Home ▸ Other ▸ Why I hate: WWE One Night Stand

This article is part 4 of a series on WWE Pay Per View events.  See also:  Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.  At the time of this writing, the event in question is still titled WWE One Night Stand, though rumor has it that the name will change this year to WWE Extreme Rules.

Welcome back to my series on WWE Pay Per Views and why there are way too damned many of them.  This is especially true in the month of June, where there are two of them – WWE One Night Stand and WWE Night of Champions.  This week, I take a look at One Night Stand.

I present my arguments against WWE One Night Stand, after the jump!

WWE One Night Stand (June)

When One Night Stand debuted on June 12, 2005, it was my favorite Pay Per View on the entire WWE Calendar.  I was a huge fan of the original ECW, so when I heard that WWE was holding a reunion show of sorts, I was all kinds of excited.  They didn’t have to announce any matches, we just knew it was going to be great.  The inaugural One Night Stand didn’t disappoint.  Most of our favorites were there – Tommy Dreamer, Sabu, Rob Van Dam, The Sandman, The Dudley Boyz, Rey Mysterio, Pychosis, the bWo, the FBI, and many other ECW Originals graced the show with their presence, and it felt like an old school ECW show, just with better production values.

The following year, ECW One Night Stand served as a catalyst for the relaunch of ECW as a WWE Brand.  While it still featured several ECW Originals, it also featured several WWE Superstars, but it still felt like ECW, save for the Mysterio-Sabu no contest.  It was on this night that Rob Van Dam cashed in his Money In The Bank contract that he won at WrestleMania 22, and defeated John Cena to win the WWE Championship, much to the delight of the rabid Hammerstein Ballroom crowd.  Later that year, however, the tradition of great ECW Pay Per View from  WWE died with the horrible December To Dismember event.

In 2007, One Night Stand became a tri-branded WWE event (as did the rest of the secondary PPV events), but with a gimmick – every match would be contested under “Extreme Rules.”  Now, rather than this meaning that it would be a card full of ECW style hardcore matches, it meant that every match would have a stipulation attached to it.  That, dear readers, is why I hate this Pay Per View.

WCW used to do a Pay Per View every year called Uncensored.  Every match on the card would have some kind of stipulation attached to it, and it was generally regarded as their worst event of their year.  Why WWE would try the same thing several years later and expect it to be well recieved is beyond me.  So yes, for those keeping score at home, they took a Pay Per View that was originally designed as an ECW show, and gave it a WCW makeover.

A point I keep coming back to in this series is the gap between WrestleMania and SummerSlam.  I said last week that I think a June Pay Per View would be a good balance.  This, however, is not the one I’d go with.  I said last week that if I could only revert back to a 12 PPV a year schedule, I’d get rid of Judgment Day and replace it in May with one of the June Pay Per Views – this would be the one to get bumped up a month.  The only reason I’d keep this over Judgment Day is that this PPV does have a gimmick to separate it from the others.  Either way, they both need to go.

Join me next Sunday at noon, as I’ll look at the other June Pay Per View, Night of Champions.

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