WWE ECW 149

April 14, 2009 – Knoxville, Tennessee

John Morrison def. Evan Bourne
The Miz was drafted to Raw the night before, and he turned on Morrison on his way out of ECW. Honestly, this match should have been a lot better. This had flashes of greatness, with a stiff knee from Morrison here and a wild lariat from Bourne there. But it didn’t come together in a compelling way and thus never captured the crowd. They gave this a ton of time and I’d say they didn’t live up to their potential. Morrison got the win with a hanging Moonlight Drive at 13:36. Like Matt Hardy vs. Finlay from the UK, the commentators immediately start calling this a MOTYC, but also like that match this was really overhyped at the time (by the online set as well). ***

Vladimir Kozlov def. David Floridia
Kozlov smash, Kozlov squash. Kozlov win in 1:06 with a chokeslam. N/A

Paul Burchill & Katie Lea don’t want to be split up in the supplemental draft. Tiffany tells them she can’t help them. Jack Swagger walks in and says he should do a Q&A on the WWE Superstars debut in two days. Tiffany says instead she’s booking the finals in the Elimination Chase series. God dammit, more extracurricular shit for me to watch. 

Finlay def. Christian and Tommy Dreamer {Triple Threat Match}
Finlay pinned Dreamer in 9:26 (shown) with the Celtic Cross for the win. So it will be Christian vs. Finlay to see who faces Swagger at Backlash. This was better than last week’s match in the series, mostly because the internal logic of this match worked where it didn’t then. It was also just a more exciting match, even if it went a few minutes longer than it needed to. **¾ 

I took a good ten years off from watching wrestling on the reg from 2008 to 2018, and while I thought I’d done my homework to learn what I’d missed in the broad strokes, I didn’t know that WWE Superstars was a show that existed for seven years. Anyway, here’s the ECW match from the first episode of that show. 

April 16, 2009 – Knoxville, Tennessee

Christian def. Finlay {Number One Contender Match}
On commentary, Josh Matthews says that Tiffany came up with the Elimination Chase, ignoring that it was actually Armando Estrada who did that in 2007. This was a really energetic little match, that Christian won in 4:29 with the Killswitch. I guess if you’re not going to do this match on ECW, at last do it in front of a crowd that’s about to watch an episode of ECW live. **¾