By Michael Simmons, Torch specialist

Hello everybody and welcome to yet another week of the column that dares to go beyond what meets the eye. Ladies and gentlemen, this…is ECW: Under the Microscope.

Just a reminder, this is not a recap. If you want match by match analysis and results, check out Caldwell's, Mayer's, and Keller's ECW TV reports on the main page. If you want ECW analysis, check out the ECW Roundtable Reviews on the main page as well. If you want nonsensical fact-spewing that would make even Mike Tenay fall asleep, you're in the right place.

Now, onto the show!

This week's ECW comes from the 1st Mariner Arena in Baltimore, Maryland. The venue is a wrestling landmark, as it hosted several historic WCW Great American Bash pay-per-views, including the 1990 edition where Sting defeated Ric Flair for his first World Championship. Most recently, the arena hosted this year's Backlash pay-per-view.

This Tuesday night's show proved to be a night of returns for a couple of superstars, those two being Chavo Guerrero and Gavin Spears.

For those who aren't regulars of the broadcast, Gavin Spears has been yet another (failed) experiment of the ECW New Talent Initiative. In fact, while superstars like Jack Swagger and up until a few weeks ago, Ricky Ortiz have had long winning streaks, the self-proclaimed "Crown Jewel of Talent Initiative" is the only new talent brought on board on a losing streak. He's had losses against Ortiz, Finlay, and even Super Crazy. No bueno.

Matt Striker gave one of the funnier lines of night saying, "Gavin Spears is talented; he wouldn't be here if he wasn't."

This seems like a perfect segue into a Ricky Ortiz reference. On this week's show, Ortiz gave ECW GM Teddy Long's (who was dressed up tonight in a silly elf costume) personal assistant Tiffany a "Ricky O" rally towel as a Christmas present. Let's do an Extreme Rewind to his second appearance on ECW, where he gave Tiffany a towel back then as well. Ortiz isn't really creative when it comes to gifts, is he?

C.M. Punk joked about the value of the towel backstage with Tiffany, Ortiz, and Kofi Kingston, saying, "This is better than a car, better than an XFL jersey!" Besides the obvious joke on Vince McMahon's defunct football league, there was a subtle hint to Ortiz's days as a linebacker for the league's Orlando Rage.

Just for kicks, the Rage possessed the league's best record at 8-2 in the regular season, but was upset by the San Francisco Demons in the first round of the playoffs, who in turn lost to my hometown team, the Los Angeles Xtreme, in the first and only XFL Championship game.
As for our other returning star, Todd Grisham chimed on commentary during Guerrero's match with Matt Hardy, "Chavo is the fresher man right now."

No kidding.

We haven't seen Chavo Guerrero on ECW in seemingly ages. Or maybe he has, but nobody noticed. Speaking of wrestlers nobody notices, what ever happened to Bam Neely? We haven't seen him since a late October edition of Smackdown, where the duo apparently split apart. We haven't heard from the former bodyguard since, and I for one, don't miss him one bit.

A signature trademark Chavo uses in his matches nowadays is the "Three Amigos" triple vertical suplex. The move was popularized to modern WWE fans by Chavo's late uncle Eddie Guerrero. If anyone was to inherit one of his uncle's moves, it should be Chavo, right? Matt Striker apparently doesn't think so. As Guerrero went for the triple verticals, Striker said, "Many purists find this to be distasteful." I'm not so sure that's the case.

Extreme Rewind to No Way Out 2008, and a match between then-ECW Champ Guerrero and C.M. Punk. At one point in the match, Punk performed a signature Eddie taunt, then proceeded to set Chavo up for the move and the crowd unmercifully booed Punk for using Eddie's mannerisms against his own nephew. That was distasteful.

I can forgive Matt Striker for that little slip-up, as him and Todd Grisham are your 2008 Slammy-award winning announce team of the year. When you think about great announce teams, you think of Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan, or Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler, or even Tony Schiavone and Larry Zbyszko. All right, maybe the last team was a stretch, but Grisham and Striker have excellent chemistry together and the duo may go down as one of the better announce teams in wrestling history when it's all said and done.

Ever since winning the Slammy, they have paraded the statue around with them everywhere, including last Sunday's pay-per-view and this week's Sci-Fi broadcast. The award has been placed on top of the announce table for the last week or so, and Hornswoggle took offense to their newfound wrestling glory and momentarily stole their award. He probably isn't a fan of their commentary.

On the subject of Hornswoggle, I've been watching WWE programming week-in and week-out for many years now and I've seen Hornswoggle slightly alter his wardrobe, run through walls, and grunt his way through promos, but after the years of watching the little guy entertain, I have just one question.

Why does Hornswoggle have dirt on his face every week?

I know my job is to uncover some of the things you might not have noticed, but I seriously can't be the only person to notice he has the same dirt marks on his face every single week. If Finlay is his father, shouldn't he force his son to take showers every day? Is Hornswoggle really that dirty all the time? Unbelievable.

Line of the night honors go to Matt Striker, who said Finlay is the real Ram Robinson, "unlike a cockamamie movie that tries to show people what we do." Ram Robinson is the main character from the much hyped "The Wrestler" scheduled to come out in theaters nationwide next Friday, and Striker, just under two weeks before the movie premieres, is already outspoken on the controversial film.

It was reported on Tuesday by James Caldwell that Vince McMahon requested a personal screening of the film. It will be interesting to see once Vince and Co. sees it, if he'll continue to let Striker opine over the air like that again.

And finally, for the last few months, Jack Swagger has been a consistent bright spot on the ECW brand. Many wrestling fans and insiders have heaped praise on Swagger's impressive work each week. Todd Grisham and Matt Striker run down his many accolades during his matches however, I think Todd Grisham may have given him too much credit, as he surprised many people at home by saying he was the new number one contender for the ECW Title at the close of the show. Is Swagger really the new number one contender? If Grisham says it, does that make it true? Is gaining an ECW Championship match that easy?

Well, if Chavo can get an ECW Title match after a two month absence, maybe it is.

Michael Simmons has been a wrestling fan for 17 years. He likes to think he has a pretty inquisitive mind. Quite often, he goes into deep thought about some of wrestling’s greatest mysteries. You know, thought provoking questions like, "Did the Undertaker ever reveal who was in the urn after all these years?" If you know the answer, feel free to leave comments below or e-mail him at Sironsim@aol.com.

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