By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

ECW HITS

Hardy & Punk vs. Miz & Morrison: This was a good opening tag team match. It was nice that WWE only spent a few minutes at the top of the show recapping the Vince McMahon angle, having Teddy Long give the standard “the show must go on” speech, and moving on to a match to start the show. It was also nice that the match that got the show going was such a good match. Matt Hardy and CM Punk worked well together as a team. John Morrison and The Miz have proven themselves over the last several months as being a good tag team. The match had good back and forth action and some really nice spots. I particularly enjoyed when Hardy and Punk hit the crisscross double bull dog while high fiving in mid air. It was a bit cheesy, but it was a good kind of cheesy. I was curious who would get the loss here as neither team really could afford a clean loss going into the PPV. So the Hornswoggle interference worked well.

Benjamin vs. Kingston: This was another good match that went a nice length. I would rather see Shelton Benjamin and Kofi Kingston in a regular well wrestled match than an Extreme Rules match, but considering this is the end of their feud, it makes sense to up the ante and get the weapons involved. The match wasn’t great and featured Benjamin on extended offense for a bit too long as the crowd seemed to really grow restless. But, the weapons were used well. Kingston’s eventual come back was very good. He is exciting to watch. The ending sequence was particularly strong as Kingston reversed Benjamin’s attempt at a power bomb into a hurricanrana into the trash can, then hit Trouble in Paradise (didn’t it used to be called the Jamaican Buzzsaw?) for the win.

ECW MISSES

Ruining Draft’s Credibility: While I gave the opening tag match a Hit because it was a good match, I strongly question why CM Punk was on this show. He was drafted the night before off of ECW and onto Raw. So, how exactly did he wrestle on ECW? The announcers stated that he had been drafted off of ECW, but gave no explanation as to how he was able to turn around and still wrestle on ECW. Many fans tuned into Raw in part to see the draft. WWE is billing it as changing the landscape of WWE. How is it changing the landscape if a Raw wrestler can just appear on ECW. WWE needs now more than ever to keep the brands separate, but they have gotten off to a poor start on the first show after the draft.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and TNA Impact each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

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