By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

ECW HITS

Burke vs. Yang: At 5 minutes, it was tied for the longest match on the show, which is not a good thing. What was good is that those 5 minutes were fun to watch. Jimmy Wang Yang and Elijah Burke put on a good, fact paced match, with some very nice action. It even told a story as Burke worked on Yang’s shoulder. It would have been nice to see the match go longer, but it was definitely good while it lasted, so it lands itself in the Hit column.

Tommy “Paul Heyman” Dreamer: ECW was worth watching for no other reason than to see Tommy Dreamer’s outstanding impersonation of Paul Heyman. It had me on the floor. He had the walk down perfect. It is too bad that the announcers had to act so stupid when they pretended to not know who he was dressed up as. It is one of those situations that was very funny, but could have been better if the announcers hadn’t acted so dumb. Obviously they didn’t want to name Heyman by name, and I understand that, but they could have said something like, “this guy looks familiar.” Or, “he reminds me of someone we know really well.” Instead they kept acting like they had no clue who he was which almost ruined the hilarious impression.

ECW MISSES

Short Matches: Five matches in one hour is just too many. They were all very short. Burke vs. Yang was good, but only 5 minutes. The Extreme Rules Trick or Treat match was only 3 minutes. That was o.k., as it was just some fun filler, but on a show with nothing but short matches, it makes it less o.k. The worst of the group was the #1 Contendership Match John Morrison vs. The Miz. Here is what is supposedly a really big match for ECW, but it only went about 4 minutes. Again, the match was good for those 4 minutes, but as opposed to Burke vs. Yang, this was important, and really should have been given more time. The other matches were short too, plus I have other issues with them as well.

Punk vs. Curtis: This was just a very bizarre choice of match. I don’t understand the point of having your World Heavyweight Champion face a total jobber. This is a case where having CM Punk come out to have a confrontation with the new #1 Contender would have been much better than just throwing him out there in a random meaningless match. It was short, but they could have given that time to the previous match to make it longer. I really don’t get what that was supposed to accomplish.

Monster Mash Battle Royale: If you like four huge men destroying each other, then this was probably the match for you. There were admittedly some cool moments, just from the standpoint of massive bodies colliding into each other. But that wore thin very quickly, and the reality of the match set in. That reality is that the match was just boring, and putting it into the Main Event slot just shows that WWE cares more about freak shows than giving the fans a good wrestling match.

ECW-Smackdown Alliance: This seemed to make sense when the future of ECW was in question. After all, if ECW was going to go away in two months, it made perfect sense to lay the groundwork for a combination of the two brands. But now we know that ECW has been renewed for another year. I know that they can’t just back out of the agreement right away. They should not just ignore the fact that Vickie Guerrero and Armando Estrada made the alliance. But at the same time, with ECW around for at least another 14 months, it is essential that WWE give ECW its own identity. And that has to include its own larger ECW only roster. That means that the alliance between it and Smackdown has to come to an end. A storyline involving a feud between the two brands might be the way to go to end the alliance and give ECW an identity. I can accept interaction between the rosters if it is moving in a direction, not just random guys from each show turning up on the other.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's Hitlist Specialist, providing his point of view in the Torch's hitlist format for Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and TNA Impact each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

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