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Pre-show runthrough:  Last week we saw Edge screw CM Punk out of the ECW title.  Punk was facing Chavo Guerrero and had just nailed him with a match-ending GTS when Edge took advantage of the No-DQ rules to spear Punk, leading to Chavo becoming the new ECW Champion.  AND THEN THEY WENT AND ENTERED CHAVO IN THE ROYAL RUMBLE.  Because I’m pretty sure Chavo lies awake at night wishing he was cool like Randy Orton and his buddy Edge.  Yep.  Way to build up the ECW champion there.

John Morrison looked A-MAZING in the Rumble.  I’m curious whether they can give him a significant role this week or if they just keep throwing him in random matches.  This will likely be week 2 of the Kofi Kingston experiment, and we’ll have to see if they pick an opponent for him who doesn’t sell like Khali.  Also, Elijah Burke made his return to television at the Royal Rumble, which likely means he will return to ECW tonight.  Let’s find out.

The show starts out with a recap of Chavo’s title win last week.  Punk sold that spear like a champ.

(Opening song)  Wait…so Kane’s an official ECW superstar now?  He’s in the opening video.  Give the production crew some credit, they just debuted a new opening video last week and they already changed it to show Guerrero with his title belt.  Good stuff.

Joey pimps the HD, and announces that Chavo is having a “Championship Fiesta” tonight.

Pyro is up and Kane is out.  By golly, I think I was right, he IS an ECW wrestler.

 Kane vs. Shelton Benjamin

I’m actually curious to see where we go with this.  Kane’s looking for revenge from the battle royal last week, where Shelton got the sneaky win over him.

Kane and Benjamin lock up with Kane getting the early advantage.  ~UPPERCUTS!!  They repeat the skin the cat spot from last week but Kane hits a clothesline to knock Shelton out of the ring.  Uppercuts on the ramp, back in the ring and Kane goes up top.  Shelton leaps to the top rope (I love that spot) and for once actually hits a superplex.  That looked pretty sweet.  Shelton slams Kane’s knee into the ring post twice.  He turns a leg lock into a single leg crab.  Kane gets the choke hold to fight back, clotheslines and uppercuts rain down.  Standing powerslam for two.  Side slam and Kane goes up top again, this time getting the flying clothesline.  Shelton counters the chokeslam attempt into a spinning heel kick.  Shelton goes up top but Kane goozles him from the top rope.  Shelton escapes with a hotshot.  Kane hits the big boot to Shelton who walks up the ramp and gets counted out.  Well, that sucked.

Winner: Kane by Countout @ 6:39 

Apparently, there is stopping him NOOOOWWWW!

So we spent two months building up Shelton Benjamin a winning streak, and we waste all that having him get counted out.  And not even after escaping a chokeslam or something like that.  He takes a big boot and runs away. Yeah, this does nothing for either of these guys.  The action was quite decent, especially the superplex spot.  It probably would have been a 6+ if not for the ending.  Match Rating: 3.1/10

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We get a recap of last week’s diva filler.  You know, chances are 99.9% of the people watching this either saw what happened last week or don’t care.  That’s thirty seconds of programming you’ll never get back.

 Kelly Kelly vs. Victoria

I’m going to say this up front, if Kelly wins this without a screwy ending I’m not going to be happy.  Victoria pushes Kelly over, stomps her and brings her up for a snapmare.  At this point Layla and Lena come out to stand ringside.  Victoria locks in an armwringer and Kelly uses the ropes to flip out of it, which was pretty surprising.  Armdrag by Kelly but Victoria is still the first one back up and stomps away at the blonde.  Apparently Lena and Layla are now bestest friends, which doesn’t make sense but we’ll let that go.  Vic tosses Kelly by her hair, shoulder thrusts in the corner; Kelly comes back with a rollup for two.  Victoria goes for the Spider’s Web but Kelly counters into a slow-motion tilt-a-whirl headscissors takedown.  Points for creativity there but Kelly couldn’t quite pull it off.  Kelly punches and kicks, and hits girly-looking lariats.  Rollup for two.  Victoria comes right back with the Widow’s Peak for the win.

Winner: Victoria by Widow’s Peak @ 2:49 

Layla and Lena hit the ring to beat up Kelly, and Victoria shows her approval.

 Thank God Victoria won.  I know they’re trying to push Kelly and that’s all right, but she shouldn’t be portrayed in any way, shape, or form as a better wrestler than Victoria.  We may be seeing more of Victoria on ECW in the coming weeks, and I’m all for that.  As for the match, while not superb it was easily Kelly’s best ever.  Victoria carried her to a very strong showing and both come out of this looking good.  Match Rating: 4.9/10 

Colin Delaney is sitting on a box.  We’re probably about three weeks away from him wrestling the Undertaker while wearing a full-body cast.

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Colin and Tazz are in the ring and weirdly enough Colin gets boos.  I think they’re booing Tazz but still.  Tazz calls for the video package of Colin’s beating.  Tazz announces a handicap match and Miz’s music hits.  I love Miz and Morrison, and I love Delaney, but this is not a good idea.

 Colin Delaney vs. The Miz & John Morrison (Handicap Match)

I’m kind of curious, is this leading to Delaney getting his first win over Tazz in revenge?  Morrison toys with Colin and Miz blindsides him.  Corner clothesline by Miz.  Delaney dodges a corner clothesline by Morrison and low bridges Miz out of the ring.  Miz recovers quickly and yanks Colin to the floor.  Morrison hits a dropkick through the ropes.  They yank Colin into the ring and double faceplant him.  Miz covers but yanks him up at two for more.  Miz hits the Reality Check, Colin was badly out of position for the neckbreaker and it looks awful.  Morrison hits the corkscrew neckbreaker, and oddly enough it also looks bad.  Maybe selling neckbreakers just isn’t Colin’s thing?

Winners: Miz and Morrison by Corkscrew Neckbreaker @ 2:10 

After the match, the champs hit a double chokeslam and Tommy Dreamer hits the ring for the save.  Now THIS…has potential.  Dreamer and Delaney as tag champs would be hilarious.  Glad creative finally came up with something for Tommy to do.

 This whole match was just a little off.  Miz and Morrison’s offense didn’t look very crisp, and at the same time Delaney, who has been selling well for the big men, just didn’t make any of the moves look good.  However, if this sets up a storyline to get Tommy Dreamer started on his retirement push, it was all worth it.  Match Rating: 2.1/10 

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CM Punk is out and he isn’t as pissed as he should be.  And oh look, it’s Punk’s personal jobber, Elijah Burke.  Unless we get a Burke win by Chavo-ference this is not a good way to bring Burke back.  The good news is that Burke’s music and the new set mesh very well.

CM Punk vs. Elijah Burke

Punk starts with a side headlock, and then gets a hip toss off the ropes.  Scoop slam and some stiff-sounding chops.  Burke comes back with a kick and a top-rope shoulder block.  On a side note, I love when guys hit their top-rope spots without pausing either to get their balance or to pump the crowd.  Shelton did it earlier and Burke did it here, and it looked great.  Burke throws punches in the corner and throws Punk into the ring post.  Back suplex leads into a chokehold with body scissors.  We get a one-minute sequence of the chokehold being broken out of and then locked back in.  Finally Punk gets Burke to the corner and hits the Knee of Doom.  Burke dodges the bulldog, Punk bounces off the ropes and CATCHES BURKE IN THE MIDDLE OF A LEAPFROG ATTEMPT for the GTS.  I’m still not happy but that was a really swank finish.

Winner: CM Punk by GTS @ 3:30 

This was an awful, awful decision.  Punk has already beaten Burke a dozen times, so beating him again does nothing for him.  Everyone knows Burke is Punk’s jobber, so it was already going to be tough to build Elijah back up.  They just made it tougher.  Adding to the problem is that they let Elijah Burke get beat in two and a half minutes.  John Cena shouldn’t beat Burke in three and a half minutes.  I don’t care if Elijah’s facing The Rock in his big return match, Elijah is an athletic guy with innovative offense and he should never lose in less than five minutes.

Aside from my concerns with the booking, though, this was a fine little match, fast paced and fun.  It’s hard for me to give a 5+ rating to a 2 minute match, but I think if there’s ever a chance it’s for this match.  The finish, as I said, was brilliant. Match rating: 5.7/10

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Kofi Kingston vs. Stock Jobber #2449

Kofi starts with a side headlock, gets a shoulder block and a nice leaping armdrag before going back to the headlock.  He sweeps the leg of the jobber, nips up, and hits a drop toe hold into a leg lock into a headlock.  We finally find out the jobber’s name is Rob Eckels or something of the sort.  Kingston hits a running crossbody and chops.  He hits a dropkick and gets the BO-BO double legdrop.  Buzzsaw enziguiri finishes us.  He added a toe kick as a set up for the enziguiri, which is a nice touch and gets them in position better for the finisher.

Winner: Kofi Kingston by Buzzsaw Enziguiri @ 1:56 

Good stuff.  The jobber was much, much, much better than Owen last week.  They kept it simple, they kept Kofi on offense the whole two minutes, Kofi looks like a beast and we barely spent any of the show to do it.  I approve of this match.  Match rating: 5.6/10

Backstage, there’s a mariachi band.

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The mariachis are now in the ring with GM Estrada.  They play, and the audience is not amused.

OOOH!  CHAVO!  Yeah, I was kind of hoping they’d get him some new, less annoying music now that he’s champion, but no such luck.

Estrada tells Chavo that Vicki and Edge will not be here tonight due to Vicki’s TRAGIC INJURY suffered at the royal rumble.  Instead, we get a video message.  Edge apologizes to Chavo for not being there, and says he needs to be with Vicki to comfort her.  Chavo off-mic: “Thank you, Edge.  Thank you.”  Good stuff.  Edge says that as part of his new familia, he has a gift for Chavo.  We get a special Chavo video package.

Chavo thanks Edge and wishes Vicki well.  Chavo tells the fans “I told you so.”  He tells them to take a good long look at their new ECW champ.  The mariachis start back up, balloons come down, and Chavo dances.  Finally the mariachi conductor turns around and nails Chavo with a guitar and it’s JEFF JARRETT!  No, wait, it’s just Punk.  Punk takes the championship, poses with it, and then drops it on Chavo and we’re out.

Overall Analysis:  The short story is that we had all the ingredients for a good show, but we couldn’t find a direction for it so it sputtered.  Punk/Burke, Kingston/Jobber, and surprisingly Victoria/Kelly were all very good matches, but the three of them combined for less than eight minutes.  The only match that got more than four minutes was the Kane/Benjamin match, and that ending with a ridiculous countout because they wanted to protect both guys.  If you’re going to run a countout, then at least take some time off of it and give it to the other singles matches.  On the same subject, there is absolutely no need for five matches on a show that has at most forty minutes to fit them into.  Stick to four—if it was me, I’d have dropped Punk/Burke on the grounds that Punk was already in the main event interview, and we can wait for Burke to return until we have something fresh for him to do.  They could also have cut the Divas match, though it was surprisingly good and advanced their storyline.  One thing, though.  Tommy Dreamer having a storyline makes me very, very happy.

Moving on, the main-event interview was reasonably well done, but it would have been better if we had put it on second-last and let Kane/Shelton or Punk/Burke or any old throw-together match main event the show.  Main event interviews, in my opinion, should only be done if they are going to be epic (see: Randy Orton Main Event Interview, 10/8/2007).  This wasn’t, it was just Punk dressing up like a Mexican and laying out Chavo.

Overall Show Grade: C