ECW 5/29
The one hour ECW show on Tuesday night from London, Ontario was an entertaining effort, complete with a solid one-on-one no DQ match with CM Punk and Elijah Burke, as well as what looks to be the last time on TV we'll see RVD with his final WWE match coming up this weekend at the One Night Stand PPV. All along it looked as if that Rob's final match would pit him with Snitsky, but now the opponent will be Randy Orton in a stretcher match, which should make for a solid match considering the bout the two had on RAW Monday night.
The match of the night was Burke and Punk, as they went back and forth and their match was better than their PPV effort at Judgement Day last week. The end was a great visual with Marcus Cor Von giving the pounce to Punk through a table that was set up in a corner. The spot made Punk easy pickins for Burke, who pinned him for the win. Sunday will see a tables match with Burke, Cor Von and Matt Striker taking on Punk, Sandman and Tommy Dreamer.
Kevin Thorn beat Balls Mahoney rather easily, and to think at one point this was a program that the show pushed. Looks like Balls is now your resident jobber for guys like Snitsky and Thorn. It would not surprise me at all if he is shown the door sometime in the last six months of 2007. His act has not exactly been very impressive as of late, or he could just stay in the role of jobber like Sandman has for the last few months.
They did a verbal one-on-one with Vince McMahon and Bobby Lashley, doing a build for their ECW Title match on Sunday. Lashley is not ready for long interviews, let me just say that up front. As for Vinnie, he carried the verbal spar, letting Lashley get his shots in as each promised to give out some shots Sunday at the PPV. No doubt we need Lashley to win here and get the belt back to TV to be defended like it should be. ECW seems to have been in a holding pattern with Vinnie getting the belt.
They are pushing the newly announced "Stretcher Match" with RVD and Orton to be a possible end of Van Dam's career on the WWE website, which means they are going to have Orton win, and you'll see RVD going out taking a likely sick bump to lose the match. Then we'll have him go away, and possibly they can try and get something done to get him a new deal and back on the roster. At the same time, the win will continue the recent push of Orton, who is out of the doghouse after the hotel incident in Europe about a month and a half ago.
