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VIP EXCLUSIVE - From PWTorch Newsletter #988...

Radican's Focus
By Sean Radican, Torch columnist
Original Headline: DVD: Guest Booker - Gabe Sapolsky
Originally Published: September 15, 2007
PWTorch Newsletter #988

"Guest Booker with Gabe Sapolsky" is the latest release in a new series of shoot style interviews from Kayfabecommentaries.com that charge a booker with taking control of a certain promotion and re-booking it in their own way. The first edition of the series with Kevin Sullivan stipulated that Sullivan had to book WWE in 1984 without Hulk Hogan coming in. Sapolsky, who is the booker of Ring of Honor, was given a different task, as he was charged with re-booking ECW from June 2006 through the "December to Dismember" PPV in December.

The first  thought I had was when I was told the booking scenario given to Sapolsky was that trained monkey’s could do a better job of booking the WWE version of ECW on SCI-FI compared to what WWE creative did. ECW had some good things going for it when it began. The stars from Raw showed up and continued their angles, RVD was a fresh face at the top of the card, and new wrestlers such as Kevin Thorn and C.M. Punk were introduced to a national audience.

Things went south fast for ECW. Kurt Angle, the top star of the company, was released by the WWE. RVD and Sabu, the only ECW originals given a good push when ECW was resurrected, were busted for drug possession. RVD quickly lost the WWE and ECW titles after his arrest and Sabu was buried from that point forward until being released this year.

As it turned out, the stars from Raw stopped showing up on ECW television as often, the ECW originals had been buried, and by the time "December to Dismember" rolled around, WWE creative was burned out from booking too many PPVs and fans were treated to a terrible PPV that ended ten minutes past the second hour. I tried to get a refund for my purchase, but failed to convince my cable company that I had been ripped off by the WWE.

One of the strengths of this release was the amount of preparation Sapolsky had done, as he came prepared with notes for all aspects of how the new ECW would be booked. The host, Sean Oliver, also did a good job throughout of asking good follow up questions that let Sapolsky clarify or further explain his ideas.

Sapolsky begins by talking about the setup of ECW in terms of a commissioner, agents, announcers, roster, house shows, and on-air presentations for television. He talks about how he would use Paul Heyman as an on-air commissioner, but as a face instead of a heel. Sapolsky then talked about the agents he would use and gave good reasons as to why he would use them, but also took the time to explain why he doesn’t use agents in ROH.

Sapolsky picked close to 30 wrestlers to fill out the roster, which is a much larger roster than the current version of ECW’s roster, as there’s seemingly the same 6-8 wrestlers feuding on television week in and week out. Randy Orton and Ric Flair are the flagship wrestlers, who will headline the PPV. The rest of the roster is filled with a variety of ECW originals and underutilized talent from the June 2006 Raw and Smackdown rosters.

I agreed whole-heartedly with Sapolsky’s approach to house shows for the ECW brand. I went to an ECW house show in Massachusetts in July of 2006 and it was one of the worst live event experiences I’ve ever had. The crowd was dead and the show was filled with talent that the crowd didn’t care about.

Sapolsky’s idea was that the talent and feuds would be established on television before taking the show on the road. Throughout the release, Sapolsky talked about how the feuds on television would be used to bolster house show matches. One of the themes Sapolsky’s re-booking of ECW was keeping the spirit of ECW, but updating it for the modern era in the context of it being a WWE owned company.

In the spirit of the old ECW, Sapolsky said that once house shows were run, he would do the same thing Heyman did with the original ECW, which was big market shows in small venues. ROH has established itself recently in the Chicago, New York, and Boston markets, which I don’t believe is any coincidence give Sapolsky’s ECW roots.  

Sapolsky laid out plans for how he would maintain the feel of the old ECW by using the same 3 titles from the Original ECW. Sapolsky’ re-booked ECW would feature the ECW Hvt. Title, ECW TV Title, and ECW Tag Team Titles. I had serious objections to Sapolsky claiming he could...

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