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The Specialists
6/18 WWE Superstars Hits & Misses: Santino, Eve vs. Layla, 6 Man Tag Jun 19, 2009 - 12:44:06 AM
Santino Marella: While I can't give Santino vs. Chavo Guerrero a Hit (not very long, lame ending), I thoroughly enjoyed Santino's performance, both before and during the match. He gave a fun promo following up on his twin sister's feud with Vickie Guerrero and his feud with Chavo Guerrero. It is unfortunate that WWE went so far across the line with Edge's farewell to Vickie that it is hard to enjoy any humor in Santino's "little piggie" line. But, the promo on the whole was funny. I like Santino's gimmick of surprising himself at his own wrestling abilities. I liked how he challenged Chavo to attack him, then cowardly ducked, leading to Chavo hitting the turnbuckle, then telling Chavo that he did that to himself. It was an amusing match. I don't mind Chavo getting the win, but he should have hit the Frog Splash first.
Eve vs. Layla: When this feud first started, I criticized it for how cheesy it was with the dance contest. I stand by that criticism. I also criticized it for the fact that I was not looking forward to the eventual match between the two. However, I was quite impressed by the match. Eve Torres and Layla both looked better in the ring that I was expecting. There were a few sloppy spots in the match, but they were not too bad. The match had solid to good action throughout. I was particularly impressed with Eve's crazy handspring moonsault finisher.
Main Event 6 Man Tag: This was a fun 12 minute tag match. Christian, Carlito, Primo, Jack Swagger and the Hart Dynasty all looked good in their roles. The way the match was booked, Christian wasn't featured very heavily, but I don't mind as it gave a chance to see more of Carlito & Primo who have been impressive lately. Swagger looked good. David Hart Smith looked better on ECW than he had in his earlier performances. He looked good here too. I still would love to see more of Tyson Kidd in a featured role. There was a lot of talent in the ring and a lot of energy and high flying offense. The ending sequence was particularly strong. It was good that Carlito got the pin as he and Primo need to be kept strong as the Unified Tag Champs, especially heading into a PPV Title defense against Priceless in a few weeks.
SUPERSTARS MISSES
None: There wasn't anything big to complain about this week. I prefer the format that the show has had in all of the previous weeks, with three matches instead of four where we get two longer matches instead of just one, but that wasn't a huge deal. All four matches served a purpose and were at worst decent. Again, I don't really need to see a Raw Rebound again, but as I have said in the past, I would rather see it on Superstars than on ECW. The Edge video was fine. The other recaps fit into the show well. I can't really complain about anything.
Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and Superstars each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.
For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.
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