ECW heat check after November to Remember 1999
So, after getting the TNN deal, they lost the Dudleys and Taz is on the way out (it was known by early September he was leaving, N2R is his final show, and in between those, all he did was put over Sabu, Awesome, and RVD), but saw the return of Raven, Sandman, and Mikey Whipwreck. I wouldn't call it a fair trade considering Raven seems wasted 100% of the time he's on screen, they had done next to nothing with Mikey since he was a big focus of TV in 1995 and he returned to the company getting squashed by Mike Awesome and then not used on TV for another 2 months, and Sandman is Sandman, even if he was in much better shape this time around after his WCW stint. Losing the Dudleys was a bigger blow than Taz, since they Dudleys were used as a utility act that could fill time and get heat against anyone on any show at any time on any position on the card and probably had more TV and mic time than anyone in the company. Taz...well his best days were already behind him and his title reign was a lot of bad matches and making guys look bad while he repeated his catchphrase so....oh well.
Raven immediately resumes the feud with Dreamer by winning the tag titles with him and then complaining about having to be Dreamer' partner and literally doing nothing but popping in at the end of the match to hit a DDT and get the pin. The Impact Players, unable to wrest the TV title from RVD, instead head for the tag titles, and this leads to Raven/Dreamer/Sandman vs Impact Players/Rhino in an old guard vs new guard type match. Raven of course turns on Dreamer, Justin pins Sandman (he now has wins over Dreamer, Sabu, Sandman, and Shane Douglas, and got the credit for running Sandman/Shane out of ECW, and Sabu getting suspended by the state athletic commissions ) and resumes their feud that was starting before Sandman went to make some money. Taz does the J-O-B brotha for RVD, in what is probably Taz's best match of the year, but one of RVD's worst, and it's made more than clear that RVD is the top star of ECW and the TV title is more important than the World Title. This is Taz's last match before his WWF debut at the Royal Rumble in January, idk what he did in those almost 3 months, but it definitely wasn't hitting the gym.
Jerry Lynn, after most of the year stealing the show with RVD, is now firmly back in the midcard, now in three way dance hell that Super Crazy/Guido/Tajiri had found themselves in. Speaking of those three, some combination of those three happens on all six of the PPVs in 1999. And on TV, they each had probably 5 matches against each other a piece, plus a few triple threats on TV. Paul E. discovered the cheat code to mid card booking and just started booking them every other week for a while. This will continue into 2000. Tajiri seemed like he was going to be elevated, but he was just a mid card filler feud for Taz. The heel turn worked out fine for his career, but I still think it was dumb when he was so over as a face and ready to jump up the card. In a similar vein, not having Jerry finally beat RVD, then move RVD up to the world title seemed like a dumb idea to me, but building your world title and national TV program around 2 (1 that doesn't speak English) guys that have very little exposure to American audiences with an impromptu unadvertised triple threat at a PPV seems more logical.
The two things I'm most baffled about: Why Paul E. was so intent on pushing Justin Credible so hard when Lance Storm was better at literally everything (workrate, high flying, brawling, PROMOS, aesthetics, literally everything). I have to assume it was a personal project for him because he tried to push Justin straight to the top from the start, having him feud with Dreamer like 2 months into his run, but fans weren't buying it and he backed off a bit before going even harder. Second: Why they had a national product with a million+ viewers and never plug their live dates. When they were at their hottest creatively, every episode of TV was hyping up the next month of shows. Now they don't even hype up dates on Hardcore TV unless something is at the ECW arena. They don't tell people when or where TNN tapings are, they don't mention house shows at all anymore unless something happened at one that they can show "fan cam" footage of. Get a national show, start touring nationally, but don't use your platform to promote your dates, brehs.
EDIT: A few shows later they finally start advertising their dates