Around the Ring: Hardcore Holly gains new respect in ECW

It's been an excellent week in the world of wrestling!

First off, we look at the wicked TNA show where it was announced that Kurt Angle will be the special enforcer in the Jeff Jarret vs. Sting, title vs. career match. If you want to see Jeff Jarratt lose the title, I suggest that you get this PPV because I don't have any belief that Angle's first public appearance in TNA will be a heel angle aligning with Jeff Jarratt. In addition, more awesome matches have been announced, but I will go into more detail with an upcoming article closer to the PPV that's taking place in Detroit.

In ECW this week, it was great to see JR showing up to help promote the product and actually cane Matt Striker with Sandman's cane. Week after week, I'm beginning to think that the WWE had a great idea with sending Striker over to ECW. He's excellent on the mic, decent in the ring and pure heel material.

Speaking of extreme, did you people see the laceration that Hardcore Holly got after dumping RVD into a table outside the ring? If you don't have a newfound respect for Holly after this, I pity you. Listen, I'm not a big Holly mark or anything, but to come from being “Sparky Plug” to the matches he's had over the past year after coming back from an almost career ending injury, you have to give this guy props. The laceration took 25 stitches to close and he STILL wrestled for about 10 minutes after he got the injury. Go to www.wwe.com to see the clip of the injury and Holly being stitched up.

Smackdown was ok this week but next week (prior to writing this) will be better when we actually get to see Lashley take on Batista. Hopefully the WWE will let Lashley get some good spots in on Batista in order to establish himself even more on Smackdown. I hope that Lashley lands on Raw sooner than later.

On Raw, it was almost like a PPV event! Seeing how last week had no new angles (no pun intended) or groundbreaking matches or events, this week was a total switch. We had a steel cage match in which we saw Cena retain his WWE championship with a little help from DX. This is the second time DX has come to Cena's aid. Does this foreshadow something? This outcome also makes me wonder how long we're going to watch this Edge/Cena feud continue and who is DX going to feud with next? I guess we'll find out on next week's three hour Raw where all these questions are bound to be answered.

Props to Jeff Hardy for winning the IC belt! I'm sure next week's Raw will have a rematch between them where Hardy's newest opponent will show his head. I can't wait!