Falls Count Anywhere

06-13-06

I thought the future was plastics.

OK, I admit it. I missed SmackDown! and the ECW PPV. From everything I’ve read, SmackDown! wasn’t a bad show, highlighted by the official quitting of Taz so that he can go and be the colorman on ECW. The interesting thing is JBL is coming back to SmackDown! as an announcer, which I didn’t expect since he was saying he was retired. At any rate, they have done a good job building ECW on both of the brands.

The ECW PPV has gotten mixed reaction from everyone but the crowd that was there which has been called one of the greatest reacting crowds of all-time. I’ll be able to see it in the next couple of days and I’ll give you a full report. The biggest news is that John Cena lost to RVD. That’s a big deal as RVD had never managed to win a World Title before.

RAW
The business opened up with Paul Heyman talking about RVD winning the World Title and Paul will be renaming it the ECW Heavyweight Championship and that he’d defend against Edge at Vengeance. RVD and Heyman were treated as heels, which is the right reaction to make ECW fans feel like they’re the outsiders. It worked with the whole Bret Hart in Canada thing in 1997.

Charlie Haas invited Lillian into the ring and apologized for knocking her off the apron last week. This brought out Viscera and he said it didn’t matter if Lillian forgave him and he attacked Haas. They did a very good job of making it into an angle, even if it’s a Big Viz angle.

Eugene and Hacksaw Jim Duggan did a backstage bit where Eugene said he had a bad feeling about this. Nick Dinsmore needs to get out of the gimmick and into a mask post-haste. This was followed by a pointless Vince McMahon promo. I’m getting tired of Vince.

This is for the other ten percent.

In one of the hotter WWE Women segments, they had a Wet & Wild Water match (or something like that) where they had the girls wear white clothes and get soaked with water balloons and squirt guns. This was hot. The winner? 90% of the males in the audience.

In the match that finally pulled the trigger on the entire DX thing, HHH and the Spirit Squad went to a no contest. They had the Spirit Squad come in one at a time like the Royal Rumble. Things kept getting worse and worse for H until they were ready to set up H with the chair around his head to Pillmanize him. The last Spirit Squad member was still not out and he ended up flying out from behind the entryway and it turned out that Shawn Michaels was the one who hit him. Shawn ran into the ring to a great pop and cleaned house. H got back up and the two of them reformed DX with the chops and the pose. H then mooned Vince. It was a great scene and they spent enough time building to it, now they just gotta do something with it that doesn’t just seem like a retread. They announced DX vs. Spirit Squad at Vengeance.

Hacksaw got destroyeded by Umaga. Eugene tried to give Hack his magic 2 by 4, but Umage broke it over his head. Not a great segment, but they are trying like hell to get Umaga over and the one who’s actually managing to get a following seem to be his manager. Armando Alejandro Estrada has got a future and people love chanting his name along with him.

Since you've been good...

Mick Foley and Ric Flair. The two of them have been at odds for years because of comments both have made in their books and now they’re facing off in the ring. Foley did his promo talking about beating ECW, but then Flair came out and said that Foley was a glorified stuntman. They went back and forth saying that Foley meant more to WWE fans than Ric Flair, which may be true. They announced that Vengeance will feature Flair vs. Foley in a 2-of-3 Falls match. That’s not going to be a great match unless they put some strange twist on it.

Carlito lost to Johnny Nitro. I’m really impressed with Nitro right now. I mean, Melina is hot and she’s a big talent and Nitro’s good in the ring. Shelton was doing commentary for the match. Benjamin ended up interfering so that Carlito couldn’t get the Backpack and then Nitro did this ‘what-the-hell-was-that Moonsault fist drop for the pin. Wow.

They had Mickie James do an interview saying that everyone who takes her on ends up getting hurt. RVD could have done that interview in 1999. They had Lita send Maria away so that Lita could handle the promo with Edge, who challenged Kurt to a match under WWE rules at Vengeance. They then had Cena vs. Edge which was just a brawl. The ECW group of Justin Credible, Balls Mahony and Stevie Richards came out and Cena destroyed them with heavy-duty chair shots.

I’d say there was a lot to like on the show, but some stuff didn’t make much sense.

That’s all for today, I’ll try and have the ECW PPV review and the recap of the first ECW TV show up on Thursday!

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Chris Garcia