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GUEST EDITORIAL
By Adam Riemer of New York, N.Y.
PWTorch.com Reader

Through the grapevine it has been reported that Mike Adamle will replace Joey Styles as the play-by-play announcer to sit along side Tazz. Now, I don't usually watch ECW, and by the ratings, not a whole lot of people do.

However, ECW by its own credit is trying now to get people interested. They are having big names such as the Undertaker show up on the program and giving the title to Kane makes the show at least somewhat credible with a believable champion.

This is not ECW from the 1990s; if it were, the ratings would probably be beating Raw. The last thing truly left from the original glory days was Joey Styles (Tazz was not an announcer so that doesn't count, and Tommy Dreamer is not the Innovator of Violence he once was). Styles voice is synonymous with ECW; his "oh my god" got one of the loudest reactions at the first ECW "One Night Stand." He is an icon in certain regards with play-by-play announcing and besides J.R. and the King, he is the best play-by-play announcer out there. Tazz is good, but Joey is ECW. So now WWE is getting rid of the guy who is the only person to ever successfully pull off the single play-by-play guy with no co-host, and you get rid of the voice of ECW. So now you have Tazz and... Mike Adamle??

Mike Adamle was good... on "American Gladiators" back when guys like Laser and Gemini were throwing around challengers. A decade or so later and he is back, and he is terrible at what he does. To me and some of the other fans around me, well, we all thought the WWE hired him just as a slap in the face to Hulk Hogan who hosts the new "American Gladiators," trying to prove the old host is better than the Hulkster. But that theory was shot down pretty quickly when they kept a guy who messes up his lines left, right, up, and down. Cue cards couldn't help this guy.

Smackdown had Michael Cole and Tazz, then Cole and JBL. Both were good (Tazz was better). Then they bring in Coachman, who is one of the worst announcers in the industry. I along with many other fans would rather hear Umaga's gibberish for two hours than have to hear Coach talk for ten seconds. Smackdown took a hit in that category. So what does WWE do? They put another terrible announcer on ECW.

If anyone every had any doubts that the WWE doesn't care about Smackdown and ECW, well, that can be put to rest. How does it look to the fans when you take a guy like Joey Styles out of the equation and put in a guy like Mike Adamle? It looks the same as when WWE did it with putting Coach in on Smackdown. It looks like the WWE doesn't care that the viewers at home have to listen to guys who screw up their lines and have voices that sounds fake, uninterested, and boring.

WWE did kill the original ECW, but the original ECW fans accepted that and could not care less about the new ECW; it's not real to us. Joey Styles, though, was real. For an ECW fan, Joey was the best there ever was. J.R. might be amazing at what he does, but Styles made ECW that much better with his intensity and his true love for the game. J.R. and the King are the only other two who have that same showing when it comes out through our TVs.

For a fan who just started watching ECW again thanks to Kane finally getting some sort of a run, this makes me feel like WWE could not care less about legacy, entertainment, and value. To me and the other WWE and orginial ECW fans around me, it seems they only care about one show (Raw).

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