The ECW X-Press! 5/27/2008

Thewrestlinggame.com Exclusive.

Pre-show run-through:

Last week, The Big Show made his ECW debut and inserted himself into the #1 contender’s match at One Night Stand.  The match now stands as Show vs. Dreamer vs. Punk vs. Morrison vs. Guerrero in a Singapore Cane (Kane?) match for the right to challenge Kane (Cane?).  In other news, Miz beat Kane by DQ and I complained that it meant nothing if they don’t follow up.  Watch them not follow up, below.  Kofi Kingston, meanwhile, suffered his first loss to Shelton Benjamin.  I was happy for all the reasons I mentioned last week.  Now would be a good time to give Shelton a squash match to keep him at the front of our minds.  Also continuing this week will be the mildly gripping Colin Delaney vs. Armando Estrada (and his abs) feud.

On the Dirt Sheet this week, Funaki gets pranked by Mr. Fuji and Mike Adamle visits the Castle of Wisdom.  It’s awesome.

(opening video)

Mike Adamle and Tazz open us up by setting the table for tonight.  Miz and Morrison vs. Kane in a Handicap Match and CM Punk vs. Chavo Guerrero.  I think we’re forgetting somebody here…

Big Show hits the ring, ready for battle.  To no one’s surprise, his opponent is the other man we’re forgetting, Tommy Dreamer.

Big Show no-sells the Dreamer punch flurry.  He hits a chop and a couple headbutts.  He walks on Dreamer’s chest and drops an elbow.  Show misses a corner avalanche and Dreamer gets his token three seconds of offense before Show just hand-checks him out of the air on a crossbody attempt and chokeslams him for the win.  A little note here, the chokeslam looks like a whole new move when Show drops to a knee during it, I love that.

You knew from the start that this match would be a bit problematic because Show is at his best throwing around smaller guys.  Dreamer is similarly better against smaller wrestlers in a quicker paced match than this.  Basically, nothing real exciting happened in this match because these guys were too big for each other to use much of their usual offense on.  It wasn’t BAD by any means but it was just filler.

We get a video package of Show winning his first ECW title from RVD.  All that really did was make me miss RVD.

(ads)

Shelton Benjamin joins Tazz and Adamle at the announce table to brag about beating Kofi Kingston.  He does a good job of putting himself over without making Kofi look bad.  Kofi now has pyro.  Good for him, I guess, but it’s totally out of context with his reggae entrance music.  Adamle says that this will be a challenge for Kofi because he’s never faced someone as powerful as Knox.  I seriously swear if Joey Styles is behind all this Adamle stuff he’s the cleverest writer alive.

After some kicking and shoving, Kofi jumps Knox in the corner for mounted punches.  Knox tries to powerbomb out but Kofi escapes and Knox settles for a clothesline.  Knox hits a shot to Kofi in the ropes.  Knox hits a nice little butterfly suplex and works a head lock for a while.  Kofi hits some flying forearms when he gets out and gets a knockdown with a giant dropkick.  Kofi dodges a running thump by sliding through the ropes and wrapping a foot around the top one to nail Knox in the head, which was a seriously gorgeous move and got an actual ‘oh my god’ pop from the crowd.  Knox is bleeding pretty good there.  Kofi hits a top rope crossbody and finishes with Trouble in Paradise.

After the match, Benjamin jumps Kingston from behind.  As Kingston is about to turn the tide, Knox intervenes and catches Kofi with a Boring Corkscrew STO. 

You all are not going to believe it considering my disdain for Knox, disdain for short matches, and indifference to Kingston, but I actually truly dug this match.  They packed at least three good to great spots into the 3 minutes of action (the butterfly suplex, dropkick, and wraparound kick in the ropes).  Knox bladed in a non-hardcore match, which I don’t think we’ve seen in a while on ECW, and I think it worked great to get over Kingston’s offense.  Furthermore, read some of my reports from two months ago or so, and you’ll see that this is EXACTLY what I wanted Knox’s role to be in ECW.  It was tonight, he did a fairly quick job to Kingston, made it look good, and kept Kofi/Benji on the front burner.  Thumbs up!

(ads)

Punk tries a GTS on the first move of the match, and Chavo is not pleased.  They spar for a moment, and Punk gets a takedown.  Chavo grabs the ropes, and they spar some more.  Punk gets some kicks to the thigh, a scoop slam and a leg drop.  Backhand slap, knee to the face, and a snap suplex leads to a butterfly lock.  Chavo comes back with a European uppercut, Punk hits some overhead kicks, but Chavo hotshots him into the ropes.  Chavo slaps on a loose, sloppy chinlock, and we go to…

(ads)

Chavo and Punk are trading punches.  Chavo tries a charge at the ropes but gets backdropped to the outside.  Bam pulls Punk out of the ring when the ref is distracted, and Chavo leaps outside on him.  Back inside, Chavo gets a body scissors.  Punk tries to DEADLIFT Chavo into a butterfly suplex.  Um…nope, sorry.  That’s kind of a good way to kill someone.  Punk just kind of drops him, thankfully on his back.  Punk hits a spinning wheel kick and a powerslam.  Chavo busts out the Canadian Maple Leaf, which is still awesome.  When Punk gets to the ropes, he makes a comeback with a backfist and roundhouse kick.  Chavo counters into the three amigos, and apparently it would kill them to let him do all three.  Punk floats over the third and goes for the GTS, but Chavo counters into a GTS RANA!  That was swank.  Punk counters the tornado DDT to set up for the Knee of Doom, but Chavo counters that too into a rollup for the win!

This was up there with the better ones of their series of matches.  They very effectively played off the fact that they know each other well, which produced an awesome series of counters leading to a hot finish.  They botched up hugely once, which keeps this from being the best match of the month, but it was still very fun and deserving of the eight minutes.

(ads)

Backstage, Colin Delaney has a kind of aimless interview with Lena Yada about McMahon giving away money, the WWE draft, and Armando Estrada.

I’m not sure I follow the logic of this upcoming handicap match…Miz and Morrison both beat Kane one-on-one, and teamed up to beat Kane and a partner, so now they’re facing him 2-on-1?

(ads)

Miz starts out with punches and kicks to Kane.  Generic ‘keep him in your corner, quick tags and cheapshots’ offense for a while.  The tag champs hit a double forearm smash.  Miz hits punches in the corner but runs into a big boot and a clothesline.  Kane hits two corner clotheslines, and a high back body drop.  He knocks Morrison outside and goes up top for the flying clothesline.  Morrison comes back into the ring, but Kane gets a double goozle!  Miz and Morrison double team him to save themselves and get disqualified.

After the match, Punk hits the ring to make the save for Kane.  Chavo hits the ring to unbalance the odds.  Big Show hits the ring and beats the hell out of them all except Kane.  Kane and Big Show stare down to end the show.

It wasn’t a match, it was a PPV hype brawl.  That’s fine if that’s what we’re going for.  Things could have been much worse, Kane could have punked out the champions like Cena did to Cade and Murdoch and it would have sucked.

Overall Analysis:  

Damn good show overall.  We kept things simple:  Put the guys in the cluster match at ONS against each other in singles matches, and give them some time to work.  We produced one great match from that, we got one good match from the show’s lead non-title feud, and the other two matches were short and average.  I think overall that’s about the best you can do with a one-hour show.  We sacrificed having ‘good matches’ in the main event and opener so we could have a nice long good old fashioned wrestling match in the middle of the show.  We saw every match have a purpose whether it was long or short.  It worked.  This show’s a winner.

Overall Show Grade: B+

COMMENTS