The site was having some editing issues so I got behind a but this week, so here we go from ECW on Tuesday.
ECW 08/04/09
ECW was hit and miss tonight. It started out with some piss poor banter between Zak Ryder, Shelton Benjamin and Abraham Washington on the terrible Abraham Washington show. Anyone else think it is stupid this dill-hole had been called up for a month and still has not wrestled? They didn’t really need this situation to spark a feud between Ryder and Benjamin. I guess this also cuts Tyler Reks out of his feud with Ryder. Later, they had a goofy Hurricane segment but it gave me an excuse to see GM Tiffany. My favorite segment of the night was Goldust and Sheamus. They mostly had a very traditional mat wrestling contest with Sheamus finishing from a normal move instead of a finisher. Very old school. I like the dynamic they have working ECW with the veteran stars, Christian, Regal, Dreamer, Goldust, capable of training and guiding the young stars in a real setting. The Main Event was the Christian vs Dreamer ECW Championship match under extreme rules. Meh, as far as hardcore matches go, this was pretty tame. One aspect of the Dreamer/Christian/Swagger feud had been the wrestling, but hardcore pretty much eliminates that. Besides, weren’t all ECW title matches supposed to be contested under extreme rules? And a hardcore match involving Christian without a single Con-Chair-To? Come on guys.
C+
WWE Superstars 08/06/09
I thought this was a subpar Superstars for the most part but it had entertaining aspects. Santino for one was great even in a glorified squash match to Chris Masters. In tag team action, Regal and Burchill defeated Yoshi Tatsu and Tyler Reks. This was a pretty good match. Yoshi is getting a decent push and I do not know where they are going with Reks, but Regal and the Burchills, Katie Lee and Paul, had great chemistry as a group. The main event featured Rey Mysterio against Mike Knox with Dolph Ziggler as the guest announcer. Knox once again showed a lot of talent but the match was on the way to the typical Mysterio ending when Ziggler interfered to cause the DQ. I did not really enjoy Ziggler behind the headphones. Either he did not know what he was doing or he was not prepared properly for that role. Maybe he didn’t like Vince yelling in his ear.
B-
TNA Impact
I had been reading about this episode of Impact that would be so crazy and so chaotic because it would feel like a riot. Well, it did in ways and was still a bit of a letdown. The night started off with Main Event Mafia and World Elite, the Eric Young lead foreigner faction, joining forces. Let’s pause to get this straight, MEM now contains their guys, the Nation of Violence guys and the World Elite guys. Because they didn’t say they were just going to watch each other’s backs. It sounded like the same angle they came at Joe with; that MEM was hiring them to be associated with them. So they have a few matches and do some promos building up the idea that it is the TNA originals vs MEM/WE/NoV. This might be interesting if it were not exactly the same thing they did after MEM formed. Anyone remember the TNA Front Line? Me neither really since that arch amounted to nothing. So they have a big 8-Man tag match with Beer Money and Team 3D vs British Invasion, Steiner and Booker T. This is the match that devolves into a brawl featuring almost the whole locker room. However, the brawl had a couple of notable exceptions: Homicide, Hernandez, AJ Styles, and Matt Morgan. The brawl went everywhere, it was super violent, continued for a couple of segments and even had some humor tossed in. All-in-all it was executed nicely and got the point across. However, two things weakened it. Russo or whoever did almost the exact same thing with the n.W.o and since the MEM is already a lot like the n.W.o it all seemed rehashed. At one point during the broadcast, Mike Tenay draws a comparison to the n.W.o brawl, saying even that was nothing like this but that still makes the audience think rip-off. Sigh, is there a broadcast school he can attend. They had some other wrestling during the night, Morgan evened up the series against AJ, Sting squashed Brutus Magnus, Knockout segments not involving the Beautiful People so I did not care, and another mini-brawl at the end that Hernandez clears out with a twirling chain. this is probably all the natural escalation that the Front Line/MEM confrontation should have taken but someone, presumably Jeff Jarret, interfered with Vince Russo’s plans. Now with Jeff at home, Vince is returning to his killed story. Here is the problem: we know that Russo has had major creative control over two runs in TNA, S.E.X. during the early years and now MEM. They are both very similar to the n.W.o, not to mention the new n.W.o in WCW, and then New Blood towards the end of WCW. All very similar to these story lines and all contributing to the feeling this has all been overdone by him. That and the chaotic nature of the last couple of weeks of Impact really didn’t feel all that different from the riot.
C-
Smackdown 08/07/09
I don’t know about this one. I wish last weeks show had lived up to its great final segment because my faith in Michael Hayes is starting to waiver. I am not saying he has lost; I am just saying some of the circumstances seem too contrived for their own good. The last two weeks of shows have been packed with quality and close chances to be great, but nothing ever pays off until the last segment. The show was billed to start off with a Title match between Hardy and CM Punk. The two brawl and the match never starts so Mr McMahon comes out and reschedules it for the main event. He also adds a special guest enforcer, who is pretty predictable if you think back to who was drafted and traded around recently. Morrison has a very good match with Tyson Kid, defeating him but it is a weird consolation for his awesome main event performance last week. By the way, since when did the Hart Dynasty become jobbers to the stars? After the Cryme Tyme “Word Up” segment, Slam Master J gets his first match since he adopted his new gimmick against Charlie Haas. I commend Hayes in trying to keep his old tag partner’s kid employed. Still, I don’t know how long Jesse will be around. I have never understood why Charlie Haas was an eternal jobber either, oh well. Next, Dolph Ziggler wins a fatal four way for a shot at the Intercontinental title at “Summerfest”, that almost came out and said he was going to win on Superstars. It was a good match but we all knew the results. JTG defeated Chris Jericho, meh. Normal build up for the PPV match. The Great Khali beat Ricky Ortiz in one of the fastest matches ever and then Kane came out to remain involved on “time-filler” feud number 2. In the back, their was some crap-tastic segment where Maria explained why she is boning Doplh Ziggler. Really stupid and no need. On to the main event, it is revealed that special enforcer is none other than…Matt Hardy *gasp*. Yeah, kind of saw it coming and from his very first interactions with Jeff, kind of saw the results of the match coming, too. It was a decent match, but Jeff Hardy did absolutely nothing hardcore or extreme, of course. The specter of whatever contrived thing they were going to pull off to keep the title on Jeff really dampened my enjoyment of the match. And then finally, there it was. Hey, we will have Matt Hardy play angry moron. Jeff will be acting like a little bitch, like always, and stand in front of Matt, arguing with him and with his back to the ropes. Punk will slide at Jeff and Matt will obviously see Jeff move causing Punk to knock Matt back. But no, Matt will be angry at Punk and then pull the ref out as Punk is about to win then get in an argument with Punk and then quick count an easy pin for Jeff to retain. Blah, why could they not execute this better? I do not have a problem with Matt counting the win for Jeff, I think their feud is a dead end anyway. I think there were two possible outcomes of Matt Hardy’s return. Matt costs Jeff the title, they have a huge match at say Hell in the Cell, Jeff gets hurt, and then Jeff takes some time off. Or they reconcile, Punk hurts Jeff, then Matt and Punk feud for the title. After Matt leaves the ring, Punk brutalizes Jeff again and it is great just like last weeks. Then Teddy Long makes them a rematch for “Summerfest” in a TLC match. this could go a lot of different ways but I don’t know how many of them are satisfying. If Matt is going to stay heel, I think they should have the Hardys reconcile over the next couple of weeks, then Matt gets added to the TLC, and then Matt betrays Jeff there. He could even become the champion then. If Matt is turning face, they should have them both struggle with it a bit but I do not know where it should end up. I fear that it would just turn into a normal Punk/Matt Hardy feud away from the title and that would be the end of both of their main event careers. Hopefully, before Jeff takes his time off, they can move the title over to Punk while turning Matt face in a believable way. I think Matt and Punk would work a really good dynamic with Matt coming from a place that he could throw all Punk’s rhetoric back in his face.
B-
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