By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

ECW HITS

Miz & Morrison - Dreamer: After Tommy Dreamer's decent short match with Paul Burchill, it was nice to see John Morrison and The Miz come to the ring. Dreamer's retirement angle has a lot of potential, and that potential grew with the verbal berating he took from the Tag Team Champions. Miz & Morrison were good as usual on the mic. Dreamer got a chance to show some physicality when he jumped Miz, but of course it didn't last long with the two-on-one situation. What I really like about this is that Miz & Morrison are over as big heels, and a feud with them should rally more fans behind Dreamer. I look forward to seeing where this goes from here.

Swagger vs. Finlay: I had major issues with the result of this match (more later), but the match itself was good. We saw these two have a good match on ECW a few weeks back, and this was another. It wasn't great, but it had solid action and good ring psychology. It was interesting to watch Finlay using more mat holds on Jack Swagger and less brawling. It was a nice way to play into the fact that Swagger is still young and inexperienced in the way that he let Finlay's tactics get under his skin. In fact, he brawled with Finlay early to get his first advantage in the match. He can throw good looking punches. The match went back and forth and was going well until the very end.

Less Videos: ECW had a ridiculous amount of videos last week. I complained about it. This week, there were way fewer videos on the show. I like to think I had something to do with that, but probably not. There was the short recap at the start of the show setting up Swagger vs. Finlay. There was only one of the two WrestleMania videos from Raw (I couldn't believe they didn't show both!). And there was the Raw Rebound. I still would rather not see Raw footage considering the size of ECW's audience compared to Raw's, but keeping in mind last week's ridiculous amount of old footage, this week was definitely a step in the right direction.

ECW MISSES

Use of Noble: I should have knows better than to get my hopes up when Jamie Noble appeared in the back with Teddy Long. It was an amusing scene where Noble told Long that he was on ECW to save it after Matt Hardy left (perhaps I should say "after Long let Hardy leave"). Noble = ratings. ECW needs more wrestlers, and Noble could be a big help to the roster. I wasn't thinking much about possible opponents at the time. However, as soon as I saw Noble standing in the ring, I knew The Boogeyman would be his opponent. It was very disappointing. Noble has so much talent in and out of the ring. He had a good thing going this time last year on Smackdown. After moving to Raw, he's been wasted. He was wasted in his guest appearance on ECW. He did get in more offense on Boogeyman than I expected, but it was still a waste.

Swagger Loses: As I said above, I had a major issue with the end of the main event. Swagger's first singles loss should have been saved for a bigger moment. I know that WWE wants Finlay to take on Swagger for the ECW Title, so he had to win this match. But, that is a reason to not have the match in the first place. Finlay could have earned a Title match in a different way. Who else is Teddy Long going to make the #1 contender? Ricky Ortiz? DJ Gabriel? Finlay could have done more crazy antics with Hornswoggle this week to keep getting under Swagger's skin. Swagger could have demanded a match with Finlay for the Title. That would have shown his youth and inexperience which makes sense, but kept him undefeated. I keep thinking back to Paul London & Brian Kendrick's very long Title run on Smackdown a few years ago. They lost as much as they won, because they would lose in a non-title match to a team, then would win in the Title rematch. We saw the same thing recently with Miz & Morrison vs. Cryme Tyme. The same thing has happened to Shelton Benjamin as US Champ. The WWE writers seem to be having trouble writing scenarios for the minor Titles to be defended in another way. Come up with something better to get a challenger a Title shot. After defending the Title against Finlay, is Swagger going to lose to Boogeyman to set up another Title match?

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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