Twilling's Blog The sad state of ECW, Why Tazz is great, Mark Henry, Mike Adamle By Rich Twilling Jul 9, 2008 - 12:00 PM Email This Article | Printer Friendly Page Send Us News & Results | Back to Main Listing Wednesday, JULY 9 – 12:00 P.M. -Last night’s ECW show was horrible for the second week in a row and ironically, it was not the fault of two week long ECW Champion Mark Henry. Henry has been a pleasant surprise to me. Not too long ago, I basically compared his mic skills to a bedtime story. However, he has been entertaining on the stick, both last week with Tommy Dreamer and Colin Delaney, and this week with Tony Atlas. The fact that Delaney is not on the disabled list shows Henry is improving in the ring. I would not call him the “savior of ECW,” but he is doing well in his new role. -As for the show itself, the roster is just so painfully thin. As long as the show is scoring ratings for the SciFi network, the show will remain on the air. However, ECW is portrayed as a joke even within WWE. Even when ECW was treated like the Jan Brady of the company, it was presented as a serious product, but now, they seem to be making fun of their own show. Case in point: Mike Adamle. He was a historic wreck during his debut week and in the few weeks that followed. Once he settled in, he was unnoticeable, which for him was a good thing. In my weekly ECW TV reports, I did not write anything about Adamle for a while, which meant I did not notice any glaring mistakes. He was not good by any means, but not being a disgrace to the wrestling business is a suitable goal for Mike every week. Last night, Tazz went out of his way, even more that usual, to make Adamle look like a complete jackass. Adamle does a perfectly good job of this on his own. Tazz is bordering on being unprofessional, but it is acceptable in this case because Adamle brings the treatment upon himself with his lack of skills and preparation. Also, it is damn funny. When Tazz moved to ECW, back when Rob Van Dam, Big Show, Kurt Angle, and Paul Heyman were on the show, it seemed like a logical and decent move for him. Once the show was internally bitchslapped by the company and all of those big names took off, poor Tazz was left behind. It was like the tenth season of "Happy Days" when Chachi and Joanie left to do their own show and Fonzie was left with next to nobody to work with. Tazz is Fonzie. Ayyyyeeee. Five years ago, people called Tazz the best color analyst in the business, and he was. If it was not for the long standing partnership and friendship of Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler, he probably would have been moved to the flagship show. If it was not for his ECW past, he would have at least stayed on Smackdown. Granted, Tazz still has a great job that a lot of us would love to have, but being where he is compared to where he was has to be an extreme (no pun intended) letdown. -Look at it this way: Jonathan Coachman was the color analyst for the main event at Wrestlemania XXIV. Beyond that scary fact, we all know that Adamle is making $300,000 a year and WWE is trying to get a return on their “investment.” I understand that. What I do not understand is why they gave Adamle so much money to begin with. Even if he was the next Jim Ross, giving a guy that much coin who knew so little (virtually nothing) about the product was crazy. It is like giving an unproven NFL rookie millions of dollars. If that is the going rate, Jim Ross should be making about 30 million dollars per year. Tuesday, JULY 8 – 6:24 A.M. -Raw was definitely an interesting show last night. It was not as good as last week’s show, but it certainly provided some interesting moments and left me very intrigued as to where they are going in certain areas. -Rightfully so, I will begin with World Heavyweight Champion C.M. Punk. Not many people are going to love the fact that he wrestled Snitsky, but if they are presenting Punk as someone who will wrestle anyone for the love of competition, I like it. It was a non-title match. If Punk is constantly wrestling on the show, he will become more recognizable to the fans and they can “pad his stats” with multiple victories. Also, they will accumulate plenty of footage to make a video stating how well his title reign is going. I also like the fact, with a little bit of subtlety, they continued the “Whodunit” angle with Punk. The fact that someone went after Vince McMahon and is now going after Punk could lead to something potentially very interesting. At the very least, people will talk about it. They could completely blow it but we will have to wait and see. Where I felt WWE messed up last night was when they did not let Punk join Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler on commentary during the main event. It would have made perfect sense to have him there because he is very good on the microphone and his PPV opponent was being determined in the match. Since John Cena, Batista, and JBL mysteriously disappeared after the conclusion of the match, Punk could have done the same. I found it to be a wasted opportunity to further put over the new champion. -Of course, the ending of the show last night will prompt a lot of discussion. When Kane was drafted to Raw, I felt as though he would linger in the midcard like he has in the past. While I hope he stays there, at least they can make him interesting again. I could see him working a PPV main event like he did back in 2004, but I hope they do not go down that road. No one will ever believe that Kane is actually going to win one of the major titles, so having him main event a PPV would not really sell a lot of shows. Building him up to challenge Punk on a main event of Raw would be a better way to go. Needless to say, it is imperative to create and establish interesting personalities for everyone on the card, so I am anxiously curious to see who Kane is talking about when he asked “Is he dead or alive?” and to see where they take him from here. -Moving on, Raw needs an authority figure and not surprisingly, William Regal is eligible to come back soon. I had been clamoring for a Regal push for years and was happy when he won the King of the Ring. I am hoping WWE shows the confidence in Regal that they have shown in Jeff Hardy since his return from strike two. I doubt he will be pushed to the point he left off at right away, but I hope they will at least put him back in his General Manager role. Of course, they could put him back into the ring, retire JBL again, and have JBL become the General Manager. That could work too. HELP SUPPORT DOT NET! BECOME A MEMBER AT OUR CHARTER RATE OF JUST $5 A MONTH - GET THE FIRST LOOK AT EXCLUSIVE INSIDER DOT NET NEWS, TONS OF EXCLUSIVE AUDIO SHOWS, MESSAGE BOARD ACCESS, START YOUR OWN BLOG, AD-FREE MAIN LISTING: SIGN ME UP (or MORE INFO) GOT AN IPHONE OR IPOD TOUCH? THEN BE SURE TO DOWNLOAD OUR NEW FREE iPhone APP: (click here!) (or SEARCH "pro wrestling" in iTunes App Store) FOR MORE BREAKING WWE & TNA NEWS AND COMMENTARY, VISIT OUR AFFILIATE PWTORCH.COM (click here!) FOR MORE MMA & UFC NEWS AND COMMENTARY, VISIT OUR AFFILIATE MMATORCH.COM (click here!) 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