The Week In Hardcore 11.11.06

ECW On Sci-Fi Results 11/7/2006 (1.5 Rating)

-CM Punk defeated Mike Knox by submission in a qualifying match for the Extreme Elimination Chamber (7:35)

-Daivari pinned Little Guido (2:22)

-Test pinned Tommy Dreamer in a qualifying match for the Extreme Elimination Chamber (3:27)

-ECW World Champion Big Show & Paul Heyman went to a no-contest with Rob Van Dam & Hardcore Holly (9:55)

Thanks to Larry Csonka for match times.

Storyline Developments

-Elijah Burke and Sylvester Terkay officially debuted on ECW this week in a backstage segment where they…officially announced their debuts. Scintillating segment.

-Paul Heyman came out with his gorilla mask that he’d been using to seduce Dusty Rhodes all this time, and runs down Rob Van Dam, finishing by calling himself the savior of professional wrestling. Wait, he’s not done just yet, he also invites anyone from any brand to sign a contract for the sixth spot in the Extreme Elimination Chamber. Not like those other five spots that the guys ON THE BRAND had to wrestle for. I really hope Snitsky shows up and lays out Kevin Thorn and signs the contract just to piss everybody off.

-The main event came to an abrupt and UNSCHEDULED end when Hardcore Holly turned on Rob Van Dam, then made out with Big Show. Heyman just sat there watching and masturbating.

ECW Top Five (As voted by…ME!)

All rankings are based on what happens on TV. House shows do not count. If it didn’t happen on TV, it didn’t happen.

ECW World Champion:Big Show

1)Test: Yet another win over Tommy Dreamer this week, and he’s going to the Elimination Chamber.

2)CM Punk: Qualified for the Elimination Chamber, but is the Mike Knox feud now behind him?

3)Hardcore Holly: Got some heat back this week with his turn, nonsensical though it may be, against Rob Van Dam.

4)Rob Van Dam: Main eventing once again this week and is heading to the Elimination Chamber

5)Daivari: He’s finally wrestling full time and has gotten a nice little winning streak going for himself.

Hardcore Backstage News

Francine has announced her retirement from professional wrestling once she finishes out the dates she has booked. She intends to pursue a normal family life. [myspace.com]

It was her MySpace page, by the way. This doesn’t shock me. ECW was her last real chance at making it, and with that having now fallen by the wayside, there’s nowhere else for her to go from here. It’s too bad, she wasn’t just a pretty (?) face, she was a tough as nails broad who was not at all afraid of mixing it up and taking bumps. At least she wasn’t pregnant when they let her go.

ECW’s rating this week was a 1.5. [pwinsider.com]

This is bad news. I’m not going to look back and check, but I think this is their lowest rating yet, and around a full ratings point drop from their first few episodes, back when the Raw and Smackdown guys were coming over. As committed as Vince is said to be to the project, you have to think that between this and the suspension of house shows that this isn’t good news for the brand going forward.

Claudio Castagnoli, who along with partner Chris Hero is one half of the ROH, CZW, and CHIKARA Tag Team Champions, has signed a WWE deal and is expected to report to a developmental territory in about a month. [pwinsider.com]

While this does not immediately or directly affect ECW, I first would like to say I’m happy for Claudio, who is a very entertaining worker and character, but I also would love to see him end up in ECW. He has impressive size (which I know because I was standing next to him last weekend) and a unique style that I think would fit in very well in a smaller environment like ECW instead of worrying about him getting lost in the shuffle in the main two brands. Too bad they didn’t pick up Hero, too. They are, in my mind, one of the top three or four tag teams in the country right now, and now without Claudio, I’m going to have to watch Hero stall his way through singles matches now. He’s better off doing the talking and letting Claudio do all the work.

The Sci-Fi Network will be running a “Best Of” ECW On Sci-Fi on December 26th, since the wrestlers will be on their Christmas break.

So don’t be sitting around all week thinking about how great a Christmas present a fresh episode of ECW On Sci-Fi will make! What? You weren’t gonna? Damn.

Vital Social Issues N’ Stuff With Stuart

Well, it seems that I’m going to be out of town for three weeks, because my best friend James is getting married. Why will this take me away for three weeks, you ask? Well, he went and moved out to New Zealand to be with his fiance (I guess it would be tough to marry her from New York), so I’m going to make the arduous 27 hour trek out there to be in attendance, and will be out of the loop for a few weeks as a result. In the meantime, my main man Ari Berenstein has agreed to take the reigns of The Week In Hardcore while I’m away, so everybody please send him lots and lots of nice emails thanking him.

But now my trip to New Zealand is rapidly approaching, and in order to ensure that I’m properly prepared, I checked out the latest travel regulations laid down by the Transportation Security Adminstration on their website. Even though I don’t expect any trouble, I felt a little bit iffy when one of the first things they said is to make sure I’m prepared before I arrive. I question this advice, because it would probably be more helpful to be prepared WHEN I arrive. Being prepared before I arrive won’t do me much good. I checked the website for the list of things I am allowed to bring on the plane with me , and it is a short one. It is also an interesting one which includes the following: bubble bath balls, bug sprays and repellents, cigar cutters, corkscrews, KY jelly, umbrellas, and Transformers action figures.

That is a strange list, but pales in comparison to the things I am NOT allowed to carry onto the plane with me. This list includes:

Box cutters, ice axes, ice picks, knives, meat cleavers, sabers, swords, baseball bats, bows & arrows, cricket bats, golf clubs, hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks, pool cues, ski poles, spear guns, ammunition, BB guns, firearms, flares, flare guns, pellet guns, starter pistols, axes, hatchets, cattle prods, crowbars, hammers, drills, saws, billy clubs, blackjacks, brass knuckles, batons, mace, pepper spray, martial arts weapons, nightsticks, nunchakus, stun guns, throwing stars, blasting caps, dynamite, fireworks, hand grenades, plastic explosives, gasoline, gas torches, flammable paints, turpentine, paint thinner, chlorine, compressed gas cylinders, liquid bleach, spillable batteries, spraypaint, and tear gas.

Well, that fucks my trip. What will I do now that I can’t bring my ice pick and tear gas on the plane with me? This flight just got a hell of a lot less interesting. And I have to say that if there were going to be some sort of trouble on my flight, I’d feel better about having a spear gun close by than KY jelly.

Extremist Of The Week: Hardcore Holly

Their desperate attempt to keep him over resulted in the only noteworthy thing to happen this week.

F’N Links

Larry’s got the ECW On Sci-Fi Report and also the famous Wrestling’s 3R’s!

Michael Weyer looks at the one year anniversary of the passing of Eddy Guerrero in Shining A Spotlight.

Bayani rates the value of the various major titles in the business in this week’s Truth B Told.

Ashish beats up the 411 Games Editor in week ONE HUNDRED AND SIX of Fact Or Fiction. I agreed with all of your picks, boss.

Steve Cook returns with the latest, greatest Ask 411 Wrestling.

And in this week’s shameless self-promotion of That Was Then, I take a look back at last weekend when I made a grueling road trip to Boston and Philadelphia on consecutive days for Ring Of Honor shows.

Extreme Outlook

The Extreme Elimination Chamber now features ECW World Champion Big Show, Rob Van Dam, CM Punk, Sabu, Test, and one more to come from another brand. All the top names are in here, so who’s left to fill out the undercard? Even with the (let’s face it) mid-level names in the main event, will anyone want to buy a show with, potentially, Mike Knox vs Sandman as the semi-main? One week after Survivor Series?

This also means that nearly all of these men’s individual feuds is over, at least for the time being. Where does this leave Hardcore Holly, who turned on Van Dam this week? He is positioned as one of the top names on the brand, but isn’t in the main event. Who will he be matched up with at the PPV?

Banging Out

That’s it for me this week. You know what? In the immortal words of Owen Hart, “Enough is enough, and it’s time for a change!”

Be nice to Ari.