I don’t often write about the Tuesday ECW show because, quite frankly, it usually is pretty uneventful. Last night’s episode, however, was an exception.

The highlight of the show was the non-title bout pitting WWE tag-team champions John Morrison and The Miz against Jimmy Wang Yang and Shannon Moore. It pains me to admit that I enjoyed a match involving The Miz, but it’s true. All four guys worked hard and hit some dazzling moves, and while Miz is the weakest worker of the bunch, he more than held up his end.

The finish saw Yang hit a sensational moonsault on Miz for the pin, presumably setting up Yang and Moore for a title shot.

Speaking of Yang, I’ve been a fan of his work since his WCW days and I’m glad to see him having some success. More on him later.

The other intriguing match last night was between U.S. champion MVP and ECW champion CM Punk. The two champs had a good wrestling match that ended with MVP getting disqualified.

The real story, however, was that Chavo Guerrero returned and attacked Punk after the match. If Guerrero is making the jump from Smackdown, that’s a good pickup for ECW. The ECW title picture suddenly looks a whole lot better with Shelton Benjamin and Guerrero in it. Perhaps WWE has had second thoughts about a Punk-Big Daddy V program.

Benjamin, by the way, showed a lot of fire in picking up a squash victory. Changing brands and bleaching his hair seems to have done wonders for Benjamin’s confidence.

Back to Yang. When I first met Yang (James Yun) in 2000 after I became editor of WCW Magazine, I was surprised to hear him speak in a slight Southern drawl. At the time, he was a member of the Jung Dragons (who were billed as hailing from Japan) and never spoke on camera. He would go on to play a Japanese character in TNA and WWE as well before the latter gave him a gimmick makeover. The fact is that Yang is half-Korean, half-Caucasian and grew up in Georgia. The character he is playing now is much closer to his real personality than any of his previous ones.

In WCW, he was teaming with Kaz Hayashi, who spoke limited English. Yang told me that he served as Hayashi’s unofficial translator. I asked Yang if he spoke Japanese, and he said no, but he and Hayashi somehow managed to understand each other. At one point, Leia Meow, playing a dominatrix character, was managing the Dragons. I used to kid Yang that he had the best gimmick in the company – playing Meow’s submissive slave.

The thing that I really liked about him – besides the fact that he bought me lunch a couple times at New York Pizza Exchange in Atlanta – is that he grew up a big wrestling fan like the rest of us.

When he was in high school, Yang had a friend who lived down the street from Diamond Dallas Page and then-WCW boss Eric Bischoff. One Halloween, Yang, dressed as Sting, and some friends (also masquerading as WCW wrestlers) went trick-or-treating to Page’s and Bischoff’s houses. When Kimberly Page answered the door and saw the boys in costume, she called DDP over, and he invited them in and posed for pictures with them. Yang told DDP he wanted to be a pro wrestler, and Page encouraged him to follow his dream. A few years later, Yang and Page were co-workers.

The boys also met Bischoff that night. After Bischoff agreed to get a picture taken with Yang, the teenager grabbed him by the hair as if he were about to give him a Scorpion Deathdrop. Yang showed me the photo and we ran it in an issue of WCW Magazine.