WWECW Workrate Report 5/15/07

Vince starts us with a sit down interview wearing a white doo rag (to match his suit) and doing a kinda bonkers promo about how much he likes his "skull caps", and thinks they look cool, but what he likes more is not wearing anything on his head at all and how Bobby Lashley took that privilege away from him. For anybody that was sick of MacMahons on TV, I think Vince is so incredibly awesome once you're removed from the situation.

1. RVD vs. Snitsky

On paper this does not look great, but RVD's best opponents are usually immobile roid guys. He bumps around big for their moves and makes them look better than they really are (and bumping has always been his strongest suit). When he's against another "athletic" guy they just become mindless jerkoff sessions. RVD still has plenty of problem spots in this match (his forearms have always been a train wreck) but this match is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. They've both been in with "better" workers, but this is a good match up. It's not a good match, mind you, but a good match up. All of RVD's spin kicks land nice and snug and he peppers them in at the right times. Snitsky doesn't blow anything and controls with acceptable power offense. Match ends when Snitsky hits RVD with a chair, so apparently that is not a thing you can do in the new ECW.

2. CM Punk vs. Steven Richards

They do a Punk video before the match highlighting all of Punk's martial arts expertise, and it shows footage of him just hitting his awkward spinning mule kick and slapping somebody. He also calls jiu jitsu "jits" which is just about the most annoying 'breve you can use. I did not realize Richards was still a WWE employee at this point but I'm stoked as I always liked his WWE work. The Bob Holly matches from Heat were two of my favorites from that time period. This match was really great and about as awesome a match as you could do in 4 1/2 minutes. Punk has his ribs taped up from getting hit with the Pounce last week, and Richards immediately eye rakes Punk and starts ripping at the tape. He starts working the body with punches and stomps, snapmaring Punk and just booting the shit out of his back. Nice, satisfying THUD there. Richards works him over with a cool bow and arrow and keeps to those ribs. Richards always had really great body part specific match layouts, depending on what the match called for. Punk's comeback was nice and quick, with Richards getting into place for everything really well and flying face first into the GTS. God I wanted like 2 more minutes at least, but they filled the time they had really well.

3. Kevin Thorn vs. Nunzio

Thorn seems pretty boring, just making a bunch of scowly faces and plodding around. Nunzio looks GREAT here. His bumping was always pretty spectacular, but his evasive offense here was really satisfying and his stick and move style worked nicely. He had a really great dropkick to Thorn's ankle and then hit a sweet dropkick off the top. Then Thorn just kinda brushed it off and hit his admittedly cool finisher (like a Stunner but with the guy draped over the top rope, called the Dark Kiss). I imagine most guys don't take it as well as Nunzio, though.

Extreme Expose is up now, and okay Kelly does legitimately seem out of place during a bunch of this, and even takes a kick to the head from Layla at one point (Layla does a lot of high kicks and was lying on the apron doing them, when Kelly tried to walk through the ropes mid-Layla kick. Whoops.) which they admirably move on from somewhat smoothly. Layla looked so damn tiny and skinny during this, much less curvy than present.

4. The New Breed (Matt Striker, Marcus Cor Von, Elijah Burke) vs. Bobby Lashley

Boy, sure are a lot of 3 on 1 handicap matches on the new ECW. They're even building one up throughout the show for the upcoming Judgment Day PPV. This match is pretty much nothing until Cor Von hits the Pounce a few minutes in and Lashley spills spectacularly over the top rope to the floor. For a move that seems really hard to make look good, a lot of guys seem to make the Pounce look really good. Burke looks really good working over Lashley. He had a bunch of nice body blows, a cool Kabuki right uppercut, and a great fistdrop off the top to Lashley's ribs (was Burke a guy getting pimped in 2007? He looks really good here). Lashley's come back kind of comes out of nowhere, like they just got the call to go home. They go from Lashley selling a beating to just immediately going back on offense, dispatching Burke and Cor Von, and then hitting his finisher on Striker. Striker gets more height on a chokeslam/power bomb type move than anybody I've ever seen. Holy lord. This match could have been really good if Lashley's transition to comeback was worked in sensibly. Instead they just flipped a switch and it was "Okay, my turn to do stuff" and the whole thing ended up rushed.


WWECW MASTER LIST