By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

ECW HITS

Christian vs. Jackson: It was good to see the final ECW end with a good extreme rules match. Lets not kid ourselves here. WWE's ECW has nothing to do with Extreme Championship Wrestling. That was over years ago. ECW as it has been was a pretty bland show over the last few years. It got off to a pretty good start and had a unique look (with the small entrance and the different hard camera angle with the announcers in the background). But recently, it has been FCW + with the young wrestlers and a few established veterans. It has had a pitifully small roster. There have been some very good matches on the show. Christian has done a good job as the ECW Champion for the last several months. But, it is time to end. It was nice to hear Christian give a promo honoring the spirit of the original ECW, even if this show had nothing to do with it any more. It was nice to have an Extreme Rules match. The match itself was good. I was pleasantly surprised at their first Title match at The Royal Rumble which was better than I expected. This was good too. I hope that Ezekiel Jackson gains something from being the "last ECW Champion."

ECW MISSES

NXT Rookie Introductions: If this is all WWE could do to "introduce" the rookies who will be part of the first season of NXT being mentored by the pros, then why even bother? The names mean absolutely nothing to most of the fans out there. The brief glimpse we got of their picture didn't do much. The one or two sentences about each one from the announcers were pretty generic. They talked about how they had charisma, or attitudes, or athleticism. It almost sounded like a list of lines you could get from a casting call rather than actual attributes. Plus, nobody is going to remember what was said about them. The draw initially for the show will be to see the established stars (some of them quite big like Chris Jericho and CM Punk) with the rookies, so announcing them and the concept of the show (which I do find intriguing and would like to know more about how it is going to work) was all that was really needed here.

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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