Was (he who shall not be named) slated to with the ECW title?

[Xero]

Was Benoit slated to win the ECW title when he no-showed (I think) Vengeance?

[Cool King]

Yeah, I remember reading it somewhere that Stephanie said that he was. Wikipedia seems to back me up on it.



ECW (2007)

On the June 11 edition of Raw, Benoit was drafted from SmackDown! to ECW as part of the 2007 WWE Draft, after losing a match to Bobby Lashley. Benoit won his ECW debut match teaming up with CM Punk and defeating Elijah Burke and Marcus Cor Von by disqualification. On June 19, Benoit wrestled his last match, defeating Burke in a match to determine who would compete for the vacated ECW World Championship at Vengeance. Benoit missed the weekend house shows, telling WWE officials that his wife and son were vomiting blood due to food poisoning. When he failed to show up for the pay-per-view, viewers were informed that he was unable to compete due to a "family emergency" and he was replaced in the title match by Johnny Nitro. Nitro won the match and became ECW World Champion. Stephanie McMahon later indicated that Benoit would have defeated Punk for the championship had he been present for the event.

The link for the interview with Stephanie doesn't seem to work now though. :-\

[Xero]

Yeah, I figured. She said the same thing about Eddie, too.

I find it odd that instead of letting Punk retain they just threw it on Nitro.

[Jeritron]

I thought it was vacant at the time and there was a tournament for it?

Wasn't it briefly after McMahon had vacated it?

[Jeritron]

Either way I think the plan wasn't for Punk to win it yet, so they went with Morrison since shithead didn't show up

[Xero]

You're right, forgot it was vacant.

[Jeritron]

They probably figured Morrison could transition it over to him later that week or something

[Innovator]

They threw it on Nitro because the guy who wrote ECW had a man crush on him, Lagana I think.

Still sad that we didn't get to see Punk vs. Benoit.

[Mr. Nerfect]

Yeah, it seemed like we were going to have Chris Benoit as ECW Champion, defending the belt against CM Punk in a series to "make" Punk. It would have been awesome television. To be honest, I think this is where ECW fell. With Benoit gone, the most decorated guy on the brand was Johnny Nitro (two Intercontinental Championships and three WWE Tag Team Championships to his name). I figured that he got put in the position because of that reason, but I guess Dave Lagana having a crush on him would have helped. This is also the point where the ECW Title dropped the "World" from its name, and started to be recognised as being below the WWE and World Heavyweight Championship, I believe.

As for why they didn't just go with Punk winning the belt -- my theory is that they wanted to build up his initial win, and they didn't know right away what was happening with Benoit and they just decided to hold back on Punk winning the ECW Title.