Did ECW actually do a good job?

Now before I kick things off,I'm talking about WWEECW rather than the original ECW,and this is not a thread about how good the old ECW was/how it was never ECW/Yada Yada Yada.It is just something that came to my attention when watching Fatal 4 Way.

From what I concluded the whole point of ECW was to give guys from developement a chance to get some air time and to try make an impression within the WWE,Build themselves a raport with the fans be it as a heel or a face and create a charachter that they could then continue with when the time came for them to move to one of the bigger shows.And if you look at the two world title matches that took place at Fatal Four Way.

WWE Title
John Cena vs Edge vs Randy Orton vs Sheamus

World Heavyweight Championship

Jack Swagger (c) vs CM Punk vs Rey Myserio vs Big Show

Now the ones in bold are the ones I want to focus on,All three of these guys are either world champions or were world champions and what is the common theme there? They all made their name on Television in ECW.I know that will be disputed by some as many already knew about CM Punk through ROH but his first WWE,International exposure came in ECW where he is also had the experience of leading a brand as ECW Champion.

Jack Swagger also held the ECW Title and had a good feud with Christian,and that prompted him to be moved to Raw where he lost his way slightly through whatever means(Booking or what not),And that maybe he could have done with a bit longer on ECW to develop his charachter but the bottom line is his perfomances in ECW were what made WWE think he could make it on the big stage of Raw.Obviously this confidecnce still remained and Swagger's experience at leading a brand obviously held him in good stead when he won the World Heavyweight title following his MiTB win.

And Sheamus,although he did not win the ECW Title he first made an impression on that show and was promptly moved to Raw and has since received a massive push,obviously there are many contributing factors to this but the point being that he created a charachter in ECW and managed to continue it onto one of the bigger shows and even win the world title twice.

I know that for every Jack Swagger there is a Gavin Spears,DJ Gabriel or dare I say it Braden Walker,But my point is that for ECW in my eyes to produce three guys who have gone onto win world titles in the WWE is very good going indeed and that although it came in for a lot of stick because of it being branded ECW when nothing like the original it still made an impact on the "WWE Universe".

I'm not so sure.

On paper, it was a good idea. To launch a third brand, use it as a base to give guys coming from development a break, a chance for the fans to see the 'new' guys and get them over before promoting them to the main brand.

The 3 mentioned in the article have developed characters, become more confident in-ring. CM Punk launched his straight-edge character with the longer promo time he got on Smackdown and PPV exposure. When he cashed in his first MITB, fresh from his time in ECW, he was booked like a jobber and did not look anything like a world champ. It's the time since that he's really developed.

Sheamus was only in ECW for a matter of months before deciding him and Trips were best mates, and hadn't really had a run with anyone (apart from Goldust, possibly?). And again, he's improved a hell of a lot since joining Raw.

Swagger - went from ECW champ, to jobber on Raw. he barely even competed for the US or IC title, before surprisingly getting the MITB nod. He's now been shoved to the main event scene on Smackdown without the benefit of a sustained push, it's like WWE have just said 'Right! He's a main eventer! You will like him!', and that's about it. Again, it's only since he's started receiving extended promo time, and matches that last longer than 5 minutes on Smackdown that he's started to look anything like a star.

Of the 'established' WWE guys who held the title...:

Matt Hardy - jobber to the stars, always a mid-carder on the bigger shows.
Christian - mid-carder.
Mark Henry - useless mid-carder (but clearly only got the title as an apology for MIchael Hayes' comments)
Kane - been jobbing and has only become interesting again in the past few weeks.
Chavo - Hornswoggle's job-boy, I don't know if his career will ever recover from that.

Of the rest, I'd say only Miz, Morrison and Evan Bourne have shown signs of any kind of career progression that I can think of. Even highly rated ECW guys like Yoshi Tatsu have been dumped on Superstars.

ECW was the third brand, was made clear it was the third brand (of the big PPVs, it didn;t even have a match at WM25, a 7 second joke between Kane and Chavo at WM24, the 3 second match between Regal and Christian at Summerslam), and the presentation of it just meant that no-one was going to take it seriously.

ecw became a joke brand after vince took it over the first year of ecw i watched it more at least they had 1 ecw rules match a week at the start of it but that went away after awhile ecw was extreme championship wrestling and once wwe took it over they took the extreme out of it and that is what ecw was all about

But without ECW would Punk, Swagger, or Sheamus ever break through properly? It doesn't matter what they did straight after, without ECW there is every chance they would have never got out of development, or lingered in the bottom cards for a very long time, ECW gave them that platform to get over, so that when they did move brand, they were recognisable, which immediatly made them better than anybody been thrown onto one of the main brands straight away could achieve.

It gave Kane, Matt Hardy, Mark Henry and even Chavo some much needed credibility, they may have gone back to their usual stuff when moved back to Raw or Smackdown, but on ECW, they got a breath of fresh air into their career, it doesn't matter that when they went back to the main brands they got the same treatment, ECW did it's job.

And Matt Hardy nearly became a main eventer after his stint on ECW, and had in my opinion his most entertaining run when he turned heel on Jeff, and beat Jeff at Mania and in the stretcher match, and I think his run on ECW brought him back some credibility.

And to be honest, I think as soon as Paul Heyman left/lost most of his creative control, it was right for them to get rid of the extreme aspect, because WWE just wouldn't have booked it in the same way, what they should have done is changed the name of the brand, I think that was a massive hinderance to it, but I can understand why the name was kept as well, as they hoped it would draw in people who recognised the name, and hoped they liked what they saw when they watched it, even if it wasn't [b]extreme[/c] championship wrestling.

i think by keeping the name ecw it made fans that knew the name before hate it more than they would have if it was a different name maybe it would have worked better if they used the wcw name and not the ecw

I think keeping the name wasn't good in terms of giving people what they wanted, by keeping the ECW name they seeminly underwhelmed people. But I think that it was a way of drawing in the casual fan, who would recognise the name ECW and WWE hoped that when they turned it on to see what it was about they would like the product, even if it wasn't anything like the original ECW.