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The Specialists
9/2 WWE ECW Hits & Misses: Dirt Sheet, Main Event, Undercard Sep 5, 2008 - 11:15:47 AM
The Dirt Sheet: This was a much better "live" edition of The Dirt Sheet than The Miz and John Morrison's first attempt a few weeks back. That doesn't mean that it was great. I still prefer the online versions to what they've done on t.v. thus far, but regular online viewers like myself know that the humor can be Hit or Miss, and that was the case here. I almost always laugh out loud at Morrison's introduction, and that was the case here when he said that he once defeated Steven Hawkings many times in row at Parcheesi. A lot of the humor worked. I particularly enjoyed Miz & Morrison's remix of Chavo Guerrero's music. Some of it didn't. Once all the wrestlers were in the ring, the segment went downhill. It wasn't bad, just not good any more. So it wasn't great, but I enjoyed it enough to give it a Hit.
Main Event: The eight man tag match (shouldn't they be called "four man tags" since they are four men teams? That just makes more sense to me. Couldn't a five on three match also be called an "eight man tag"? Just a thought.) Main Event was a solid 14 minutes of wrestling action. With eight men in a match, it is hard for any one performer to stand out, but Evan Bourne somehow found a way. He is amazing. I was a bit surprised when he took the prolonged beating from the heels, as I figured it would be Tommy Dreamer. Not to worry though, as Dreamer took a second beating, leading to a second hot tag. It was nice that they played with the formula a bit. The ending was particularly fun, as the babyface team ganged up on Mark Henry leading to a pin. Henry wasn't weakened as it was a four on one attack leading to him taking the loss, and it should make fans think that his Title is in jeopardy at Unforgiven.
ECW MISSES
Undercard: There were only two undercard matches on ECW, which was good. However, neither of them was a good match. They weren't that bad, but they certainly weren't very entertaining. The big issue here is that three of the four competitors in the two matches are very new. The other is Super Crazy who has been a jobber for most of his WWE career (at least the last several months of it). I am all for introducing young talent and trying to make new stars. However, WWE has been doing it too much at the same time on all three brands, and ECW is probably the worst. They keep bringing in new wrestlers and it takes time for the fans to get behind them. It is really hard when so many are being introduced at the same time. I like Ricky Ortiz' gimmick, but he isn't great in the ring. Neither Gavin Spears nor Brian Braddock has impressed in the ring so far. But of course, both of them lose. If they are bringing back the old WWF Superstars role of jobber to the stars (whatever happened to Duane Gill and Barry Hardy?), then I am o.k. with it. But, they still have to be able to put on better matches, even short undercard matches on ECW. These were a bit boring.
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.
Send feedback on this article to pwtorch@gmail.com and we'll regularly publish reader feedback in the "Torch Feedback" category on the Main Listing.
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