ECW: 9th July 2009

The ECW undercard is a little underwhelming at the moment, post-shuffle. There's the Bella Twins doing a twin gimmick where they switch places, at the expense of Katie Lea, who actually is worthwhile in the ring. Ezekiel Jackson cuts a pointless promo and has a squash match (he at least does a nice lariat). They waste my wrestling watching time with the Abraham Washington segment (I'm still hopeful that intentionally bad comedy gimmick, as evidenced by Dreamer's reaction, and the hairbrush). On the positive side, the first time someone punches him is going to get a fantastic reaction.

The Yoshi Tatsu-Shelton Benjamin match was a pretty decent little TV effort. Yoshi (already getting crowd support) seems to have half a moonset at the moment - his stuff into the finish was fine, but he had nothing earlier in the match, and his couple of bits look awkward. If they are looking for another Tajiri, he's going to need to develop some personality. Tajiri was great at interacting, without words, with the crowd. Benjamin was solid here - I much prefer him as he currently is, with more ground attack and more character than as the Man Who Jumps.

You have got to love Christian's entrance being accompanied by a slack-jawed child shot (this is how I look at home during Christian matches also). I hope that makes his next Titantron video. I enjoyed this a lot - Christian bumps around, including a full-force body drop over the ropes to the outside, and Kozlov looks good on offence. I'm also enjoyong some of his facials - Christian's first punch was met with a great look of shock and anger. Nothing particularly high end, especially relative to Christian's better matches this year, but the seven minutes this got implies they have a pretty great longer match in there for a later date.

But please, don't ever ask Tommy Dreamer to do colour commentary again. Sometimes, when he talks, it makes me wish that I was listening to the relative coherence and meaningfulness of Sarah Palin's resignation speech. Example (paraphrased): "Tommy, what are Christian's assets? Tommy?" "Sorry, I'm lost in this action. I'm scouting these guys as well" "What are his assets was my question" "His assets? Everything". Great scouting, there. Also, even if it's easy, don't let your commentary team make him look like more ridiculous by discussing how dumb his answers to their questions have been. He's still the champion.