Sabu isn’t a fan of the recent ECW celebration.
NXT recently celebrated ECW at 2300 Arena by bringing back some legendary names from the defunct promotion. RVD, Bubba Ray, D-von Dudley, Dawn Marie, Nunzio, and Rhino all took part in the one night celebration.
In general, the consensus around the show was a positive one, but not everyone thought that WWE did the nostalgia thing correctly. That brings us to the ECW original, Sabu, who thought that the ECW show was actually quite “lame”:
"I thought it was lame. Even though it's a good show, good wrestlers, it was lame for a nostalgia ECW thing. The building doesn't look the same. It's not the same. It's not really a reunion or a top-notch thing, without me or Sandman. Both of us or one or the other. It's kind of a must, I think," Sabu said during an interview with Covalent.
There’s no denying the impact both Sabu and The Sandman had in ECW. They both started out in the company and were main stables of the promotion. Sabu and The Sandman were surely the embodiment of ECW; these guys had classic feuds against names like RVD, Tommy Dreamer, and Terry Funk.
The NXT episode that had past nostalgia acts was no One Night Stand 2005. Heck, it wasn't even One Night Stand 2006. WWE could’ve definitely done more to tap into the roots of ECW, but NXT was about putting over the future of the business. While the influences of ECW were there that night, the company wisely made sure that their developmental talents were the true stars.
It’s been rumored that WWE was entertaining the idea of making a nostalgia show at the 2300 arena an annual event. It would be fun to feature more acts from the past in future episodes if it does come to fruition.
Surprisingly, Sabu and The Sandman still wrestle these days. The latter is semi-retired so he doesn’t get into the ring often. And Sabu has talked about finally hanging up the boots against RVD in July:
"I'm actually hopefully setting up for my final match. I want to do a final match, maybe in July or later," he said during his stories with Briscoe and Bradshaw interview. "It's probably going to be [with] Van Dam. I heard Van Dam say he wanted to have a Barbed Wire Match. To have his last match and my last match be a Barbed Wire Match. I thought, 'Yeah, whatever. That's good.' I'd rather just wrestle him in a regular match. I want to have one of my better matches. The Barbed Wire Match, that's a gimmick. I don't really want a gimmick. The gimmick is my final match."
Who knows, maybe that Barbed Wire madness could happen on the next ECW nostalgia show in NXT.