quick thought on RAW tonight, as posted elsewhere:
the Joey Styles RAW promo was at least three minutes too long, way too about much about inside things most fans probably don’t care about, and ill conceived both in the idea to turn him heel, and to kickstart the ECW bit over an announcer.
It’s also the exact sort of promo that a fair bit of ‘smart’ wrestling fans will [fill in your blank] in their pants in excitement. That whole notion of Joey quasi-‘shooting’ is taken backwards by those people, I believe. They wouldn’t have Joey saying anything on the air that hasn’t been said behind closed doors many times before, and the fact that they let Joey say those things on air without actually changing the product in any way (or giving the impression that they were going to do so) means the speech essentially boils down to
Here are the things some of you think are wrong. This man has proven himself an idiot for saying so, and you are equally wrong for thinking this way. Learn to love WWE the way it is and stop complaining.
Having Joey go heel at the end of it sends the message that the splinter group is not “different”, but they’re “wrong”, because they’re against the WWE fans. (And all Joey’s complaints invalid, because obviously the man is insane if he’s against Our Great WWE Fans.) That does not bode well for the long term prospects of ECW.
They really had to have Coach out there for that skit, because it’s a billion times better with him. They’ve been fine to let Coach ruin many a broadcast over the last eight or so months, and I think they could’ve let him do one more to get this angle over a lot better – if they wanted ECW as a face. I think they know the fans were going to choose Joey over Coach, so they were hoping they’d choose Lawler over Coach. Lawler doing the bitter old man act didn’t actually help.
Heat, Velocity, and Heat (pre PPV). It’s Monday, I did most of those recaps on Saturday, and I can’t remember much about them. Vito probably had his best match in the WWE, but it’s with Chris Freaking Benoit, so I would hope so. Matt Hardy’s retired the Downfall Raindrop, I think, and that’s ever so sad. I was surprised Burchill didn’t find his way on to SmackDown – lack of faith in his reaction? (He did change home countries!) It seems as though they’ve already forgetten the Cade/Murdoch reunion angle, or whoever was booking Heat that week was only booking that week.
Even before tonight, I haven’t exactly been hyped for the ECW concept. The WWE seems to have a problem with the concept of a One Night Stand – it always goes wrong when you try for something more. Times have changed, expecations have changed, people have grown older, and conditions aren’t for the better. You can use the past to create and springboard on to new ideas, but expecting to recapture the same spirit is foolhardy. It was gone a long time ago, before they even stopped promoting and airing on TNN. ONS ’05 wasn’t and didn’t bring that spirit back, it was simply a celebration of what spirit had one existed. You can’t have a party every day. At some point, you’ve got to move on with your life.
I’m sure I’ll watch the WWE vs ECW show, because it’ll be free. And I’m sure I’ll watch the ECW TV premire show, because I’ll be hoping they’ll change my mind and it’ll be a new great experence inspired by the ECW of old. I’m attempting to keep an open mind until some final result of countless decisions airs, because there’s still likely many pivotal choices to be made which will greatly shape what finally becomes ECW. Still, if nothing else changes and they stay on the same path, I really don’t see something worth investing $35 on a PPV or my time on a weekly recap. Come July or September or whenever this thing bumps off Velocity, I’m expecting to be bumping my WWE recapping down from 2 hours to 1.
I hope they find something for Josh to do.