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The Specialists
10/6 WWE ECW Hits & Misses: Tiffany - Regal, Regal vs. Tatsu, Christian vs. Ryder Oct 7, 2009 - 11:14:19 PM
Tiffany - Regal: Last week's episode of ECW was pretty bad. This week's was better, but not much. Last week's show had zero Hits, but this week's had two, starting with this short backstage scene with Tiffany and William Regal. Tiffany isn't a great performer, but she was good here. Regal was very good in slyly questioning Tiffany's decision to come back from her injury after only one week. He did it in a way that made it seem like he was concerned for her, not on his own power trip. Obviously, she wasn't buying it as she quickly sent him away for his match against Yoshi Tatsu.
Ryder vs. Christian: This was the third good match between Zack Ryder and ECW Champion Christian. It was predictable that there would be the interference from the Ruthless Roundtable, and it made sense to not have a clean victory in this match, as they want the #1 contendership to be up in the air, meaning Ryder wasn't going to get the win, and they also want to keep Ryder strong, so he wasn't going to get the loss either. The action leading up to that point was good. Ryder and Christian have developed a nice chemistry in the ring. Ryder continues to show his potential.
ECW MISSES
Opening Segment: The show did not get off to a great start. The opening segment wasn't terrible. There were a few good things about it. However, it finds itself as a marginal Miss. Regal was strong on the mic. Christian's bit about the janitor, Tony Atlas and Yoshi Tatsu all deserving ECW Title shots ahead of Regal and Zack Ryder was ok. There were some funny moments in it, but the "thank you" bit with Tatsu wasn't nearly as humorous as last week (which was only slightly amusing to begin with). Then Tiffany came out. I'm fine with her being back, but it is ridiculous that she was back, yet Regal hadn't been informed that he was no longer the interim GM. As I said above, I did like their scene together later in the show, but this didn't make any sense. It did set up three matches for the show, and there was some nice mic work, so it wasn't all bad. It would have been better to just have Regal come out, acknowledge Tiffany's return and demand to be named the #1 contender and continue on the same way from there.
Tatsu vs. Regal: I was looking forward to this match since last week's show, but was very disappointed. Tatsu and Regal did not work together well at all. There were some very sloppy moments and some straight ugly moments too. Matt Striker tried to cover for them, but it didn't work. At one point it looked like Tatsu missed a spinning elbow, but Regal sold it like it connected. That is just one example of multiple poor spots. Even the ending seemed forced with Regal sliding to the side of the ring in a way that would likely never happen in reality. It just wasn't a good match.
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.
Send feedback on this article to pwtorch@gmail.com and we'll regularly publish reader feedback in the "Torch Feedback" category on the Main Listing.
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