So many wrestling shows

Alright, there’s been a lot of wrestling this past week. ECW ONS 2, Monday Night Raw, New ECW (Sci-Fi Edition) and Friday Night SmackDown! I’ll just give some overall opinions instead of doing a match-by-match analysis

ECW ONS 2

Purpose of the PPV: Getting the new ECW Legitamacy

• Taz and Lawler provided a good start to the PPV. Personally, I was quite sick of hearing Lawler go on and on about how crappy ECW was. Seeing him get choked out within a couple of seconds was a good finish to this storyline.
• Kurt Angle and Randy Orton had a pretty good match and I thought Orton excelled as a heel in this atmosphere. If only WWE audiences could give him this much heel heat. Angle was appreciated by the new ECW crowd as one of their own and he got to show off a new style. I think Kurt Angle: Shoot Wrestler Edition will do well in ECW if Paul Heyman gets to keep control of ECW.
• The Main Event: John Cena vs. Rob Van Dam. I’ve thought that Cena is much better as a heel than as a face. These two had a much better match than I thought they could. Cena losing his WWE Championship at an ECW event shows how much the WWE wants the new ECW to succeed.
• Did it live up to its purpose? I think that the ONS PPV did what it was meant to do. It showed off the ECW Wrestlers and established ECW as a strong WWE brand. They gave the ECW the main WWE championship.

Monday Night Raw
Purpose: Keep pushing ECW and the Vengeance PPV

• First, the show starts with Paul Heyman talking about how the decision stands and RVD is the new WWE Champion, then WWE sent their #1 Boy, John Cena, to ECW’s first regular television show to give the ECW a strong rating. Edge was also scheduled to appear. Raw threw together Vengeance on this show. I think there had been only one match scheduled before Monday night, and that was the Edge vs. WWE Champion (who I thought would have beeen John Cena, but I was wrong). The reunion of DX finally happened this past Monday. I don’t know how effective they will be, but it may be interesting. I think they need to draft some directionless characters like Carlito and Charlie Hass. I bet those two could act quite juvinele and it would be amusing.
• Did Raw acheive its purpose? I think it did. Tons of ECW on Sci-Fi promos and plugs and Vengeance was put together in one night.

ECW: Sci-Fi
Purpose: Kick off the ECW with a bang.

• Some sneaky camera angles try to keep the SmackDown! portion of the set off the air. The opening promo with RVD, Edge and Heyman ended up pushing the Vengeance PPV some more. I forgot to mention that Kurt Angle will be facing Randy Orton once again at Vengeance. I think that Vengeance has these inter-promotional matches because the WWE just didn’t have any ideas to put together this PPV. I imagine after Vengeance, the inter-promotional matches will cease until the big four PPVs.
• I’ve got to mention the Zombie. I think this was a message from the WWE to the Sci-Fi network. “If you make us do science ficition angles, the science fiction characters will get their asses kicked.” Effectively, the match between Sandman and the Zombie was a rehash of the Eugene / Sandman segment from ECW ONS 2.
• ECW lived up to its purpose. I just had to kick off the start of ECW. It was an uneven show, but still more solid than most Raw or SmackDown! episodes. I think the one hour format will help out since it’s only one hour of material to put together. In ECW that could be 3 matches and 2 segments and you’re done.

SmackDown!
Purpose: I don’t know, I didn’t watch.

• By Friday night, I was more interested in watching my House, M.D. DVDs than watching more wrestling. The show is depleted without Orton, Angle, and Benoit (along with Lesnar, Big Show, Carlito and all the others who were good on SmackDown! but are all gone). Additionally with JBL on the mic, I don’t know if I want to hear it. I recorded the show, so I may watch it later.