Tuesday, May 23, 2006
With Judgement Day finally out of the way, it was time for ECW to shine on Monday Night Raw. It's now full speed ahead with the hype for One Night Stand.

The show opened with the angle to set up the Dreamer/Funk vs. Foley/Edge match. Foley presented Edge with the Hardcore title. Edge said he couldn't except it and said Foley deserved it more. They eventually decided to declare themselves the co-holders of the championship which brought out Paul Heyman. Heyman said Foley had prostituted his hardcore legacy during recent times then challenged Foley and Edge to face two ECW wrestlers of his choosing in a tag match at ONS. Foley was hesitant but Edge jumped in and accepted the challenge. Heyman then brought out Dreamer and Funk and they brawled around ringside with Foley and Edge. There were some big ECW chants throughout this angle but the lack of the pop for the ECW run-in could not be ignored. I've said from the beginning that the audience needed to be conditioned to react to ECW, but in the third week of storyline development the reaction for Dreamer and Funk was shockingly low.

The second angle set-up RVD challenging Cena for the WWE title at ONS. After being DQed for Van Daminating Shelton Benjamin with the IC belt during a championship match, Rob acted all P.O. Later that night after Cena had disposed of Chris Masters in a match RVD came out and told Cena he was cashing in his Money in the Bank for ONS. When they had the big stare down it immediately struck me how meaningless a Cena vs. RVD main event would look to your common or garden WWE fan. It means something to ECW fans but you could almost hear crickets chirping in the background. WWE's booking team has three weeks to make RVD look like a worthy contender. It's going to be quite a challenge.

They also aired the first commercial for ONS. Nothing too spectacular, just your usual montage of highspots. One of the highspots was a diving head butt performed by Chris Benoit in a WWE ring. It stuck out like a sore thumb among the ECW clips.

The big WWE/ECW/SciFi announcement is expected today so you can bet I'm going to keep hitting that refresh button on my browser. On wrestlingobserver.com they announced that the first two ECW house shows will be June 24th in the old ECW Arena and June 25th in Elizabeth, PA at the Court Time Sports Center. Hopefully they'll arrange to have the old school Fan Cam tapings of the events.

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