Good show, but...

PLEASE give ECW their own tapings... and PLEASE ECW FANS sell-out next Tuesday's show in Philly. These "We Want Cena" chants (it's a Smackdown show, of COURSE they'll be there) have to go... Good job of the ECW fans in attendence of drowning them out but it shouldn't even be an issue. (By the way, if the ref counts to five when you're in the ropes, and you don't break the hold, what happens, exactly? Ya know, with no DQs...)

Oh, and no more male asses okay? I think Sandman's opponent was there just to get the fans to LIKE Kelly. Ha!

Poor Doring & Road Kill. Perhaps once things get going, they'll give 'em those ECW Tag Titles back.

Wrestlers not Test!!!

I'd rather see Roadkill in an Amish Butter-Churning competition than see Test in ECW. I mean, seriously, what's he going to give to the product that they don't already have?

I can only imagine the Test-Big Show storyline arc, which results in multiple broken noses for the former Motley Crue Bodyguard and one-time love interest of Stephanie McMahon.

In all honesty, if you're more of a punchline than X-Pac, then you just don't belong in ECW.

We want wrestlers, NOT Test!!!

"Don't come back! Don't come back!"

Mike Johnson of PWInsider posted results from tonight's ECW house show in Philly at the old ECW Arena, and he made some interesting observations.

Glad to see CM Punk got a hero's welcome, and I hope we see him on SCI FI sooner than later. Saw him live in a match once - last June in NYC at a Ring of Honor show - and been a fan ever since. Great look, good enough in the ring, and the fan-base can really get behind him.

As for Paul E. getting a good number of boos at the show, I wonder if they shouldn't just make him a heel on TV, 'in bed' with Vince, and position someone like Tommy Dreamer as someone out to 'save' ECW and make it more like it once was... could work.

Really, though, the one thing they need to do, and I'm convinced of this now, is double-up RAW and SD TV tapings every Monday, and give ECW its own show in smaller venues each Tuesday (or maybe every other Tuesday, taping two weeks' worth of shows at a time). I understand that adding a third night of production is expensive, so this solution may just work. (And as for Heat, just tape it before ECW or make it a recap show with one match taped before each supershow.)

And no, I'm not saying WWE should put RAW and SD "back together." First of all, it's impossible with the way the shows are being done now; but secondly, the big stars will end up on both shows, and younger/lower card wrestlers barely making it on TV. But that's another debate for another day...

Another inter-promotional PPV filled with "dream matches" looms ...

Just as common as interleague play in baseball these days is the idea of the inter-promotional PPV ... Remember when we could only dream about matches like Ric Flair vs. Hulk Hogan in the 1980s or Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. The Sandman in the 1990s? Now we get Super-Fantastic encounters like Sabu vs. Cena and Edge vs. RVD!

Man, sometimes I think dreams are better left in our fantastical minds ...

Wake me up, and next time I'll still be The Wrestling Mark.

Team 3D, ECW house shows, Macho Libre ...

How cool was that shot from the NWA:TNA Bingo Hall house show in South Philadelphia, where chairs were tossed into the ring during Team 3D's bout with The James Gang?

Makes me think about something interesting: ECW house shows just might be better than the TV tapings, because *gasp* the smaller venues filled with 2,000 actual ECW fans work better for the product!

Also worth noting for its sheer irony: The funniest / most memorable moment of the night on ECW's last episode was a SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT moment: Macho Libre (oooh yeah, ese!)

Until next time, I remain The [Bilingual] Wrestling Mark ...

How come I am rooting for Cena against ECW?

Perhaps it's because Cena's been the most exciting part of the ECW shows thus far (he slapped Heyman and got Sabu to speak!), or maybe it's because everyone in the IWC and beyond is trying to force down my throat the idea that John Cena should be booed out of every arena. Let me say this: he was a better champion than I ever could have imagined, and he has demonstrated to me the ability to play the heal when necessary (i.e. at Hammerstein) without losing credibility as a babyface.

Either way, John Cena has proved alot to me over this past year, especially with his ability to keep the crowds engaged in a battle of cheers vs. jeers every time he comes out.

I just happen to be one of the people who cheers a little bit more than I used to.

Until next time, I remain The Wrestling Mark ...

Quick thoughts: ECW, Episode 2

Some running thoughts as I watch tonight's ECW show:

We start with a Tarot Card reader, goofy but no goofier than The Miz, and it can work in small doses a la the way they've used THE VAMPIRE so far...

Lighting is MUCH better, and the crowd already seems more into it, and the show started off right, with a match that you know Sabu will win, but one that was competitive and jobbed the right guy...

Kelly making fun of herself gets thumbs up from me...

Rob's promo was probably better than any he's done in five years, excluding the shoot at ONS last year...

Show dismantling Dreamer, only to have Tommy get up and smile? That told more of a story than the Battle Royale could ever have. Reminds me of the VERY successful Jeff Hardy/Undertaker feud a while back...

Speaking of which, why not bring Jeff back in to join ECW? He fits the style, and touring with Smackdown he'll be with his brother, Helms and most likely Shannon Moore -- three of his best friends to keep him in line and showing up to shows...

Macho Libre is my new favorite wrestler! Although Tazz, no need to say Randy Savage's name; we got the joke...

Sandman's facials were perfect. Also great that they did the inset box w/Sandman interview -- little touches like that add so much to the show...

Anyone else catch Heyman talking to the ref and making sure he knew that "the only thing refs do around here are count the pin and call for a tapout?" Haley would be proud... that and Sabu SPEAKING were nice touches...

Moment of truth -- can ECW Vixen™ Kelly get the bra undone this week? She can! Looks like that shoot fighter they recently signed (DSW's Mike Knox, according to the Observer) has debuted... From what I've read, he and Angle should have some good bouts...

Is it bad that I'm looking forward to Test's debut on ECW?

Ah, Lita with BANGS. Extreme as it gets... well, not as extreme as RVD with two belts, though. That has me rolling every time.

Good way to end the show, and overall MUCH better than last week. Once Vengeance is over the RAW presense should decrease, and as I said last week, that July 4 show -- now confirmed for Philly (although in the bigger Wachovia Center rather than the ECW Arena) is gonna be VERY telling...

Good times. Let's see if they can keep it going.

Much better...

Sabu WRECKING Cena on RAW was awesome last night... at least awesome enough to get people to tune into ECW on SCI FI yet again.



In tag team action, ECW World Heavyweight Champion Rob Van Dam and Kurt Angle will face WWE's Randy Orton & Edge Tuesday night at 10/9 CT on the Sci Fi Channel. (ECW.com)

Now let's see if Vince, Heyman, Lagana & Co. can do more than book one interesting segment on tonight's hour-long show.

Maybe Mick Foley was onto something...

When Mick Foley gave his promo about Stephanie McMahon being the greatest visionary in ECW history, he then sealed the deal on this vignette by chanting, "Long live The Alliance! Long live The Alliance!"

Now, as hilarious as that was since Mick was obviously trying to sustain his heal heat and cement his heal status, it's kind of ironic how we are now faced with another imminent ECW invasion of Raw tonight.

Perhaps the Creative Team, including Heyman himself, didn't realize that Mick Foley was being sarcastic. Or, perhaps everyone involved with this ECW project is so scared of Vince McMahon and Co. that they have decided to bring back a new breed of WrestleCrap.

I can just see it now: "This Tuesday on ECW on Sci-Fi, The Spirit Squad invades the ECW arena and goes Five On One with RVD. Also, in an exclusive inter-promotional encounter, The Big Show squares off against Smackdown's The Great Khali, with special guest referee, Raw's own Love Machine, Viscera! Kurt Angle and his mouthpiece of doom will also be in action against (insert random ECW Jobber here, who also happens to be a former ECW World Champion!)

Rounding things out, The Sandman takes on his most formidable opponent yet, Kellie the Stripper's Bra! Watch it all unfold on the New Breed Unleashed."

Until next time, I [skeptically] remain The Wrestling Mark.

WrestleQuote of the week ...

"How come they are all so old?" -- My girlfriend, commenting on the ECW wrestlers

A note about The Sandman's entrance ...

By having ECW at bigger venues where Smackdown! is taped, it gives the show a hack feel, and that was most evident to me during Sandman's entrance, who started his beer-mashing all the way up in the crowd at the sometimes-used Vince McMahon luxury box (when he watches matches from afar for storyline purposes) and had to wiggle his way down.

The bottom line is this: The Sandman's entrance -- like ECW itself -- just doesn't have the same effect in a big arena. It kind of reminds me of Hulk Hogan's entrance in WrestleMania III, where everyone used the cart except Hogan, who then took FOREVER to get to the ring.

Throw in the "smart mark" fact that Sandman was catering to a non-ECW crowd, it just made the whole entrance -- and the entire affair -- seem out of place.

Were there no Bingo Halls in the area?

Until next time, I remain The Wrestling Mark.

Justin's credibility

There's a lot that can be said on the importance of "enhancement talent" or "jobbers" in the pro wrestling industry. While not as prevalent it once was, the role of enhancement talent is simple: make the star you're wrestling look like a star by getting squashed in a quick match. Sure, these days you don't see too many generic Barry Horowitz-types; rather, jobbers in WWE tend to have a "known" name or some kind of gimmick a la the Brooklyn Brawler (you're fooling yourself if you think Scotty 2 Hotty or Visera is anything BUT a jobber when wrestling singles matches these days... and there's nothing wrong with that -- you NEED the audience to believe in your stars, and having them go over identifyable opponents is one way to do so).

While I kid that Justin Credible is nothing more than a jobber, I do believe that the way he was used on ECW's SCI FI debut was poor due to its sheer laziness, thus making him look more like a jobber than, say, someone ECW was interested in pushing. That being said, note this newsbit from Jeremy Botter's latest Inside Pulse column:

- The squashing of Justin Credible by Kurt Angle wasn't done to demean Credible in any way; it was simply done to make Angle strong out of the gate. Credible will be a part of a new Impact Players faction, and it's been noted that his strong friendship with Triple H and Shawn Michaels will put him in a good political position to get a good shot at showing what he can do.

Let me ask ECW's bookers one question: if you didn't mean to demean the character, and expect to do big things with him down the road -- friends with DX or not -- how do you even put him in the position of looking as weak as he did against Kurt Angle on Tuesday? I'm not saying I think Justin should have won. And I'm not saying that he should have gotten in more offense vs. Angle. Kurt is an animal in the ring and needs to come across as invincible right now, and Justin pushing him to the limits just wouldn't have seemed... credible. But here's the rub on Justin: he shouldn't have been in that match in the first place.

All reports are saying that the ECW show ran short, which is why they added the footage of Lawler vs. Tazz at One Night Stand into the broadcast. Didn't someone backstage realize that maybe everyone would have been better served if Angle squashed, say, Al Snow or Danny Doring or even a no-name jobber, while Justin either did the same or was given a promo package/interview segment that could establish his character to the newbies, showing some highlights from ECW's tape library? I know, things were done on the fly on Tuesday, and changes made at the last minute by seemingly too many cooks; they likely didn't even know the show would run short until all of the supposed editing was done. But that isn't enough for me: I'm a demanding wrestling fan!

So that's my big concern. And I'll keep goign back to the theme of time management, looking at a longer-term big picture, and better utilizing old footage... Doesn't seem like too much of a stretch from where I sit.

In the Immortal Words of The Zombie ...

"Urrrrrrrrr ..... Urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ... URRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrr"

--which, ironically, is how I felt after the premiere of ECW on Sci-Fi.

What would happen if ECW was on the Home & Garden Channel? Would we have the reappearance of "The Bush-Whackers"?

That's all for now. Until next time, I remain The Wrestling Mark.

The New Breed (in a list)

Why not, eh? Not counting C.W. Anderson and Francine, whose bios have been posted on ECW.com despite not yet appearing on TV or PPV since the re-launch, here is the updated ECW roster, made up up people who were a part of ECW One Night Stand and/or the SCI FI debut:

Al Snow
Amish Roadkill
Balls Mahoney
Beulah*
Big Guido
Big Show
Bill Alfonso*
Danny Doring
Jason Knight*
Jazz
Joey Styles
Justin Credible
Justin Roberts
Kelly the Exhibitionist
Kurt Angle
Little Guido
Masato Tanaka*
Mikey Whipwreck*
Paul Heyman
Ref John Finnegan
Ref Mike Posey
Rob Van Dam
Sabu
Sandman
Stevie Richards
Tajiri*
Tazz
Terry Funk*
The Zombie*
Tommy Dreamer
Tony Mamaluke
Trinity
Vampire (Kevin "Mordecai" Fertig)

Yeah, I know quite a few of these guys aren't going to be "active" in ECW (note asterisks, above), but it's not a BAD start at a new promotion... is it? Time will tell, I guess.

On a cautiously optimistic note, this item gave me a bit of hope when I posted it on Inside Pulse:

PWInsider's reporting that their inside sources are saying that everyone, including Vince (even though he wasn't going out of his way to admit it), realized that the ECW debut on SCI FI was a bomb despite the rating, and that the pressure is up to deliver next week. The overall vibe backstage is that people tuned in out of curiousity, and will likely do so again on Tuesday, but after that all bets are off.

Ah, interesting times.

More ratings details...

Per Steve Murray's request:

SCI FI CHANNEL PINS THE COMPETITION WITH ECW'S TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO TELEVISION

'ECW' IS THE #1 CABLE PROGRAM FOR THE DAY IN TOTAL VIEWERS

SCI FI IS #1 IN CABLE FOR KEY DEMOS AT 10PM

NEW YORK June 14, 2006 SCI FI Channel premiered 'ECW' ('Extreme Championship Wrestling') last night and was the ratings victor in the 10pm hour. The return of 'ECW' with a sci-fi twist delivered a 2.79 HH and was the most-watched show on cable drawing almost 3.4 million total viewers.

The show was #1 among the key demos bringing in 1.89MM P18-49 and 1.68MM P25-54 from 10p-11p. This performance represents gains of +457% among P18-49 and +347% among P25-54 versus its prior four week time period average.

Key Ratings Performance Points:

--'ECW' on SCI FI is the best performance for any program on the network this year on P18-49s and the best P25-54 performance since the season premiere of 'Battlestar Galactica' on 1/6/06.

--'ECW' on SCI FI beat an original episode of FX's 'Rescue Me' by +14% among P18-49s and +3% among P25-54s.

--'ECW' on SCI FI delivered the all-time best June performance for any program on SCI FI in both P18-49s and P25-54s, and ranks #1 among all SCI FI 2nd quarter programs ever for P18-49 delivery.

--The median viewer age for 'ECW' on SCI FI was 32.3 -- sixteen years younger than the 2nd quarter to date time period average of 48.4.

World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE: WWE) is an integrated media and entertainment company headquartered in Stamford, Conn., with offices in New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto and London. Additional information on the company can be found at wwe.com. and corporate.wwe.com.

SCI FI Channel is a television network where "what if" is what's on. SCI FI fuels the imagination of viewers with original series and events, blockbuster movies and classic science fiction and fantasy programming, as well as a dynamic Web site (www.scifi.com ) and magazine. Launched in 1992, and currently in 85 million homes, SCI FI Channel is a network of NBC Universal, one of the world's leading media and entertainment companies.

A rare column...

I was asked to fill in for Daniels over at Inside Pulse Wrestling this morning, so enjoy!

The Zombie = Ratings?

From PW Torch with clarification from Inside Pulse (thanks to Widro for pointing this out to me): The June 13 ECW debut on Sci Fi did a 2.79 cable rating, with an average audience of 3.4 million viewers. This included a 2.6 in the Male 18-49 demographic and 3.1 in the M18-34.



In case you're wondering, this week's RAW scored somewhere in the 4.2-4.3 range, and TNA Wrestling usually gets around a 1.0 (give or take), so this is obviously a resounding success (even though it's lower when compared to last Wednesday's "WWE vs. ECW" special on USA). But will people watch NEXT week? I don't think the true test will come until July 11 (you can't get an accurate read as long as they are running WWE vs. ECW storylines, which will no doubt continue through the ECW broadcast on Tuesday, June 27 (after ECW wrestlers are in two matches at RAW's Vengeance PPV), and the following week's show airs on July 4).

In fact as it looks right now, the most important show for THE NEW ECW is the one airing live from the "ECW Arena" on Independence Day, assuming plans don't change (I don't believe this has been officially announced as of yet, but it's been strongly rumored). The venue size is ideal, the crowd will be RABID, and despite the rating, if you're an ECW die-hard or at the very least a pro wrestling fan who is hungry for an alternative, THIS is the show to target if you wanna send a message to the Powers That Be.

If nothing else it will give me plenty to write about, both here and on IP Wrestling, so stay tuned...

Deconstructing a relaunch

Just watched WWE's version of Extreme Championship Wrestling on Sci Fi, and in a nutshell: it was sheer crap.

First of all, they should have booked the show like it was brand new -- character profiles/introductions ("Hi, I'm Justin Credible, former ECW World Champion... " / "Hi, I'm Balls Mahoney, this is why you should care about me..."), faster pacing, different camera angles...

I actually think the show started off well -- the RAW tie-in made sense for a variety of reasons, including the fact that adding current RAW viewers into the mix means higher ratings and thus a better chance the show will survive past the summer -- and even The Zombie was funny in a "symbolic" kind of way. So you've got your audience in the first few minutes of the broadcast, yet what exactly did Paul Heyman (and Vince McMahon and Executive Producer Kevin Dunn) do to hook them, reel them in, and keep them wanting to watch NEXT week and the week after that?

A recap of Jerry Lawler's ring entrance? A battle royale? A stripper who doesn't know how to unclasp a bra? Please.

As for the arena, look -- I think the Smackdown venues will make it difficult, since crowds will likely be split between "traditional" WWE fans and fans looking for an alternative, but it won't be impossible. Go back to what I said above: change some camera angles around, make sure not to pan around to get shots of the entire audience... maybe add some seating closer to the ring... and voila! You have a different look and feel. I understand that it is cost prohibitive for WWE to tape shows three nights in a row, and that this ECW relaunch was basically booked on the fly once Vince saw how quickly the One Night Stand Pay Per View sold out. But last week's "WWE vs. ECW Head to Head" special even seemed produced differently than last night's shitstorm. You have all of the production tricks in the world at your disposal, so why don't you use them?

The show will likely get ratings through the Tuesday following RAW's Vengeance PPV, but after that it's all up in the air, and they better shape up otherwise this isn't an alternative... it's just Heat on a different night... or worse: WCW Thunder - THE NEW BREED.


(I will say that I did enjoy the "...and look at this one: IT SPINS!" line from Rob Van Dam. I dig it when champs hold multiple titles - think Chris Jericho after he unified the WWF and WCW World Championships - and when they decide to put the WWE Title back on RAW, this will allow them to devise a way to keep ECW with a title to call their own... Hey, at least that's something positive.)