Late Tuesday afternoon I was made aware of the fact that ECW General Manager Tiffany was to be the invited guest on the Abraham Washington Show, of course one of the components on the ECW telecast. I was further tipped off that Mr. Washington was going to question Tiffany about some of the arguably curious decisions made / not made by as of late by her concerning her roster of ECW superstars. Now being somewhat critical of Tiffany's actions from a business perspective, I was interested to hear if her comments were going to be ones that exhibited a sensible business rationale; I'm not so sure that it did.

I've spoken to Tiffany many a time, and she does come off as a pleasant, articulate businesswoman. She certainly has a vision for where she wants ECW to go, and as being a WWE loyalist since day 1, I'm fully supportive of positive direction. But when you are in charge of said direction, you can also dare to be different in the process. And after listening to Tiffany's comments to Mr. Washington's questions, I wonder if there is some misdirection in Tiffany's step. Here's my take and opinion:

WWE BRAGGING RIGHTS

When Mr. Washington pointed out that ECW had zero impact, Tiffany thought that ECW had a "tremendous impact". She proceeded to bring up the fact that the members of Team Raw and Team SmackDown, in addition to John Morrison, and Kofi Kingston all had their first break on ECW. For the most part that is true; no argument there. With the exception of DX and Cody Rhodes, all of the other participants in the SmackDown -vs- Raw teams at Bragging Rights were involved in the ECW brand at some point in time. So here I felt that Tiffany put a spin on the question. My interpretation of the question was more of the extent of why were none of the current ECW superstars on the card itself? I would suggest that in the grand scheme of today, our WWE fans will look at all of the names that Tiffany alluded to as current Raw and SmackDown superstars, and not from whence they came.

SHEAMUS TO RAW

As many of you know, Sheamus debuted last Monday on Raw. Raw commentator Michael Cole mentioned that he was signed as a free agent. According to Tiffany, she said that she worked under the premise that "if you don't want to be here, I don't want you here". Sheamus said that he wanted to leave, Tiffany said he could leave for good, but he had to take on Shelton Benjamin in one last match. Fair enough. But in my Raw blog last Tuesday, I wondered how Sheamus could just pick up and leave; Tiffany clarified it. But this was very reminiscent of earlier this year, when then ECW General Manager Theodore Long allowed Matt Hardy to take off for SmackDown. At that time I was critical of Long not trying to work a trade out with SmackDown to receive a suitable "playa" in return. It's déjà vu all over again, almost. Tiffany was at somewhat of an impasse here, because if she wanted to make a deal with Raw and receive someone in return, whom would she have dealt with? Raw has no General Manager, just guest hosts. And as an aside who did Sheamus agree to terms with? Regardless of that, Raw got a blue chipper in Sheamus, and Tiffany lost a roster member.

Now I applaud Tiffany for one thing: the New Talent Initiative. She carried this program over from the Theodore Long administration, and indeed some really good talent are blossoming from it, in particular Yoshi Tatsu (more on him later). Now of course I'm nothing more than an armchair quarterback every Tuesday night in my ECW viewing. But to me, there is no doubt that this armchair quarterback believes that although Tiffany has what it takes as General Manager to carry the ECW ball downfield, she has to add a little "pep to her step" so that going forward she does not fall short of the goal line like she has in my eyes.

No, thank you Yoshi Tatsu! To me, he certainly proved his worth last night in wrestling ECW Champion Christian. And although unsuccessful in emerging victorious, Japan's latest export showed that he had the heart of a lion, and a drive than many WWE superstars would covet. The future is certainly bright for the man from the Land of the Rising Sun!

Speaking of the ECW Champion, evidently William Regal can't take no for an answer. Despite being told once again by Tiffany that he would not be receiving another title match, the venerable Englishman decided to send his goon squad of Ezekiel Jackson and Vladimir Kozlov into the ring after Christian emerged victorious in his match. I think that Regal will face severe consequences for as actions, perhaps suspension. I'm anxious to see where this goes. Madame GM, it's now up to you...

That's it for this week. And it's up to you to leave a comment, if you'd like.

Take care everyone...