The Week In Hardcore 11.04.06
Posted by Sam Caplan on 11.04.2006
The main event for the December To Dismember PPV has been revealed, and I will discuss that and all the other backstage news, the ECW Top Five, and more!
Wow, what a great show this week! I am so happy with the way this brand is turning out! I am so happy that I can't even think of a witty intro. So let's get right to it!
ECW On Sci-Fi Results 10/31/2006 From St Louis, Missouri (Rating)
-Sabu defeated Kevin Thorn by submission in a qualifying match for the Extreme Elimination Chamber (4:35)
-Daivari pinned Shannon Moore (1:52)
-ECW Champion Big Show & Test pinned Rob Van Dam & Hardcore Holly (19:38)
Thanks to Larry Csonka for match times.
Storyline Developments
-Paul Heyman announces that the main event of the December To Dismember PPV will not be a straight Show vs Van Dam match, but a six-way Extreme Elimination Chamber, and the remaining slots will be filled over the course of the next several weeks. Joey and Tazz can't imagine what an Extreme Elimination Chamber might be. I guess it's an Elimination Chamber with a table and chair in it because as everybody knows, ECW has always been exactly like WWE except that it had tables and chairs.
-Sandman beats up a clown because he hates them.
-In something I refuse to put in the match results section, Trinity won an Extreme Diva Costume Contest over Ariel and Kelly. Trinity put down the Marlboros long enough to hack and wheeze her way into the ring wrapped in police tape she no doubt grabbed when some of her family members got sent up the river for racketeering. Ariel was dressed exactly the way she always is because, as she put it, "THITH ITH NOT A COTHTUME, THITH ITH THE WAY I ALWAYTH DRETH." Kelly dressed up like a CM Punk if he was emaciated, lobotomized, an exhibitionist, and only 19. After Trinity wins, Mike Knox comes out to yell at his girlfriend and probably beat her up a little, and CM Punk runs out to make the save. Mike Knox is so pissed that he is left with no alternative but to challenge Punk to a match next week. Fear Mike Knox.
-In the main event, Dusty Rhodes' girlfriend jumped the rail, probably to get as far away from Cyber Sunday as she can, and was so freaked out that she hit Rob Van Dam with a pipe and allowed Big Show to chokeslam him and pin him. Then, after all these years, the gorilla reveals herself to be Paul Heyman. There it is folks, Dusty has been screwing a gorilla for twenty years.
ECW Top Five (As voted by...ME!)
All rankings are based on what happens on TV. House shows do not count. If it didn't happen on TV, it didn't happen.
ECW World Champion:Big Show
1)Rob Van Dam: He is officially the number one contender after defeating Big Show on 10/24.
2)Test: Once again on the winning side this week, this time in the main event against Van Dam and Holly.
3)Sabu: Defeated Kevin Thorn to qualify for the Extreme Elimination Chamber.
4)Daivari: I'm glad he's getting a shot to make his mark as a wrestler instead of a mouthpiece.
5)CM Punk: This guy is so over. It appears that the Mike Knox feud will be ending next week.
Hardcore Backstage News
WWE has suspended ECW house shows following the month of November. The ECW brand will be incorporated into the Raw and Smackdown house shows. ECW On Sci-Fi will continue as usual. [pwinsider.com]
This really doesn't surprise me. All signs are that they rushed into doing ECW house shows way sooner than they should have, and they have been drawing flies as a result. They also apparently had a much smaller budget for promoting the shows than they do for the two main brands. I would surmise that this is likely a result of the original plans to run a niche internet show before they decided to go the Sci-Fi/touring arenas route. This is kind of a bad sign though, because ECW has developed into a junior brand to Raw and Smackdown, and that shows no signs of changing anytime soon. I get the feeling that ECW house shows are being suspended in much the same sense that Byte This was.
Elijah Burke, Sylvester Terkay, Daivari, and Great Khali have been moved from Smackdown to ECW. [wrestlingobserver.com]
They're obviously trying to shore up ECW with what they view as name talent with potential. I thought this was a great move. If Daivari and Khali continune in the same kind of Michaels-Diesel, "small wrestler with huge bodyguard" roles they have now, I have no problem with it. I think most people probably freaked out because they thought Khali would be wrestling in ECW, but it doesn't seem they're going in that direction just yet. As for Burke and Terkay, I haven't really seen Elijah in action very much, but I hear he's pretty good and has been a top name in OVW for some time now. He certainly can talk. And I do see a lot of potential in Terkay, because although he just seems like a Bobby Lashley-type musclehead who punches a lot, the guy was an NCAA Division I Champion, so he CAN wrestle very well. Though he probably won't be able to do an ROH-style Pure style match anytime soon, he does have the knowledge and background, and has already shown impreswsive striking ability. Hopefully he'll use ECW as an opportunity to develop and get comfortable in front of a TV audience so he can be moved up to Raw or Smackdown in a more prominent role. And I have no idea what kind of promos he can do, but if his current amount of promo time given is any indication, they could pick worse people to stick him with than Elijah Burke.
The plan right now is to keep running with combined ECW/Smackdown house shows until at least Wrestlemania. [pwinsider.com]
Well, there you go.
Vital Social Issues N' Stuff With Stuart
Just some random thoughts:
-Is it just me, or was Test looking kind of bloated this week? And what are they doing with him? Is he just going to be a dick who does stuff the fans don't want to see? In all fairness, he does work his ass off, and he and Holly did their best last week despite the hostile crowd, but he's just kind of stuck on this treadmill where he's just beating the guys the fans want to see pushed without a storyline of himself.
-Damn, did Kevin Thorn drop down the ladder in a hurry or what? Did he fail a test or piss somebody off or something?
-I think it's great that Daivari's going to be an in-ring worker in ECW instead of a manager. The guy has more talent than both Hassan and Khali put together, and hopefully he'll get some kind of a push here, especially with Khali in his corner as a bodyguard, which is the perfect role for him except for maybe an occasional wrestling appearance.
-Next Week on ECW On Sci-Fi: Shannon Moore jobs to a dead person!
-I really wonder what the future holds for Hardcore Holly. He was way over for a week or two because of that Van Dam match, but since then he hasn't hit it with the crowd like a lot of people probably expected. I hope this wasn't a false start for him, but it's really starting to look that way.
Extremist Of The Week: CM Punk
He doesn't even need to wrestle every week to stay over with the crowd. I don't like the T&A segments (which I knew would be coming after Extreme Strip Poker), but I think it's great that it was all just a set up for Punk to come out, beat up Mike Knox, and get a big pop. If ECW gets killed tomorrow and nothing else was accomplished, it was all worth it to make CM Punk a national TV name.
F'N Links
Steve Cook returns this week with his excellent relaunched version of Ask 411 Wrestling.
In week ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE of Fact Or Fiction, Andy Clark and Ari Berenstein debate what the discontinuation of ECW house shows signifies for the future of the brand, among other topics.
In this week's Truth B Told, Bayani comes up with a topic I wish I had thought of, in which he looks at several national TV talents and discusses whether they'd be better off in the indies than on TV. And by the way Bayani, the stitches just came out, and my eyeball's as good as new.
As always, I get blown up reading Michael Weyer's Shining A Spotlight. He also apparently gets more reader mail than I do.
The column that needs the least promoting on this website, Wrestling's 3R's, is HERE.
And in this week's self-promotion extravaganza, this week's That Was Then brings us part SIX of my epic work, There Can Be Only One. Part Six brings us the tale of Shawn Michaels, from when he and Diesel split as a tag team through to him becoming the Ironman at Wrestlemania 12.
Extreme Outlook
This week we begin the build to December To Dismember, and so far ew have Big Show, Rob Van Dam, and Sabu. Who else will get thrown in?
CM Punk and Mike Knox are finally going to meet in the ring next week. How long will it take Punk to make Knox tap like a bitch?
What kind of impact will Daivari make now that he's apparently going to be wrestling full-time? Will he be able to succeed in the C-brand?
Banging Out
Well, that's it for me this week. Big ROH weekend, went to the show in the Boston area last night and tonight I'm off to Philadelphia for Homicide vs Corino SUCKAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! That's going to be brutal, and not in a Kevin Thorn match kind of way.
OH WOW, and I almost completely forgot that Big Show's going to be in the main event of Cyber Sunday this weekend! Heh, whoops. You can see how much everybody cares about that show. Does anybody here expect Show to come back to ECW with the WWE Title or World Title? No? Me neither. See you all in seven.
All feedback can be directed to stuwrestling@hotmail.com.
