Falls Count Anywhere

05-02-06 (Backlash)

She. Will. Return.

Trish is getting an MRI on her shoulder. We’ll know more soon.

ECW plans are still in the air, but the first show will be at the ECW Arena in South Philly on the 24th of June. That’s a big month for Viking Hall, which will also be hosting a TNA event there on the 9th. The names that have been mentioned are Roadkill, Sandman (who has signed something), Sabu, RVD, Kid Kash, and Psicosis. Tajiri is also expected to be brought back.

RAW
I missed the first half due to a taping error. It seems that I didn’t miss much except for Vince McMahon talking about his sperm and giving the GMship to the Spirit Squad. I’m kinda glad that I missed it but I’m very glad that I caught the second half of the show.

The first thing I saw was a Umaga squash. It sucked, as expected, but at least I came in right as it was ending. This was followed by Vince macking on Candice Michelle who said that since Vince had cured her chest cold maybe he could work on her labia-itis. I’m not kidding about that. He asked if it was acute and she said, ‘Yeah, it’s kinda cute’.

NOOOOOOOooooooooo!

In a fun segment, Mick Foley showed up on The Cutting Edge with Edge and Lita and gave an interesting promo. I liked Edge’s intro where he said that his win over Mick at Mania was tarnished by Joey Styles announcing it. That was a nice touch. Mick challenged Edge to match, but Edge said he was on crack and would give him a match next week in Anaheim. That should be interesting, especially since Mick said there’d be barbed wire, thumbtacks, and swords. OK, maybe he didn’t say swords, but he should have.

Chris Masters came out and called on RVD to take the Masterlock Challenge. RVD came out and let Masters put it on. This led to Shelton coming out, and that’s actually an interesting pairing, and he beat on RVD while he was in the Masterlock. Carlito came in and made the save and got a pretty good pop. The Spirit Squad came out and said that this would be a tag match: Carlito and RVD vs. Masters and Benjamin. It wasn’t a bad match, especially with Carlito adding so many new moves to his playlist.

Here is where the interesting part started. Joey Styles received a note from the Spirit Squad to go and meet with them backstage. He left, sounding unhappy. The match ended with Benjamin trying to use a chair but Charlie Haas running in and taking it from him, allowing Carlito to roll him up. At least they’re using Haas with a real storyline.

The turn.

So, Styles went to the back and met with the Spirit Squad. They said Joey didn’t show any spirit and if he didn’t get better, they’d make him dress up as a Cheerleader next week. Joey returned to the announce position where Lawler was waiting with a microphone and asked Joey to show some spirit like when he was in ECW. Joey said that if he was still in ECW, he wouldn’t be working with a hack like Lawler. That got a good pop.

Joey then pushed and slapped Lawler and Lawler pushed Joey down. Joey walked away and then they went to commercial. They came back and Lawler apologized to Styles. Joey came out and cut the most amazing promo in ages.

He basically did RVD’s promo from One Night Stand last year, but he did it on RAW and he did it to make himself a heel…sort of. He said that he was brought in after they humiliated Jim Ross and then they proceeded to tell him that he wasn’t there to call moves but to tell stories. He said that was an insult to the guys in the ring who he wasn’t even allowed to call wrestlers. He said that he hated Sports Entertainment and that he was a Pro Wrestling announcer. He said they pulled him from WrestleMania because he wasn’t ‘Sports Entertainment’ enough. And then they pulled him from Backlash even though he called PPVs on his own in ECW.

Well, he did have a color man at times (Cyrus the Virus for a while) and then he said that he hated the crowd for buying what McMahon was selling and he said he quit. That was an amazing promo, one that’ll live forever in the history of ‘How’d that happen?’ We all knew that ECW was coming back, that there’d be big things like this happening, but I never thought they’d start with Joey Styles cutting a promo.

Next they had Cena take on Kenny of The Spirit Squad. Or maybe it was Nicky. I never know. Basically, with HHH as special ref, they had John Cena controlling until he was about to get the FU, but then H hit Cena allowing the Spirit Squad to beat on Cena while HHH did nothing. H wanted to keep the beatdown going and every time that Kenny (or Nicky) got a pin, H was slow to count it.

My hero.

Eventually, he got tired of it and punched H, which led to cleaning house and beating on the Spirit Squad. He’s doing well as an Austin-type face. He started to walk away and came across Shawn Michaels, who had reffed a match earlier, walking to the ring in the ref shirt. They paused and stared down for a second. Shawn got to the ring after Kenny had delivered the big legdrop off the top, but he stopped after counting 2. Kenny went ballistic and he gave him the Sweet Chin Music and followed it with a Crotch Chop. The Spirit Squad came in, but Cena and Michaels cleaned house and Cena got the FU on Kenny for the win.

The Styles thing was amazing, and it was the right way to go with bringing back the ECW, but how can they keep that ECW edge while still being on RAW TV? Letting Joey say his thing, complete with knocking Sports Entertainment, was a great start. They made Joey a heel, calling the fans idiots basically, and that’ll cost him…except in ECW country.

It’s almost looking like they’re redoing the Hart turn (where Bret was a heel everywhere but Canada) and the NwO thing (where they would do shoot comments against the main brand on the brand’s own show) and that’s a really interesting direction. Here’s hoping it doesn’t fizzle.

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Chris Garcia