James Caldwell, Torch Assistant Editor (5.5)

Tale of two shows this week. First-half of the show was just filler, meaningless, or useless. Second-half really picked up the intensity starting with Tommy Dreamer's promo exchange with Jack Swagger after Dreamer's victory over Paul Burchill.

If Dreamer's final WWE TV appearance is indeed on Sunday, it's too bad because WWE finally found a nice way to credibly present Dreamer with an edge. Last week, he was strutting around the ring like Ric Flair or Rick Rude. This week, he was booked to have the final word on ECW champ Christian to complete the TV build-up to the PPV. Dreamer seemed to be playing with house money the last few weeks, which is how WWE should have built up this ECW Title Quest all along.

Tyson Kidd had a strong performance in a 15-minute slot against Christian in the TV main event. Kidd is developing slowly but surely into a legit star wrestler. ... Not sure what they're doing with Evan Bourne right now. Wrestling Mark Henry on a weekly basis seems to be just a way to keep him on TV, but not really do anything with him. ... Zack Ryder is in the same category of being on TV, but WWE not having anything for him. Hair. Cocky. Rob Conway v.2. Woo Woo Woo. That's about it.

Tony Donofrio, PWTorch.com Contributor (8.0)

Another good show this week from the land of the (not so) extreme. Starting the show off with Evan Bourne is always a good thing as he will get the crowd excited immediately. I still am not sure if I like Bourne picking up another cheap win over Henry this week but it could keep the feud going and I actually liked the tension between Henry and Tony Atlas after the DQ.

Zack Ryder continues to get his character over more and more each week and I've actually started to slowly like it over the past month. Funny how we can see Ryder put on good matches with the "local competitor", but Vladimir Kozlov struggled to have a good match with Shawn Michaels a few months back before WrestleMania. Speaking of Kozlov, it was nice to not see him this week, he always seems to drag the crowd (and the show, for that matter) down.

The Tommy Dreamer vs. Paul Burchill match and the Christian vs. Tyson Kidd match sandwiched together, with Dreamer's promo in the middle, made for compelling television. Burchill and Dreamer had a nice little match considering what Dreamer can really do these days. Don't you get the feeling that the Burchill's will be receiving the "future endeavors" treatment on WWE.com soon? I hope not but WWE just doesn't seem to want to use them in the right way. Dreamer's promo was interesting as it went from him saying goodbye to him predicting he'll be back on ECW next week as champion because of the audacity of Jack Swaggers interference. You could really feel Dreamer put his heart into the promo and that's what I really loved about it. Incorporating Dreamer and Swagger into the Christian vs. Kidd finish was done really well. The match itself was very entertaining and I think Kidd came out of it looking good even though he took the pinfall. We also got to see Dreamer get as close to going out on top as he's going to get, which is nice because I don't see him winning the belt on Sunday.

Overall, a strong show in my opinion but I've come to expect nothing less each week from ECW. Their one hour show is more interesting than Raw every week (I know that's not saying much) and I always look forward to it, as it doesn't disappoint. The lead in to Extreme Rules was also done extremely (no pun intended) well. We should be in for an exciting ECW Main Event (as GM Tiffany would say) on Sunday at Extreme Rules.

Greg Parks, PWTorch.com Contributor (5.0)

Not much to speak of on the show this week. Another Evan Bourne vs. Mark Henry match didn't sit well with me, as it's not exactly the way to show off what makes Bourne different than everyone else, which is the attraction for him. It especially didn't help when Henry was on offense the entire time. And again, I hope we're not getting the break-up of Mark Henry and Tony Atlas.

Zack Ryder just isn't working for me. The "woo-woo" is just really annoying and means nothing. I'll admit that he did look decent against the jobber in the match though. Matt Striker trying to give background on the "feud" between those two was pretty funny, if not totally unbelievable. Dreamer vs. Burchill was OK, about what you'd expect from these two, who often struggle to take their matches to another gear. Dreamer's post-match promo on Jack Swagger was good and, if his title quest hadn't been forgotten about for weeks by WWE in the months leading up to this, I think this could've drawn some money.

Christian vs. Tyson Kidd was a solid contest, as one would expect. They even had me thinking Kidd would pull the upset at couple times during the match. Easily the best match on the show and the hype for ECW's one Extreme Rules match was OK. More focus on Dreamer in the weeks leading up to the PPV would've done wonders, though.

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