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Falls
Count Anywhere
06-08-06
Welcome
to Falls Count Anywhere EXTRA! My name is Chris and ECW is
Back! ECW
vs. WWE
The
WWE, with little pre-promotion, put on a Wednesday night
show on USA as a way to hype ECW One Night Stand this Sunday.
The show was strong, with a couple of missteps that could
be overlooked.
The
opener was Rob Van Dam vs. Rey Myserio. This was an ECW
match that was sloppy, mostly due to RVD’s tendencies,
but strong and got a good reception from the crowd. They
did a few segments where they each countered or escaped
moves and ended in a staredown. That’s a Mexican series
that I always enjoy.
After
a while, they started trading offense, and it was pretty
well back and forth. There was an awesome spot where RVD
press-slammed Rey and as he dropped him he did the Standing
Moonsault onto him. That was awesome! Eventually Rey got
a Top Rope Bulldog onto a chair, but couldn’t seal
the deal. RVD hit a Frog Splash for the pin. Really fun
match and it had ECW 1996 written all over it. It was good
to see RVD trying to work again.
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Better
than Garcia looking extra boobalicious.
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Mickie
James took on Jazz. This wasn’t a very good match,
but Mickie looked extra boobalicious here. She got the win
with the Jumping DDT. They put her over strong, which is
good to see.
At this
point, I flipped over to see So You Think You Can Dance
to watch the guy who landed on his head. It looked bad,
a lot like the time Sabu landed on his head when Chris Benoit
tossed, but the guy was OK.
John Cena did
a promo that I thought was awesome. The guy can flat-out
talk. This was an Old School promo that could have come
from Ronnie Garvin in 1987 or Bill Watts in the late 1970s.
It wasn’t his comedy talk, it was his ‘I’ve
got the World against me’ talk and he built up RVD
a bit.
The
Big Show won the Battle Royal after he revealed himself
as ECW’s new 911. It wasn’t a bad Battle Royal,
as they had folks flying out left and right, but two commercial
breaks hurt it. Kurt was left with four WWE guys: Fit Finlay,
Randy Orton, Edge and Big Show. Kurt managed to throw Fit
and when Edge went for a spear, Angle turned it into an
Overhead sending him over the top. Kurt was then eliminated
from by backjumping Randy Orton.
Orton
celebrated, but using an old Paul Heyman favorite, Big show
took off his RAW shirt and revealed an ECW below. Big Show
then tossed Orton. Fun stuff and Paul can do all the stuff
he did with 911 in 1995 with Big Show.
Edge
beat Tommy Dreamer in a Hard Core match. I saw that they
used a lot of weapons, but I didn’t see all of it.
Terry Funk and Mick Foley started brawling, which included
Mick choking Terry with barbed wire. Terry beat on Mick
a lot. Foley then cut a promo that put everything together.
Yes, it was a bit disjointed, but if you were paying attention,
you got that Foley hated ECW because it made him love it.
He called Hard Core a prostitute, which is accurate. This
was one of the better post-2001 Foley interviews.
The
show had two sets of announcers. The first was King and
JR. The second was Joey Styles and Taz. This was great.
They played off each other so well, especially with the
ECW guys throwing insults at the WWE guys and Lawler throwing
them back. The best was “Hey Lawler, I’m surprised
you’re not at the Senior Prom tonight," referencing
Lawler’s legal issues from about ten years ago. It
ended with Lawler and Taz brawling a bit. It was good stuff.
Joey and Taz did a great job calling the night, as did JR,
and Lawler added that sting that was missing.
The show ended
with a surprise: Sabu had a decent match with John Cena.
Mostly it was Sabu being able to walk Cena through a serious
brawl, but it was partly Cena starting to get an understanding
of brawling. I thought Sabu looked good and Cena didn’t
get in the way. They had Cena hit the FU, though Sabu was
fighting it, and then Big Show ran in with the ECW folks
and that led to a giant brawl. Good way to end an interesting
show.
Will
this get ratings? Nope, not enough promotion and these things
rarely do well even with promotion unless they’re
in a time that wrestling fans are used to. I’m betting,
though, it’ll help bring in casuals.
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