ECW has an everlasting legacy in the world of professional wrestling and in 2006 WWE decided to relaunch the brand. On 8/10/06 the ECW brand rolled into the Hammerstein Ballroom for a show that featured the debut of CM Punk and Batista vs. Big Show for the ECW Championship.
Shannon Moore joined the brand after he called Vince McMahon directly to get his job back, and he faced off against CW Anderson in a dark match at the 8/10/06 event.
While talking about his return on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Moore was asked if he got any heat for going above John Laurinaitis and calling Vince McMahon to get his job back. According to Moore, Laurinaitis went out of his way to sabotage his match with CW Anderson by switching plans on the fly.
“So a couple of things. One of them, which is still disheartening to me, because it wasn’t about how it affected me; it was more about how it affected C. W. Anderson. Ultimately, whenever I ended up back in the WWE, we went to Hammerstein Ballroom, and there was a big ECW show there. We’ve never had this conversation, and I would love to one day, if I ever run into Johnny, so we can have this conversation and kind of like just understand what happened. But that night in Hammerstein Ballroom, C.W. was on that show, and C.W., we go way back, C.W. is cracking me in the head with chairs back whenever I was 14 years old. That night I wanted to give C.W. his moment because he wasn’t contracted, but he was on that show, and Johnny Ace was in gorilla position on headset that night. Understanding now what they were gonna do with CM Punk, and the reason that I ultimately got hired back as that character, it wasn’t to bring me back to make me a star. It was to introduce CM Punk, because at that point I was the Prince of Punk. I didn’t know nothing about CM Punk getting ready to come up yet, and that they were gonna start pushing him. But their idea was probably just to get the Prince of Punk off the street so that way there could only be one Punk whenever they started building CM Punk, but Johnny played into that.
I think that night in Hammerstein Ballroom, he tried to sabotage my match by switching the call back and forth on the headset to the ref, ‘Hey, tell Shannon that he’s a babyface.’ ‘Tell Shannon he’s a heel.’ ‘Tell Shannon he’s a babyface.’ ‘Tell him he’s a heel now.’ ‘He’s a babyface now.’ Then he had the referee just doing some corny stuff in the ring. Whenever I got back, I didn’t know what to do. I was wanting to jump across the table and make it physical because I was really upset about that. Not only for me but for C.W. Anderson, but ultimately, some of the guys were like, ‘Dude, don’t. It’s not worth it. Just let it be.’ But I just felt like it was just a sh*tty move to sabotage me, just based on the fact that I went over his head to get my job back.”