By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

Former ECW Original star Shane Douglas says he believes WWE and Vince McMahon's motive for "sanitizing" the ECW brand name was to eliminate the recognizable "E-C-W" chants from WWE TV. Douglas believes McMahon was willing to take this measure at the expense of not making as much money as he could have with the ECW brand featured on WWE's TV programming.

"My personally opinion – and I think the opinion of a lot of fans – is that Vince McMahon simply wanted to stop fans from chanting 'ECW' when they saw someone they either didn't like or they did like and one of the most difficult things to sanitize on tape is crowd sound," Douglas told Brian Fritz in an interview for Fanhouse.com. "So if you see the crowd chanting 'ECW' and their fist is pounding three times and they try to sanitize that with crowd cheers, it's very obvious. So, from a production standpoint, I think Vince McMahon thought he had an agenda that he had to adhere to."

Douglas was also critical of his former employer, TNA and president Dixie Carter, for not trying to tap into more realistic storylines and instead trying to book every gimmick possible to entice viewers to the product. Douglas suggested both WWE and TNA could make money looking at what worked in the original ECW.

"It's clear TNA's (Total Nonstop Action Wrestling) foray into wrestling has been vastly underachieving and WWE's has been amazingly dwindling. It's a shame. I think (TNA President) Dixie Carter and her dad (Bob Carter) have made an amazing monetary investment in the company that has produced nothing," Douglas said. "And the WWE, on the other hand, is trying to figure out how as a company to stop hemorrhaging fans."

Douglas added: "I think fans want to see something more realistic with the storylines, force them to think a little bit and get to something that's a lot more old school. That's one portion of the formula that Vince has steadfastly refused to try and Dixie Carter has been unwilling to try. They've tried everything else. They've tried ever flip-flopping move, every kind of iron cage they can build, every tower they can build, every kind of storyline and vignette that can do off of 'sports entertainment' and we're down 10, 15 million fans over the last 10 years. My belief is that old school is where it has to go to bring some of those fans back and create new fans."

Link: Douglas's entire thought-provoking interview with Brian Fritz can be read at Fanhouse.com.

Caldwell's Analysis: The statement about wrestling losing 10 million viewers since the end of the Monday Night Wars needs to be put in proper perspective. The peak of the Monday Night Wars was an all-time boom in popularity for pro wrestling that was something beyond the scope of the cyclical nature of the wrestling business. Now, the business is back in a regular cycle of ups and downs depending on whether there's a hot angle on WWE TV or TNA playing up a potential Monday Night Wars battle, such as January 4.

Douglas is right about WWE and TNA needing to incorporate a more realistic style into their product. That's where TV is going. The relevant TV shows right now feature stars with personalities in realistic situations where the stars are manipulated into conflicts that flesh out their characters. TV shows on E! are doing a better job of selling pro wrestling angles than pro wrestling is, because WWE and TNA are still using a stale Attitude Era TV format.

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