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Archive for May 24th, 2007

I think ECW is taking over WWE Raw. Ever since before WrestleMania, when WWE started promoting the billionaire hair match feud between Vince McMahon and Donald Trump, with ECW Champion Bobby Lashley and Umaga as the stand-ins for the billionaires, Lashley has been getting more and more face-time on RAW than on ECW On SciFi, where he belongs.

Perhaps Lashley has massive student loan debt and needs to look into school loan consolidation to get out of hock, but his amount of exposure on Raw reached ridiculous proportions that make you wonder who he owes that he’s trying to pay off with all this overtime pay.

This week Lashley had to “run the gauntlet” on Raw to get the right to face Vinnie Mac one-on-one at the One Night Stand PPV and earn the ECW Title back. (Lashley lost it to McMahon a couple PPVs ago, after WrestleMania.) That resulted in Lashley wrestling four opponents, including Chris Masters, Big Viz, Umaga and Shane McMahon, needing to win all four to get his one-on-one with Vinnie Mac.

As a McMahon-Austin redeux, the McMahon-Lashley feud is entertaining enough, I suppose, but Lashley’s spending more time on Raw than on ECW, and it’s hurting the ECW program. Heck, One Night Stand used to be an ECW-only, or at least ECW vs. WWE PPV event, but this year it is just another PPV with Raw and Smackdown matches that have no connection to the ECW brand, other than all the matches at One Night Stand will be extreme rules matches.

Someone get on the phone and find a way to get Paul Heyman back on the WWE payroll so he can get ECW back on track, OK? Thank you.

There wasn’t much in the way of entertainment value to be gained from watching HBK’s concussion and attempt to wrestle through it on last weekend’s Judgment Day PPV. While it’s clear Shawn Michaels needs some kind of break from the biz, perhaps even a Kissimmee vacation, what’s not clear is whether the concussion is legit, or whether it’s a storyline excuse to give the aging superstar some time off from the WWE grind.

Right now, I’d have to guess it’s legit, if only because the match seemed pointless to the point of squeamishness. If it was only a storyline concussion to give HBK a few months off, the whole thing could have been way more entertaining in how it played out.

Either way, the result is a non-match that gets Randy Orton back over as a hardcore heel, a “legend killer,” as he prefers to be known in the storyline and the ring. With Edge moving over to SmackDown, and both Triple H and HBK out of action for the foreseeable future, Orton definitely needs to step up his game and become the top storyline heel for Raw … aside, of course, from Khali, who should be feuding with John Cena though SummerSlam, at least.