Counting The Lights

I think Yoshi Tatsu is pretty good. And I’m excited to see him wrestle Christian.

But good lord, Abraham Washington. Good fucking lord.

And Shamus? I might never make it to the match. I just might not.

Tiffany’s music has lyrics: Insatiable / can’t get enough / need to find a boy bad enough to keep up

And she runs ECW? Sometimes I ask these questions because if I don’t get them out, my head will fucking explode. She said that if people don’t want to be in ECW, they can leave. Well, I don’t want to fucking watch it. Yet, I do, just because the Christian matches have been good and Regal is funny as fuck. In fact, Regal proved on the show that he’s one of the few heels who can get actual heat. Of course, he loses all his matches and they don’t build on it.

“Mr. Ree-gal. You have asked me reee-peat-edly. And my answer is noooooo!” I want a conversation between Kimona Wannalaya and Tiffany because it will be the most entertaining interview ever.

That said, Regal throwing furniture?

Fucking awesome. It’s how I feel at work every single fucking day.

Alright. Asshole time. Shamus won’t be doing 10 minute matches on Raw. In fact, he’s Snitsky 2K10. That said, um, dude, what was the point of him beating Sheldon? ECW should be a territory of its own and the loss doesn’t hurt him on Raw. It only makes Sheldon look weak when he is matched when the next geek that comes up from developmental. So yeah, I did not even watch the fucking match, so fuck you for wanting me to.

Rosa Mendez was like blah blah blah blah blah to Matt Helms and then the Pirate and his evil sister and then blah blah blah Byron Saxton.

But yeah. Yoshi Tatsu. Christian. They gave these guys a lot of time. The crowd was into it a little in the beginning but it picked up. Christian really has been the quiet star of the year, able to work great matches with a good variety of people: Jericho, Woo Woo Woo, Tatsu, Regal, Swagger, Dreamer. Actually, Saxton is not a bad little commentator here, just selling that this is important to Yoshi without telling us that they’re rented the Tokyo Dome to have the Emperor watch the match.

Actually, I like the idea of ECW. I wish it had nothing to do with the main WWE and didn’t have the promo pieces in the middle that feel forced, and then it’d be it’s own little company and I could enjoy it for what it was. And yeah, I wish the WWE had followed through with their global farm system, as I read about in The Observer:

Besides every attempt at running his own business, from UFC to ECW to Pride, [Shane's goal was to] globalize the company by opening up international offices all over the world which would run their own regular promotion, essentially a global version of the old territorial system. There were plans worked on (WWE at the time talked about it publicly and there was a major story in the Observer at the time with the basic details of the plans, although our feeling at the time is it wasn’t viable) but ended up going nowhere. Several international offices were opened, but were then closed, even the Canadian office, which had been around dating back to the days of Jack Tunney in 1984. Carl DeMarco, the longtime president of WWE Canada, was one of Shane’s closest allies in the company. The talks of running full-time major offices all over the world, with most of the talent residing in different parts of the world, doing their own big shows and PPVs, and WrestleMania being like an annual All-Star game, were eventually changed to the idea of having the big touring company but setting up full-time promotions in a few parts of the world that would be more developmental level, most talked about being an all-British or European office. In the end, none of the ideas ever came to fruition.

Shane was made the overseer of the project and at first, Vince was very passionate about the expansion. He had regular meetings with John Laurinaitis about talent and agents and staff that would be the best for each market. Stephanie was in charge of which writers would be sent to which satellite territories. Brian Gewirtz was adamant about staying stateside with Raw, and had a meeting with Stephanie where he saw the plans to move Ed Koskey to Europe with Dusty Rhodes, Bruce Prichard and Christopher DeJoseph (Big Dick Johnson) to Latin America and Gewirtz, a team for a Japan/Australia territory while Michael Hayes, David Lagana and Gewirtz would write the U.S. shows. None of this got past names being on a piece of paper, and it’s pretty clear and should have been when the names were put down that there was no way at his age and stage of life that Rhodes was going to relocate to Europe. The plans for new offices, which eventually were opened up, was step one on that expansion. However Vince nixed the deal. Part of the problem was when the worldwide economy went bad, Vince didn’t want to make any expansions because Vince was fearful of the economic effect on the company. Vince feared that an election of Barack Obama would destroy the economy and that’s when many expansions, like the TV studio, were pulled back on. What killed the project was said to be the collapse of Italy, which had been the country’s hottest European market at one point, and suddenly they went back to the mentality that Europe is better being played twice a year as opposed to Europe was a goldmine and they could run a full territory there. Japan had been a tough market for years, and had gotten tougher and it was very clear a WWE brand running regularly in Japan would be an embarrassment to the company. WWE twice a year shows were suddenly drawing less than NOAH and New Japan big shows in Tokyo and the last thing the company wanted was a full- time WWE presence in Japan and be the No. 3 promotion in the country. And like with so many WWE projects, once things started looking bad, Vince lost all interest and all plans were dropped.

Yeah. Well, they spent more on a Randy Orton NASCAR car than developmental last year. So there you go.

Anyways. the match with Yoshi and Christian.

What makes Christian’s matches work is that he builds his near falls around teasing his finisher. It’s simple. And that’s all it really is, you know? Keep wrestling simple. I would have had Yoshi try to kick out at the end, but that’s neither here nor there. The best thing is, after Christian wins in a great match, the beatdown got over. Because it’s simple. You had a great match and the bad guys tried to ruin it. It works. Simple things work.

Wow did it work.

The crowd hated Regal to a level unheard of and the fact that Regal never even touched Christian adds to his complete asshole aura. Just fucking completely awesome. Well done, everyone.

Hey! This was positive! Also, thanks for taking Shamus off Raw! Bring Giant Pharoah up!

-Sam

Getting to this more than late. Well, I’m doing it right after TNA. So…I’m sorry.

Wow, Abraham Washington starts this off. Jericho cuts him off and we’re on.

Right now, I do not want to watch any more of this fucking show.

There are people starving in the world and we’re wasting money on pyro for ECW. Yes, life is truly a piece of shit.

The new ring annoucner, Lauren Mayhew? If you made up a list of things I would not want to fuck, she’d be on the summit of that mountain. Also, The Teacher makes up dumb, borderline racist names for Yoshi. The Storm Shadow? Because he’s Japanese. So he must be a ninja. I love Yoshi. I love his shitty music. He and Zak Ryder lock it up and do some of the wrestling. You know, this is bullshit, Teacher telling us that the fans are in the streets watching this in Rippongi. People have nice pants in this match. WWE Universe mention. And blah. This was a good little match. Enjoyable, minus the horrid commentary. It’s so fakey and so smartly sure of itself it kind of makes me tune out.

Jericho meets Tiffany and some other blonde girl walks out. Jericho walks into getting a match with Christian.You know. I have a rant. ECW. Run by a can do it girl who is trying to turn it into the little brand that could. Or ECW. With girls dancing on top of the Crow’s Nest and taking piledrivers.

That said, I could watch an entire hour of Jericho and Regal being insincere with one another and talking about their suits. It would be the best show ever.

Seriously, I am going to start talking like Tiffany all the time. I write for Counting the Lights, the youngest most exciting wrestling blog around! I am proud to write for this site! I am so excited that every week I get to watch Shamus and TNA! It is the number one and the best!

Shamus and Shelton do a little brawl. I watched it in fast forward. Why would I lie to you?

And now, Katie Lea is on her way to the ring and I am quite happy about that. Hardly any of the new ECW guys made it into the new Smackdown vs. Raw game. I’m hoping for DLC, so we can get Burchill, Yoshi, Katie and some of the Smackdown guys like the new Hart Foundation. That said, you can download almost anyone you want or make them. ECWs Brand Warfare story gets over ECW better than anything the WWE ECW has ever done.

But tonight, a pirate is unmasking a fake Green Lantern. So whatever.

Finally, Jericho and Christian had a great little match and it made ECW look better having Christian go over. I hope he doesn’t get sent to one of the other shows, because I enjoy having him here in ECW, having good matches. And when you add it up, there was more wrestling in this show than all of Raw and definitely all of Impact. You get a lot of wrestling for very little here in ECW, as long as you aren’t put off by the pale Irish guy with no personality.

-Sam