Thursday, July 20, 2006
ECW: It's shitty again!
I don't think that I meant this blog to devolve into an ECW review column. But then again, it didn't occur to me that ECW would return when I started Wrestleblog back up. And Lord knows that I didn't expect WWE to turn ECW into a crappy extension of Raw and Smackdown. Monty Python was right: no one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition. But I digress.
Coming into the July 18th show, I had a reason to be optimistic. Last week's episode, capped by the amazing Big Show -vs- Ric Flair title match, gave me hope that the new ECW had turned the corner, and was gonna concentrate on not sucking. Instead, they gave us a whole heaping helping of sucking this time around. It started off by having Kelly start off the show with her psedo-striptease. Mike Knox's interference took far too long, as it almost always does.
Things went from bad to worse, though, as Knox challenged Sandman to a match. The match itself was ugly, Knox kept control for far too long, and the attempted highlight of the match, Kelly getting decapitated from a Sandman cane shot, was telegraphed when Knox grabbed Kelly far, far too early. Top that off with Sandman losing to Knox, and you have a match that'll make me grumpy any day.
Tommy Dreamer did give a great little speech, imploring Paul Heyman to add some kind of logic to this angle. Heyman also played his role perfectly, down to the Mafia Kiss of Death. I wish we could've had a better executioner than Test, but I'm sure that Scaia over at OnlineOnslaught was pleased that things are going much the way he hoped. Oh, Sabu also had a nice little match against Stevie Richards. The springboard DDT is an awesome move, and may get Sabu even more over than he already is.
The main event made me even grumpier than I already was. Who in the fuck decided it would be good to have The "Great" Khali on ECW? Horrible, horrible idea. I didn't bother investing much interest in the Show/'Taker match, 'cuz it seemed like a foregone conclusion that this wasn't going to end well. And Khali's attack on the Undertaker proved me right. Unfortunately. I really wanted to be wrong, too!
Add it all up, and you've got one suck-tastic episode of ECW. And the optimism that I showed last week is completely gone. I am starting to wonder if I'll be able to get through ECW's 13-week run on SciFi. If next week's episode is as bad as this week's, I may just call it over and go do something entertaining on Tuesday nights.
¶ 9:07 PM
Coming into the July 18th show, I had a reason to be optimistic. Last week's episode, capped by the amazing Big Show -vs- Ric Flair title match, gave me hope that the new ECW had turned the corner, and was gonna concentrate on not sucking. Instead, they gave us a whole heaping helping of sucking this time around. It started off by having Kelly start off the show with her psedo-striptease. Mike Knox's interference took far too long, as it almost always does.
Things went from bad to worse, though, as Knox challenged Sandman to a match. The match itself was ugly, Knox kept control for far too long, and the attempted highlight of the match, Kelly getting decapitated from a Sandman cane shot, was telegraphed when Knox grabbed Kelly far, far too early. Top that off with Sandman losing to Knox, and you have a match that'll make me grumpy any day.
Tommy Dreamer did give a great little speech, imploring Paul Heyman to add some kind of logic to this angle. Heyman also played his role perfectly, down to the Mafia Kiss of Death. I wish we could've had a better executioner than Test, but I'm sure that Scaia over at OnlineOnslaught was pleased that things are going much the way he hoped. Oh, Sabu also had a nice little match against Stevie Richards. The springboard DDT is an awesome move, and may get Sabu even more over than he already is.
The main event made me even grumpier than I already was. Who in the fuck decided it would be good to have The "Great" Khali on ECW? Horrible, horrible idea. I didn't bother investing much interest in the Show/'Taker match, 'cuz it seemed like a foregone conclusion that this wasn't going to end well. And Khali's attack on the Undertaker proved me right. Unfortunately. I really wanted to be wrong, too!
Add it all up, and you've got one suck-tastic episode of ECW. And the optimism that I showed last week is completely gone. I am starting to wonder if I'll be able to get through ECW's 13-week run on SciFi. If next week's episode is as bad as this week's, I may just call it over and go do something entertaining on Tuesday nights.
¶ 9:07 PM
