I had my DVR playback working tonight with Tuesday's ECW and tonight's Superstars (watching an hour late after enjoying Iron Chef America with my wife, who is not a wrestling fan), and I have to say, both programs are benefitting from not being the WWE's "main" programs. A1 poster and Wrestling Observer subscriber bryce said that Dave Meltzer and Brian Alvarez often talk about why those two shows and to an extent Smackdown get the "old-school wrestling" build. RAW often gets overproduced, and thus "creative" doesn't have the time to come up with sports entertainment stuff for the other three shows.
Thank God for that.
While RAW gets all the attention, ECW and Superstars often contain wrestling action jam-packed into less than an hour's worth of run-time. Some of the matches are clunkers, but more often than not, especially on ECW, where experienced veterans such as Goldust and William Regal play jobber-to-the-up-and-comers, you're getting solid wrestling action that's better than some of their PPV matches.
This week, ECW gave us a lineup featuring Paul Burchill against Tyler Reks, Kozlov in a squash match, Goldust versus Sheamus O'Shaughnessy and a main event of Christian against Zach Ryder. Superstars had a surprisingly star-stocked lineup of John Morrison against Tyson Kidd, Yoshi Tatsu taking on Regal and the WWE Champion, Randy Orton, versus Primo Colon. None of them were bad matches. It was awesome, really, to have two hours full of matches with guys you may not get to see showcased on the bigger shows and to have them feel important without the trappings of the overarching main event story bogging it down.
Sure, RAW can have good-to-great matches at times. I look to MVP/Orton, Cena/Jericho, Jericho/Batista, the 8-man tag match featuring Ricky Steamboat right after WM and the Orton/Trips LMS match as evidence. However, there's no guarantee that you won't be subjected to Vince and company trying to pass off their lame comedy as the between-match filler. You do get the filler on ECW, but a lot of it is surprisingly old-school, featuring promos and some backstage stuff which is mostly serious in nature. Oh yeah, and Abraham Washington, but let's pretend he doesn't exist this week, just for the sake of my blood pressure.
The standout contest to me was ECW's main event, Christian taking on Zach Ryder. I can't tell you how much of a fan I've become of Ryder's character over the weeks, and with him finally stepping away from Edge's shadow, he's shown he can actually work in the ring. Ryder plays such a cheap heat gimmick, but he plays it so well. I love how he calls his opponent "bro" during the match too. Of course, Christian himself is a world-class worker, and I don't think I've ever seen him in a bad match where it was his fault. Put the two together, and you've got a great TV main.
I mean, some of the stuff Ryder pulled out was amazing. For example, towards the end of the match, he busted out a flying leg-lariat/Rocker Dropper type move where he got serious air. Christian may not be Diesel in height but he's also certainly not a Mexican mini-estrella either. Christian stepped it up a notch too, which not only shows the respect he had for the main event position and for Ryder, but in character really helped to legitimize Ryder as a main event player on Tuesday nights.
Even if RAW is in the shitter, I'm glad that the WWE hasn't completely abandoned wrestling and that I'll have ECW and Superstars for now to sate my thirst for accessible wrestling on a weekly basis. I bitch a lot about the WWE, but they do give you old-school wrestling, and I'm glad that as the market leader, they give quality on a consistent basis. I don't have to long for Comcast to pick up HDNet.
Although that won't stop me from longing and actually complaining to Comcast. You can never have too much of a good thing, but really, ROH is a much different product than the WWE, and that's a good thing.
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