What a fun show. I tuned in out of curiosity and for once, I watched an entire hour of ECW without fast forwarding.
Unless this happened in weeks prior, Tiffany has gotten a promotion and is no longer "interim" GM. She announced the New Superstar Initiative is back in effect. And for all the talk of Tiffany getting fleeced in the trade, did anyone ever stop to think that maybe part of her job as GM of ECW is to oversee the young talent and prepare them to be called up to RAW and Smackdown? That she's supposed to facilitate getting the young guys ready for the two main brands. The trade off is for her to willingly lose young faces in exchange for veteran superstars and the newest guys from FCW.
Shelton was awesome. What a racist dick he was behaving as against Yoshi Tetsu. I didn't even mind him jobbing to one kick to the head. He really had that coming.
The segment everyone probably hated was the Abraham Washington Show (a better name evoking dead Presidents might be Fillmore Nixon) with the Bellas. I read somewhere Washington used the name Obama in FCW, and he does have a passing resemblance. As trite as the Bellas Q&A came off, at least they've resumed giving them some personality conflicts with each other. They were just starting to get interesting when Nikki was with Miz and Morrison and Brie was with Carlito and promo. Then Nikki apologized to Brie on wwe.com and suddenly they were boring faces again on RAW.
Sheamus was one jacked and practically naked to the point where it was a little uncomfortable watching him Irishman. I humbly request finding Sheamus looser trunks.
Speaking of new trunks, Vladimir Koslov finally got some new ring gear and it's an improvement. I liked the team of William Regal and Kozlov a lot, especially Regal practically swooning over Kozlov at the end and massaging him as the show signed off. I think Regal was in love.
I also dug Striker out of nowhere explaining that William Regal used to wrestle as Steven Regal until he discovered he was the descendant of William the Conquerer and changed his name. Ten years later, they decide to explain the name change. Good a time as any, I guess.
Four new young guys debuted, Regal, Shelton, and the Bellas got thrown right into the mix. The new look ECW was pretty good, I'd say.
Originally posted by John Orquiola I also dug Striker out of nowhere explaining that William Regal used to wrestle as Steven Regal until he discovered he was the descendant of William the Conquerer and changed his name. Ten years later, they decide to explain the name change. Good a time as any, I guess.
I guess that sounds better than "WWE already had one "Steve" when he debuted, Steve Austin, so he was forced to change his first name because you can't have two people with the same name, people might get confused."
After Shelton, I pretty much FFW'ed all the way to the main event.
When I heard the name Abraham Washington, my first reaction was "Someone's been playing too much Fallout 3 (me probably)."
-- 2006 Time magazine Person of the Year --
"I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office." George W. Bush - June 26, 2008, during a Rose Garden news briefing.
"Abraham Washington" made me think of all the random, ex-President inspired names of the characters in the terrible, terrible Norm Macdonald & Dave Chappelle movie Screwed.
I was hoping Yoshi Tetsu would reveal he speaks perfectly fine English after Shelton's over-the-top promo...what a waste of Shelton...
When Kozlov smiles, he looks like a completely different person. Eerie.
Originally posted by John Orquiola I also dug Striker out of nowhere explaining that William Regal used to wrestle as Steven Regal until he discovered he was the descendant of William the Conquerer and changed his name. Ten years later, they decide to explain the name change. Good a time as any, I guess.
I guess that sounds better than "WWE already had one "Steve" when he debuted, Steve Austin, so he was forced to change his first name because you can't have two people with the same name, people might get confused."
Originally posted by John Orquiola I also dug Striker out of nowhere explaining that William Regal used to wrestle as Steven Regal until he discovered he was the descendant of William the Conquerer and changed his name. Ten years later, they decide to explain the name change. Good a time as any, I guess.
I guess that sounds better than "WWE already had one "Steve" when he debuted, Steve Austin, so he was forced to change his first name because you can't have two people with the same name, people might get confused."
They also had Steve Blackman!
Don't get me wrong, I loved watching Stone Cold. But if anyone needed to change his name, it was him. He ripped off the Father of Texas AND the Six Million Dollar Man. Plus a couple of other people I see on wikipedia. What was wrong with going by his real name, Steve Williams? It's not like anyone else had that nam... oh wait, nevermind.
They debuted new talent but the crowd was totally dead from "Abraham Washington", which is about as stereotypical of a black name that you can get.
The Irish guy also didn't have any heat or pop behind him.
Kozlov really is talented for a big guy but no matter what they do, the Communist gimmick that everyone had 20 years ago is so not over. Could Regal be setting up Kozlov to turn into a face, and then he suddenly like Volkov, he realizes the Western world are the good guys??
Shelton was funny although it was racist. Shelton smears him next week.
And please, can we get Regal in as GM of ECW if he doesn't pan out as a heel.
Originally posted by John Orquiola Unless this happened in weeks prior, Tiffany has gotten a promotion and is no longer "interim" GM. She announced the New Superstar Initiative is back in effect. And for all the talk of Tiffany getting fleeced in the trade, did anyone ever stop to think that maybe part of her job as GM of ECW is to oversee the young talent and prepare them to be called up to RAW and Smackdown? That she's supposed to facilitate getting the young guys ready for the two main brands.
That makes total sense...but that's not how it's being presented. It's being presented as she made a trade.
I also dug Striker out of nowhere explaining that William Regal used to wrestle as Steven Regal until he discovered he was the descendant of William the Conquerer and changed his name. Ten years later, they decide to explain the name change. Good a time as any, I guess.
That is cool.
Maybe some day he'll spin a yard about how it seemed like Tiffany made a bad trade because she got Edge in the deal, but then it turned out that Vicki had put a no-trade clause in his contract, and Vince held her to the other terms of the deal. B^)
That Seamus was the palest guy I've ever seen. It was kind of freaky.
No complaints about crowd responses will be tolerated: WhoTF are these people???
Dark match, Drew McIntyre with promo d. Jamie Noble. This was fine, but I kept trying to figure out if this guy was a rogue from Brutus Magnus' consortium.
Although they fluffed it, we had a cold open, with Tiffany standing inring talking.
Again, WTF is "Yoshi Tatsu"?? Shelton was hilarious. "Stand back or I call Godzilla." Funny promo from Shelton made me happy. "Thanks for coming, Shelton." -- not so much.
And then there was this Abraham Washington character. WTF Redux. This was really bad. Stupidly bad. Uncomfortably bad. Perhaps y'all on TV got some sort of backstory about who this asshole is & why we should listen to him be rude to the bimbettes???
OK, moving on to WTF #4 -- Seamus. No last name. (Just like Hornswoggle?) The whitest man *ever* to appear on WWE television. ("The Deadman" has a much better tan!) Squishy-squash against a (local?) jobber named Oliver something.
And then we get a promo about "Toddle Rex" (I swear that's what it sounded like! Yeah-yeah, we find out during SuperStars taping that it's "Tyler Reks" -- ooooh-kay.) upcoming debut against Zach Ryder on Superstars.
Kozlov & Regal vs. Dreamer & Christian!!! Yea!!! (Really, the live audience has been here for about an hour, & the only people we've known so far are Shelton, Tiffany & the Bellas. I was looking forward to some of the fun stuff that I've been seeing on ECW. I don't have a problem with promoting talent from FCW, but there's a degree of "WTH are these people??" all at once that's ... not happy-making.
So anyway, Christian, Dreamer, Regal & Kozlov was fun. So maybe this is a WWE show after all!
When Abraham appeared, I thought it was Rock at first then sadly disappointed. Even more disappointed with the segment with him, people complain about the Autobot twins in Transformers 2 should look at this. The rest of the show was basically ok. I still wish someone would have called Tiffany out on how bad the trade was for them, but whatever.
Again, WTF is "Yoshi Tatsu"?? Shelton was hilarious. "Stand back or I call Godzilla." Funny promo from Shelton made me happy. "Thanks for coming, Shelton." -- not so much.
What you found funny, I found uncomfortably racist. The ONLY ending for that match was for Shelton to get squashed in some form and a one-hit-knock-out works for me.
If the tables were turned and Yoshi set up a table in the ring and feasted on fried chicken, collared greens, watermelon and washed it down with grape soda and went off like Shelton did with Ebonics, people would be calling for boycotts of WWE.
The only thing that redeemed it was that Yoshi-kick. I guess you have to be of Asian decent to get it.
-- 2006 Time magazine Person of the Year --
"I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office." George W. Bush - June 26, 2008, during a Rose Garden news briefing.
Again, WTF is "Yoshi Tatsu"?? Shelton was hilarious. "Stand back or I call Godzilla." Funny promo from Shelton made me happy. "Thanks for coming, Shelton." -- not so much.
What you found funny, I found uncomfortably racist. The ONLY ending for that match was for Shelton to get squashed in some form and a one-hit-knock-out works for me.
If the tables were turned and Yoshi set up a table in the ring and feasted on fried chicken, collared greens, watermelon and washed it down with grape soda and went off like Shelton did with Ebonics, people would be calling for boycotts of WWE.
The only thing that redeemed it was that Yoshi-kick. I guess you have to be of Asian decent to get it.
But wasn't that the point of the thing? Shelton acts like a jerk and in the process gets very racist than gets the shit kicked out of him?
There would have been no way that he didn't get his ass kicked right away.
THe other way around the same thing would have happened.
THe other way around the same thing would have happened.
The other way around and there would be a shit-storm of bad publicity, probably not many laughs in the crowd, and Jackson and/or Sharpton would be calling for boycotts. That's my point.
Look at the controversy at the new Transformers and they're trying to apply race to talking robots. If people are getting their panties in a wad for the voice acting on animated robots, I think they'd be upset at my example.
And yes, I got the point of the setup, I just feel it went way too far and too long.
-- 2006 Time magazine Person of the Year --
"I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office." George W. Bush - June 26, 2008, during a Rose Garden news briefing.