Thursday, February 2, 2017

ECW Review 7/18/2006

ECW Review
American Bank Center, Corpus Christi, Texas

The show starts this week, showing a replay from Saturday's Main Event, which at first didn't seem relevant, but then... the main event is shown and it is Big Show and Khali vs. Undertaker. They beat him down, bad. And that leads to the announcement of the main event, Big Show vs. Undertaker for the ECW Championship. Sounds pretty good. Then the intro for the show plays.

And yet again, Kelly's Expose. Mike Knox grabs her, same old stuff. Instead of going backstage however, Knox takes her to the ring. Kelly tries to show off to the fans and Knox shows her a video of Sandman from last week. He tells her to go to his corner, and Knox calls out The Sandman.

Extreme Rules Match: Mike Knox vs. The Sandman
Once Sandman finishes his entrance, Knox goes right after him. He takes him right outside the ring, and beats on him. Multiple surroundings are used by Mike Knox, including the crowd barrier, the announce table, and the camera cord. After the bashing outside, Knox throws Sandman into the ring, but Sandman comes at him with a large amount of offense, including punches, bulldogs, kicks, etc. They spill back outside of the ring, and Sandman goes to hit Knox with the Singapore Cane but he pulls Kelly in front of him and she takes the blow. They go back inside and Knox hits Sandman with a couple low blows and pins him.

Winner: Mike Knox in 2:38
Sad to say, but this is one of the better matches that has been on ECW. It had a bit of a story, and the action somewhat played to it, I guess? I'm stretching it here. *

A short video showing Shannon Moore is shown, now repackaged with the gimmick of  "The Reject." Sigh. They also show Kelly being stretchered out from the cane shot to the head.

Paul Heyman comes out and continues the rant from last week on how the fans cost RVD the title, not him. Tommy Dreamer interrupts him. He says how he has gone through everything with Heyman, since the beginning of ECW. He goes on to say that Paul proved a lot of people wrong, but on this time, he is way out of line. Tommy also demands an explanation. And Paul Heyman drops the mic and kisses Tommy on the lips. I officially have no idea what is happening. And then Test comes out of no where and hits Tommy with a Big Boot, and then a Fireman's Carry Swinging Neckbreaker. No idea what happened.

Back from commercial, and Balls Mahoney talks about what makes him extreme.

Sabu vs. Stevie Richards
Stevie Richards starts off the match with his game plan, sticking to grappling. Surprisingly, Sabu fires right back with some technical holds. This takes back Richards and he has some strong strikes, and then goes right back to the technical holds. Sabu gets back up and starts hitting a combination of things, trying to start a comeback. We see two nice springboard attacks from Sabu, and then a Camel Clutch to end the match.

Winner: Sabu in 3:13
Another boring match for no reason, but what else is there to expect anymore. ¼*

CM Punk is backstage, and just talks about his training, but still no match from him. What is the point? Kevin Thorn is also backstage and has yet another weird segment with Ariel.

The commentators go on about how Big Show is a monster, and a highlights package is shown.

ECW Championship Match: Big Show (c) vs. Undertaker
The match starts out with Big Show dominating, as expected. A commercial break goes by, and we come back to Taker having the advantage, but that momentum is soon halted. The match continues on in a semi-ok pace, but no big moves to note are hit. Taker is selling as an underdog, and does quite a good job at it. It looks like Show is about to win after hitting an 800+ pound superplex, but Taker not only kicks out, but also sits up. The comeback has started. He starts hitting Show with stiff shots, and they both go for a chokeslam on each other, to no avail. Taker does hit a big boot though which knocks Big Show out of the ring. Taker continues hitting Show, but then Khali comes out and hits Taker to promote their upcoming match at Great American Bash.

Result: No Contest in 13:54
Not a bad match at all. It really does go to show how good of a worker Undertaker is. The crowd stayed entertained, and so did I. Too bad it had a crap ending. **

A brawl continues with Big Show and Khali double teaming Taker. They end up chokeslamming him through the announce table. After this, Khali does some posing and the show ends.

Overall: 2/10. While the overall show was pretty terrible, and was on track to be another 0/10 rank, the main event really showed off. Too bad we probably won't get Taker every week. Speaking of that though, I know Rob Van Dam is suspended, but where is Kurt Angle? Surely he could've been doing something useful at this point. Who knows.