By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

ECW HITS

Tommy Dreamer: Tommy Dreamer's quest for the ECW Championship has been a Hit or Miss storyline. It has sort of started and stopped, but obviously WWE has put an emphasis on it in the last few weeks as they build towards Extreme Rules. It was good to see Dreamer treated as a big deal on the last ECW before the PPV. I assume this is the end for Dreamer, and if it is, it was good to see him end on a high note. If not, then at least he looked more credible as a possible Champion than he has in a long time. His match against Paul Burchill was slow, but ok. It was good to see him get the win. I like that Jack Swagger interrupted his good bye speech. Dreamer gave a good performance in his look of disgust at Swagger's music and his come back to Swagger's promo. Swagger was very good on the mic also. The physicality between them on the outside of the ring during the main event was good too. I also liked how Dreamer gave Christian a DDT to end the show standing tall.

Christian vs. Kidd: Christian and Tyson Kidd really saved this show. The first half of the show was pretty lame, but things picked up with the exchange between Dreamer and Swagger. Things picked up even more with this very good match. It went 16 minutes and featured a ton of fun, high energy wrestling action. What I like about Kidd is that he can do some really cool high spots, but he can also do some mat wrestling too. He makes his submission holds look more interesting than many others. I have talked before about how I enjoy hearing him yell at the referee to ask his opponent if he quits. In this match, I noticed how intense he looked in just doing some moves on Christian's arm. Those are basic moves, but he makes them look so much better. The second half of the match continued very nicely. It built well with a series of near falls. You had to assume Christian would win, but I had a bit of doubt when Kidd hit that guillotine leg drop. Swagger and Dreamer's appearances added to the match instead of distracting from it which was a bonus.

ECW MISSES

1st Half of the Show: Nothing stood out from the first half of ECW as being bad enough to get an individual Miss, but it all was just sort of blah and added up to a Miss in the end. Once again, Evan Bourne was featured in a slow match against Mark Henry. It started off well enough with Bourne eluding Henry, but then slowed down. However, it never felt that slow as it ended quickly. I would rather see Bourne used better than this, but it wasn't that bad. It is interesting to see him eek out victories over the World's Strongest Man. The tension between Henry and Tony Atlas at the end was fine. Watching Zack Ryder squash a jobber was ok. He looked fine in the ring and I liked the fact that WWE had him talk in the inset before the match, but I don't care for his character so I didn't care about this match. The interview with Finlay was short and decent. However, I'm not looking forward to seeing another Finlay vs. Swagger feud. I liked Katie Lea Burchill's promo before her brother faced Dreamer, but as I said above, their match wasn't very good. So going into the third commercial break, the show had failed to impress me. The wrestling was slow. The story developments were not good. And, I was not looking forward to seeing more of Henry vs. Bourne, or more of Ryder, or more of Finlay vs. Swagger.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and Superstars 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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