Matches from this week’s ECW featuring people I care about…

…this obviously does not include Chavo Guerrero vs. Tommy Dreamer.

The best thing in the WWE by far at the moment is the whole Chris Jericho vs. Shawn Michaels saga. That’s not to say that everything else isn’t good, it’s just that storyline has become so good that it’s just so far ahead of anything else. I’m sure I’ll write about that many times before too long though, today I’m going to watch some matches from this week’s episode of ECW on Sci-Fi, which may not have the star power or whatever of the other brands, but can usually be relied on to deliver a match or two that’s decent at the very least.

John Morrison vs. Matt Hardy
Matt Hardy may not have ‘IT’ like his brother Jeff, but when it comes to consistently good TV matches, you can’t go wrong. Also, he has awesome punches and Jeff…does not. Put Matt in there with somebody he can really work well with like John Morrison and you’re going to get a great TV-length match. This was a really good back-and-forth contest, and I liked Morrison getting over the ‘winner goes on to the Championship Scramble’ thing by showing more aggression than usual. Both guys going for their finishers early and often was good, and there were a lot of reversals and near-falls without it coming off too contrived or whatever. They were given plenty of time too, which is one of the main reasons I like ECW. Anyway, eventually Morrison makes a blunder and Matt hits the Twist of Fate for the victory.

The Miz vs. Evan Bourne
It seems like I like Evan Bourne/Matt Sydal quite a bit more in the WWE than I ever did in ROH or anywhere else, probably because the rest of the WWE roster isn’t filled with people doing the exact same spots and moves as him. All Bourne’s moves, counters and reversals were really unique here, especially his wacky roll-ups, and the jumping knee strike while The Miz was perched on the top rope. For his part, The Miz was a pretty great heel in this match, really laying into Bourne with all his clubbing blows and strikes and general prickishness. Said it before, I’ll say it again – The Miz is easily the most improved wrestler in the WWE that isn’t called Kelly Kelly. The ending was pretty great too; Bourne went for a top rope hurricanrana, Miz slippd out and Bourne crash landed on the ropes and turnbuckles. That is gonna hurt tommorow. Miz then finished him off with the Reality Check.

I’m pretty surprised (and disappointed) to see The Miz advance to the Championship Scramble at the PPV over his tag team partner John Morrison. Don’t get me wrong, I like Miz, but Morrison is awesome and seems a bigger star. Anyway, these were both really good matches, and are great examples of why I like to watch ECW, so I can’t really complain.

I was also going to watch the Mike Knox vs. Finlay match; I heard it was pretty hard-hitting and fun, and Finlay obviously rules, but Mike Knox has never even slightly impressed me in anything that doesn’t involve manly facial hair, so I can’t be bothered.

Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart, WrestleMania X

This is the last thing I wrote on the BobbyCheese forum that I like enough to bring over to here. It’s another large essay but if I actually get any readers, they’ll have to get used to that. After this, I can get onto writing brand new junk about fake fighting. For example, I watched SummerSlam with my friend Jasp and we thoroughly enjoyed it, but then Leeds Festival happened like two days after it, and I killed about 400 braincells there, so I’m going to re-watch it soon and then write about how much of a scoundrel Chris Jericho is.

(PS. I originally wrote about the match below in May, when it actually was the anniversary of Owen’s death. I am not just some kind of rube)

Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart
(WWF WrestleMania X, 20/03/94)

The other day was the ninth anniversary of Owen Hart’s death. This is weird and makes me feel old because I remember it vividly. I didn’t watch the actual event but I got to high school the next day to hear about it from my friends. Liam Knowles decided the best way to tell me was “OWEN HART’S DEAD! THERE’S NO MORE BLUE BLAZER! GODFATHER’S STILL INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPION! :)”. Nice priorities, that.

Anyway, I decided to watch what is probably Owen’s best match (that I’ve seen anyway) as sort of a tribute, and sort of because I remember it being awesome and I’m interested if it still is. Owen was great, and Bret is one of my favourite wrestlers ever so guess what? It’s still awesome.

Jimmy Jacobs vs. Bryan Danielson

I <3 Jimmy Jacobs Episode II: Attack of the AMERICAN FUCKING DRAGON

Bryan Danielson vs. Jimmy Jacobs
(ROH Unscripted III, 01/12/07)

Jimmy Jacobs is someone I go out of my way to download matches of; “American Dragon” Bryan Danielson is the only other ROH wrestler I do this with. Danielson is someone who would probably flop completely in WWE but in the ROH environment he is incredible. He used to be really technically good but completely bland, but gradually became just an overall great wrestler, with a reputation that of The Best In The World™ who can beat you in a million different ways.

Jimmy Jacobs vs. Colt Cabana

So lately I’ve been doing lots of drinking and dancing and drugging and…despondancy? Anyway, Leeds Festival happened. It was amazing as usual, maybe not as good as previous years thanks to Biblical rain storms and lots of mud and ‘coming down’, but still better than practically anything else all year. But this isn’t meant to be a personal blog, so I’m not going to write about how awesome Queens of the Stone Age were, or this girl I know and her pretty hair. I’m just going to continue copying all my wrestling stuff over from the BobbyCheese forum, so i can move onto new stuff. Be warned, this one is an ESSAY.

Colt Cabana vs. Jimmy Jacobs (Windy City Deathmatch)
(ROH Five Year Festival, 24/02/07)

I like most of the Ring of Honor I’ve seen, but one of the most valid criticisms it gets is that it’s just “good wrestling” for the sake of it, with not many stories or feuds and basically not much of a reason to care beyond the matches being technically good. This is the biggest exception, as it’s one of the two big climaxes of the “Jimmy Loves Lacey” storyline, which was really one of the best stories in all of wrestling in the past five years and I wish that I’d actually seen more than 1/3 of it. The basic SparkNotes version of it is that Jimmy Jacobs is an emo kid who fell obsessively in love with his manager Lacey, which she used to her advantage and basically treated Jimmy like shit and made him do all her dirty work. He tried to woo her by writing emo love songs about her and putting them on YouTube, and it was funny and cool. Then after Jimmy became so nuts over her that he viciously turned on his tag team partner BJ Whitmer, the story turned nasty. Colt Cabana got involved eventually, fucked Lacey, earning Jimmy’s hatred, dumped Lacey and tried to get his former friend Jacobs to stand up for himself and realise what she was doing to him. He didn’t obviously, and instead they spent a few months stabbing the shit out of each other. It’s as good a story as it sounds. If it doesn’t sound good to you, it is, because Jimmy Jacobs is absolutely fucking incredible at his character, and he’s somehow became an awesome blood-soaked brawler, despite being about 5ft tall.

Cactus Jack vs. Randy Orton

I also wrote a couple of actual essays on matches over on the forum. Here’s one…

Cactus Jack vs. Randy Orton (Hardcore Match)
(WWE Backlash, 18/04/04)

This match proves the awesomeness of Mick Foley. Here he is, after his retirement from being full-time, having a great match with Randy Orton, WAY before Randy Orton had good matches. It was the first of his post-retirement “getting killed to put an up-and-coming heel over” stuff, which he’d repeat to great effect with Edge, and pointlessly and lamely with Carlito.

The basic back story for the match was that the Legend Killer gimmick had first started, so Orton had been antagonising Foley for months, leading to Mick entering himself in the Royal Rumble solely to get at Orton. Then they had a handicap match at WrestleMania (Evolution vs. the Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection), where Randy pinned Foley. This caused Foley to challenge Orton to HIS kind of match at Backlash, but not against Mick Foley – against the mythical Cactus Jack. Hell yeah.

Stuff from BobbyCheese: WCW/ROH

Man I’ve been banging on about wrestling a lot lately…I expect it to continue, otherwise I wouldn’t have set up this thing, but you know.

WWE matches I wrote about on BobbyCheese, part 3

Another Rumble, Jake Roberts slapping the taste out of a woman’s mouth, Bret Hart being awesome, and much more! Well, actually that’s it.

MORE random WWE matches!

You know the score. This one includes a Royal Rumble though…

Some random WWE matches

These are also random matches I watched on YouTube etc. and then wrote about on the BobbyCheese forum…

More BobbyCheese stuff: Dragon Gate matches

Thanks to YouTube and Daily Motion and all that, I’ve been able to watch a match here and there from Dragon Gate lately. This is the order I watched them/wrote about them on the BobbyCheese forum, not the order they happened. Educate yourself!