After the usual ballyhoo finishes, Grisham and Striker inform us of tonight’s main event – Mark Henry vs. Fit Finlay.

ECW Champion Matt Hardy is out first. We see another recap of Hardy’s title win from Unforgiven before his opponent comes out. They announced that Hardy will defend the belt at No Mercy against Mark Henry. Tonight Hardy is facing Mike Knox.

They actually had a pretty decent and long-ish match. I don’t know if Matt Hardy is really great or Mike Knox has improved, but they had the best match of the night, hell, I preferred this over anything on Raw.

 

Early on, both men got some offense in till Hardy had the upper-hand. They went to the outside and both hit a double clothesline, after the break, Knox worked over Hardy, who had been kicked into the steps during the break. Hardy missed a moonsault and Knox regained control of the match. Eventually, Hardy made his comeback and hit a tornado DDT and the Twist of Fate for the victory.

I said I liked Mark Henry as champion of the show, but Hardy is so over as a babyface, the people really love him, and he has the best matches on ECW, so I’m cool with him being the champ.

Henry and Atlas were backstage watching the TV; Atlas commented that Hardy looked good. This sent Henry into a tirade about how he was going to get his belt back at No Mercy and beat the crap out of Finlay tonight.

Miz and Morrison walked out of a lift, that maybe the greatest 10 seconds in ECW history.

 

Miz is out to face Evan Bourne, but while Miz has John Morrison in his corner, Bourne bought out someone to be in his corner. That someone was Ricky Ortiz! Jesus Bourne, couldn’t you find anyone better than this goof? Also, does Ortiz even have an official managers license?!

This was another decent match, mainly because Bourne is so great and Miz is pretty good himself. They teased Morrison attacking Bourne, but Ortiz came over to warn Morrison off. I do believe Morrison told Ortiz at one point during the match to “Give Carlito his hair back”. The finish saw Morrison trip up Evan, which caused Ortiz to come flying off the steps and splash Morrison. Miz ran at Bourne in the corner, but Bourne ducked and did his awesome roll-up pin for the victory.

Next up was Jack Swagger in another squash match. Tonight he was facing former TNA tag champ Chase Stevens, you know, the blonde one from the most generic tag team of the decade, The Naturals.

Swagger did a lot of pick ups and take downs, and you know what, he looked really good this week. He won of course with some generic powerbomb, but still, maybe the future is bright for this dude. He still has a retarded smile and an awful name though.

 

Also, I’ve figured out what his theme is! It was Jamie Noble’s first theme from back in 2002. I knew I’ve heard it before, but just couldn’t pin it down as to what it once was.

 

The streak of decent matches sadly ended at the main event. I did somewhat except this to be decent, but sadly it was ten minutes of Mark Henry applying rest holds and Finlay selling.

They did a spot where Tony Atlas had the ref distracted, and Mark Henry grabbed Hornswoggle. Finlay saw this and smashed Henry in the arm with his stick (it looked more like he smacked Hornswoggle in the head with it). Henry sold his arm for the rest of the match but still managed to hit the Worlds Strongest Slam for the victory, as ECW went off the air.

I thought it was a better show this week than previous weeks. I don’t mind Hardy vs. Henry again at No Mercy. Hardy will win, and I suspect that at Cyber Sunday they’ll do a vote off between Henry, Finlay and someone else. Finlay is most likely to be voted in, and I’ll finally get to see Finlay vs. Matt Hardy again. As always, please send any comments or questions to steve@ifight365.com.