By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

SUPERSTARS HITS

Marella vs. Ryder: This was the same as just about all of Santino Marella's matches. However, I tend to enjoy them even if they are totally formulaic. Zack Ryder got in most of the offense in the short match. Marella did his hilarious come back and even got to hit The Cobra. This is one of those things in life that makes me laugh every time I see it. I said before the match started that if Ryder has any future in WWE (which I hope he does), he has to win this match. If he loses, then he isn't long for this company. Luckily he won. It was a fun match.

MVP & Christian vs. Carlito & Guerrero: This was a good tag match main event. Montel Vontavious Porter, Christian, Carlito and Chavo Guerrero all looked good in the match. I suspect we will get more of these tag matches in the next two weeks on Raw and Smackdown, only also involving the other Money in the Bank participants. The announcers did a nice job of connecting it both to WrestleMania in terms of building momentum, and to NXT in terms of Heath Slater and Michael Tarver being at ringside to learn valuable lessons from watching their pros. A few weeks back when I complained about how all the matches on Superstars were random and without a purpose, this is the type of purpose I was talking about (Superstars this week had four matches, two of which were random, and two of which had a specific purpose which is a good balance. Having a match between two random wrestlers trying to impress the higher ups and earn better competition or however you want to put it is perfectly fine. I just don't want to see four of those matches on one show). Back to the match itself, it had good wrestling action. There was a mini hot tag to MVP early on, then they built to the bigger hot tag to Christian later. That all worked well. I also liked after the match how Christian and MVP got into it a little as they both predicted they would win MIB.

SUPERSTARS MISSES

The Sleeper: The sleeper was a legit finisher when I started watching wrestling which was over 20 years ago. I was a fan of Brutus "the Barber" Beefcake back in the day, and plenty of other high profile stars have used it as a finishing move over the years. But not recently, which has been fine by me. I like submission holds. I wish WWE had more wrestlers who used them as finishers right now. I just think the sleeper making a come back with Dolph Ziggler is like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. We have been conditioned for years that this is a mid-match move to wear down your opponent, before the referee raises his arm and it falls twice, only to stay up on the third attempt as he makes a come back. He stands up, elbows his opponent three times in the gut, then runs off the ropes. I'm all for breaking up that formula, but watching Ziggler try to get the move over has not been enjoyable. I don't like having the referee just stop the match when it looked like Shelton Benjamin had passed out. What if he was waiting for the ref to raise his arms three times?

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, NXT, 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.

[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

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