03/13 ECW on Sci-fi TV Recap

For a viewpoint different from mine on this show Click here One of these recaps is great, the other is Ric's.

Welcome to your Tuesday night recap. I am not your usual host, but due to the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament, Wade and I are switching recaps for the next 2 weeks so he will be recapping TNA and I am at the helm for ECW. As a trivia note, believe it or not, this is the first WWE recap I've ever written. This will also be the first time I've watched ECW since last July.

I am all about the love this week. Gaging online feedback last night's episode of IFL was a plague on society. I didn't think it was perfect but I thought it was better than a lot of other people apparently did.
Also, I'm going to be giving some love to Destination X when Euan and I tape our recap show in the near future. I didn't think that show was perfect, or even great but I didn't hate it as much as a lot of people appear to have.

Lets see if the love extends to ECW tonight?



It has been so long since I've watched this show that I had to ask Wade what channel Sci-fi was, I guessed 47 and I guessed correctly.

We get a commercial plugging Mick Foley's appearance tonight and more between Lashley and Vince.

Randy Orton wants to know what's up with Edge. If he wants to know what's up, he needs to call TNA for Ron Killings phone number.

Edge backtracks like a politician answering...well, any question really.

Let the Bodies hit the floor, well only if I get to pick which bodies.

Joey Styles and Tazz are your announcers although I faintly hear the Spanish team in the background.

The Original ECW theme signals the beginning of our first match.

Match 1: Extreme Battle Royal - ECW Originals Vs. The New Breed

Marcus Cor Von looks familiar, I wonder if I've seen him before. Nah, he'd have an iMPACT on me if I had seen him I'm sure.

Elijah Burke, Marcus Cor Von, Kevin Thorn and Matt Stryker represent the New Breed while Tommy Dreamer, Sandman, Sabu and RVD represent the ECW Job...er...originals.

Tazz tells us that this is an extreme battle royal...my response is that it is not extreme unless you reverse it.

Sandman doesn't last very long, and so far this has been team against team not every man for himself.

Joey says that the ECW originals have always had their backs to the wall. I can solve that problem...Hey guys, Turn the fuck around!!

Marcus Cor Von is the first of the New Breed to be eliminated. His chances of winning were just poooooounced! Period.

Sabu was next out but I didn't see by who, I was busy making Monty Brown jokes. On a related note, I'd like you all to know that I do in fact enjoy shooting fish in a barrel.

It is Dreamer and RVD Vs. Burke, Stryker and Thorn.

Ariel is outside the ring screaming, well she's no Lenne Hardt that's for sure.

RVD eliminates Thorn but is eliminated shortly after, Dreamer is down to 2 on 1.

Can Tommy Dreamer overcome the odds like Randy Couture? No, he can't do it like Couture because with Couture, I actually cared so that's what makes this different.

Stryker was eliminated and then Dreamer was the victor eliminating Burke. RVD is fucked, and the proof is that it was Dreamer that got the win here.

Joey says that the pride of the Originals was on the line, if these guys had any pride they would quit.

Winner: Tommy Dreamer - ECW Originals
This had the heat of your typical night on the former Planet Pluto. The coldness in this match reminds me of the last time I asked out a woman.

Before anything else can happen, we hear Mick Foley's music begin to play and he makes his way to the ring...and then we cut to a commercial Break!!!

The one positive is that they teased the Foley appearance before going to the break, I love it when promotions do that and don't think they do that kind of thing enough. Oh, I had to add a second positive, the battle royal did have an ending so that was good. If it had lasted forever I'd want to kill.

Foley has the mic, and asks if we think he's here to get the cheap pop and the cheap plug for his book.
He also wants to talk about Wrestlemania. Foley reminds Dreamer and myself of when he turned on him leading up to 1-night Stand. Foley says he wrote every bit of his book, and this is his most honest book ever. He wants Dreamer to take a look at his book.
Foley says his pop isn't the way it used to be. He said he did what he did at 1 night stand to shine the spotlight on the originals. He says that at WrestleMania they'll take on the New Breed in front of 70,000 fans. Psst, Mick, it is 93,175! 2 more people than went to WrestleMania III.
He leads the crowd in an ECW chant. By that I mean he chants ECW, and they kind of chant along but mainly do so because it is Foley that is doing the chanting, not because they really like ECW. That's the vibe I got anyway.

Joey and Tazz plug the Orton and Lashley match.

We are treated to a Snitsky video as well before we hit the...

Commercial Break!!!
I don't consider that promo to be one of Mick Foley's better efforts. I'm not going to say he phoned it in because a phone call might have been better. It is not really his fault but ECW was abused for so long that it would probably take a month or so of solid Foley promos before any one of them meant anything to anybody. Oh, when I say month I mean 31 days not 4 weeks worth of TV, thought I'd clear that up for the stupid readers...hi Ric!!!

Oh, while I'm piling on Ric, I got an email from WWE Fantasy this morning telling me I finished in second place last week and thus will be getting a T-shirt for my troubles. Of course, watch it be like a Snitsky shirt, in which case...watch me kill. However, that's not my point. My reason for posting this is so that we can all laugh at Ric Gillespie...you big pussy.

Speaking of pussy, my family owns cats, oh and Extreme Xposay is out after the break. I liked this better when it was called the Nitro girls. Kelly Kelly is very likely a worse dancer than Kimberly Page.

Oh, but the dancing and I use dancing in the same way here that I use the word booking in reference to Vince Russo is interupted by Snitsky.

Match 2: Snitsky Vs. A couple of Jobbers.

Any chance we could go back to the dancing? ... Please?

This is Snitsky's first official match on ECW, and I'm convinced they waited until I was recapping it so I could have that honor. The wrestling, used in the same manner as dancing and booking above, is short and Snitsky gets the win.

Joey and Tazz did say the name of the 2 jobbers but I don't care, they were squashed by Snitsky after all.

Winner: Snitsky

Punk and Burke are backstage talking. Burke brings up CM Punk's bad night on Smackdown. The New Breed had a bad night tonight, hey they're not the only ones. Punk is reminded that he in fact has a big match at Mania. I'm sure he's glad that Elijah was there to remind him. Burke agrees to be in his corner if he joins the New Breed. Given Burke lost to Dreamer tonight, I'd probably turn him down if it were me. But, this just in, I'm not CM Punk.

Commercial Break!!
All of that work with Snitsky and it is like putting a nice Christmas bow on a pile of crap. You've just wasted a good bow, and its still a pile of crap.
Burke does cut a good promo though.

We're back with some people talking about the battle of the billionaires. Well, given that Vince isn't really a billionaire right now, he's doomed to lose because as I've heard somewhere before, everyone has a price mwahahahahahahaha!

A recap airs of the Battle of the Billionaires contract signing from Raw last night. Austin comes out and threatens Trump with an 8 billion dollar can of whoopass...it manages to be a dated reference and cool at the same time, few people can pull that off.
Trump did some work on Vince's head last night as well.

Match 3: Bobby Lashley Vs. Randy Orton

Looking at the time on the clock, we're either getting a long match, or a midlength match and some sort of angle. Time is moving slower than it did for IFL last night if that tells you anything about this show and my feelings toward it.

Lashley enters first because his opponent is a regular on the A-show.

Edge also gets an entrence of his own because he to is a regular on the A-show.

The referee is Big John McCarth...oops, thought I was doing MMA recaps for a second.

Orton must've known I was planning that MMA joke because he goes to work with legkicks on Lashley early. I'm sorry but as I don't recap WWE shows often, I haven't had a chance to say how dumb and lame the name Lashley is. If he wants to be a man he should change his name to Thore ThunderDeath. A much tougher name if I say so myself, and of course, I do.

Seems Edge and Orton are having some problems, as we go to a commercial break!

One of those segments that is hard to grade as it was a recap of something that happened at Raw, then we saw 3 people walk to the ring, and then 1 minute of wrestling. It is nice of WWE to make me feel at home recapping this show, as that reminds me of something I'd usually see on TNA.

We're back as Joey Styles reminds us of how this match came about. Well, at least this match had a reason for taking place, unlike most matches on a certain other show I recap regularly.

Orton is using a Boston crab to eliminate the Explosive suplexes of Bobby Lashley, this according to Tazz. I don't think I really want an answer to this question but what hold will he use to neutralize the potential ass fucking that has been known to be a few steps behind suplexes these days?

Joey and Tazz talk about thumbing someone in the eye and how no matter how hard you train, you can't make your eyeball stronger. I wonder if it would be effective or not to thumb a glass eye?

Orton has controlled most of this match, his attempted RKO however is shrugged off by Lashley. Edge is tossed from the ringside area by the referee and Joey speculates it may have been on purpose. Then we experience a rather jarring cut to commercial break!!!

You know what I'd rather be doing right now than recapping this show? Eating because I'm hungry. I guess there was nothing wrong with this last segment save for the rather sudden jump to commercial. It is sort of telling that a majority of the heat I've detected for this match so far has been directed at Edge, the one man who's not actually wrestling in it.

Thore ThunderDeath (this name will catch on if I have to kill Vince Russo to make it happen) was whooping on Orton during the break, he hit a belly-to-belly suplex then a spear. So in the words of Sheiky, he suplex heem, spear heem out of his boots, break his back, and then fuck his ass. Thankfully, WWE did not show a replay of those last couple of parts, they might've been kicked off of TV.

Orton is trying to put ThunderDeath away at this point but his knee to the face does not get a pin. This comes as a bit of a surprise to Joey Styles.

You know Styles and Tazz talk a lot about what Mr. McMahon thinks of Orton's performance. I guess this Mr. McMahon guy is somehow more important than this match. Judging by the very loud boring chant that just broke out, he probably is at least in the eyes of the crowd.

Thore taking control over Orton does put a hault to the boring chant, but this crowd has not been that loud for anything else tonight.

Tazz just mentioned the Strenfh (said the way it was written) and power of ThunderDeath. Speaking of power, the fans resume with the boring chant, and thankfully in the eyes of the fans at least, Lashley hits a powerslam and gets the pin.

Winner: Bobby Lashley

Mr. McMahon's theme music plays and a good thing since he heads to the ring to end the show.

My Thoughts: Well, lets see, you had a battle royal with no heat. You had a character nobody is interested in getting a push that won't amount to anything, and then you had a main event where the most over man was in the corner until his ejection and the nex most over person was someone with the unfortunate name of Boring. If it weren't for the fact that this show was without wacky gimmick matches and that fewer than 10 million people appeared on it, I'd wonder if they weren't showing a tape of iMPACT by accident.

I've recapped worse shows than this and as believable as this sounds a lot of them came from TNA. I've also recapped better ones than this, and as unbelievable as this may sound one or 2 of those may have even come from TNA.

I am not calling this good by any means, but I did enjoy watching and recapping this show as sort of a change of pace so the night is not a complete waste.