just as a JBL promo is a normal part of WWE TV. There was some fun with his T-shirt early on – he kept throwing it to the crowd and they kept throwing it back. Aside from that he got predictable chants of "Cena sucks", "Fuck you Cena", "Cena swallows" and "you can’t wrestle". All four, with "Orton" in place of "Cena" had filled ten minutes of the show at an earlier point.

10. Laugh at me if you want but I think this was Cena’s best performance ever. He worked the crowd expertly without ever actually doing anything heelish, he tossed in some new moves to prove the "same old shit" chants wrong and he stopped Van Dam’s match falling apart with remarkable skill for someone so inexperienced. RVD had tried the abilities of longer serving pros than John Cena. My only real problem with the actual match was the finish. Why did Edge of all people have to interfere? He would face the winner for the title so why did he care who won? Or are we now supposed to see Van Dam as the "easier" of the two opponents? If we had to have interference then why not an ECW person? Or someone debuting? And why was the three count made by Paul Heyman? I guessed there would be ref bumps and a controversial count but I was relying on Bill Alfonso to come out in his old ref’s shirt and count the fall.

If all that sounds unduly negative it is only because the show should’ve been the launch of the new ECW but it actually laid out the pecking order in 2006. At the top of the tree we have WWE superstars who are better than everyone. Second come WWE superstars who have been moved to ECW. Third come old ECW legends who get a big pop but who can barely walk and bottom of the pile are the newer ECW names or the ones that have yet to officially join the brand. Which is a bad idea as it is those bottom of the heap, fourth-stringers who are going to have to carry the ECW brand three or four shows a week. When ECW comes to Poughkeepsie and tries to shift two thousand tickets for a house show it won’t be John Cena, the Big Show or Terry Funk who will be giving those fans their money’s worth. It’ll be CM Punk, Jamie Noble, Stevie Richards, Super Crazy, Tajiri, the FBI and co. Cena winning would’ve been worse booking (which proves it is possible) but on the whole it was a show which suggests a not-so-hidden agenda at the heart of this ECW revival.