History of ECW with KB

Heat Wave 1999
Date: July 18, 1999
Location: Hara Arena, Dayton, Ohio
Attendance: 3,700
Commentator: Joey Styles

So it’s another month and time to do another ECW show. Taz is still world champion and tonight is destroying Tajiri. Yeah that’s a great way to drive up the buyrate Paulie. The main event is RVD/Lynn vs. the Impact Players. Ok that’s a bit better. Oh never mind. None of them have any tag titles or anything worth winning here so there we are again. The card looks like crap so I’m not really looking forward to this. Let’s get on with this.

Taz says he’ll beat Tajiri. I’m so riveted.

Danny Doring and Roadkill say that they’re awesome. The only thing awesome here is their manager Ms. Congeniality. Most of you know her as Lita.

Chris Chetti and Nova say they’ll win.

Jason rubs oil on himself and talks about himself beating Jazz.

The Dudleys talk about Balls Mahoney. Why do I have a feeling that means Spike also?

Steve Corino, who I still barely recognize, talks for Tajiri. He’s a cowardly heel manager at this point. Yeah he would get better.

Storm and Credible say they’ll win. Can we GET TO THE DAMN SHOW???

Lynn says he’ll team with RVD tonight because he has to. RVD says Sabu will understand. Sabu comes in and doesn’t like it.

Holy shit we’re in the arena! What a concept! Joey does his normal welcome and we hit the theme song. There are six announced matches, the tape runs just over two and a half hours, and we’ve spent over seven minutes talking. This doesn’t make me go to a happy place for this show, and I like being in my happy place. If nothing else we get shots of Dawn Marie.

Danny Doring/Roadkill vs. Chris Chetti/Nova

Lita is with the heels here, and uh, damn. She’s playing up a **** character already. That’s saying a lot. The fans want to see her tits. That’s something she’ll get used to. Doring wants to talk. That doesn’t shock me at all. He says he was laying in bed last night and had a realization and something came to him. Ok then. See, when the fans here do the chants they’re cool as they were original. Now when TNA fans do them, they’re obnoxious.

Doing proposes to Lita, who accepts. Naturally there’s no ring, so Roadkill hands him a condom. Sure why not. Somehow Nova sounds awesome right now. Chetti is wearing a Mad Hatter hat and dancing badly. Even Joey is freaking out over it. The first contact of the show is made at thirteen minutes in. Chetti might be gay now. Ok then. Nova is alone in the ring and gets hit with a Hart Attack.

Joey says he’s 28. That just comes off as odd but cool at the same time. It’s nice hearing someone be that young. It’s fast paced so far if nothing else so I can’t complain. Roadkill is a decent power guy. Doring is just a pest. Nova hits what would become known as the Ratings Spike in OCW. He follows that up a bit later with a Stunner/DDT combo on the heels. That’s damn cool looking.

We get a horrible figure four. Damn it and things were going so well up to that point. Chetti hits a sweet looking double jump moonsault and grabs a mic. He says it’s time to dance, and of all songs Livin La Vida Loca comes on, and he dances with Lita. WOW. Nova comes in and of course is pissed off.

Lita winds up taking what we would call a Cradle Shock. In an impressive display of strength, the dancing idiot hits Roadkill with one as well and a double splash/legdrop from the same turnbuckle at the same time (cool move) ends it.

Rating: B. We have four young guys wrestling a fast paced tag match to open a PPV with a hot woman involved. Sounds like a winner to me. The dancing thing is just OUT THERE though. I get that you want to have a gimmick for the guy, but seriously? That’s the best you can do? Hot opener though and I’m into the show because of it so great job there.

We see clips of Taz yelling at Tajiri but he’s interrupted by Corino and Rhyno. Corino is more or less hated here as the punk kid. After a funny bit of Taz yelling at Corino and it being just one long bleep, Tajiri turns heel and beats up Taz to set up the title match here.

Jason vs. Jazz

So it’s heel manager vs. heel manager. Sure why not? Jason is Buff Bagwell but more annoying. Jazz is Jackie meets Chyna in case you missed her in WWE. Yes this is one of the six matches on the card. Oh great she’s dancing. Jazz is from New Orleans. I would have thought Utah. So I’m thinking this is like Jarrett vs. Chyna Lite.

I have to think that since nothing is explained of course. Apparently Jazz has either very little or no experience but of course she’s decent in the ring. A problem here is that Jason isn’t that big to begin with and Jazz is quite a bit smaller than he is so his offense looks weird. Jazz gets a decent looking crucifix into a sunset flip. Jason looks a bit like Santino in the face. At least from a distance. Jazz makes the comeback to some nice pops. Chairs are brought in and his balls are crushed. An X Factor onto the chair ends it.

Rating: D+. So was this just a random man vs. woman match or was there a point to this? Either way Jazz is annoying and the match was too short to be much. I don’t get it but whatever. I don’t get a lot of ECW stuff so there we are.

Cyrus shows up at the commentary area.

Little Guido vs. Super Crazy

Yeah because the whole international match thing hasn’t been done to death right? The commentary is REALLY hard to hear. Hey look we’re stalling before we get going. Who would have guessed that? Guido has decent bicep muscles for a guy his size. The fans are inquiring about a pizza they claim to own.

As usual the match is fast paced and exciting to see but at the same time they all run together as there’s little point to having so many of them other than ECW having no use for any of these guys other than as filler to pad out their PPVs that don’t need to be three hours as they don’t have enough stuff to go that long. The ten punch count in Spanish is a fun touch. You can never accuse ECW fans of not paying attention.

Guido gets thrown over the ropes and it looks great. Cue big dive. We hit the crowd. Never mind that we can’t see anything. In a fucking STUPID spot, the heels are looking up at Crazy for about 8 seconds while he gets ready for the big moonsault in the crowd. Hmm. WHY DO YOU NOT MOVE YOU FUCKING MORONS??? That is what people mean when they say contrived spots or moves that expose the business.

There was zero reason for them to just fucking stand there like that. No reason at all. Crazy hits a springboard spin kick which is one of my favorite spots. And he follows that up by being an idiot and doing the spot where you jump from the top and the guy puts his boot up. Tell me, is there a reason you jumped with no visable intention of doing a normal move other than JUMPING INTO THEIR BOOT? That’s idiotic spot number two.

Cyrus is really annoying so at least they got his character right. Sal, the 500 pound fat ass, comes in and hits an alleged Fameasser on Crazy for two. They can’t pin him. The fans chant Little Caesars. I haven’t eaten all day so that sounds AWESOME. Crazy fucks up the third moonsault but makes up for it with a SWEET dive onto Sal.

An Unprettier gets two as Crazy kicking out the whole time is just fucking stupid at this point. And after being killed more or less for 10 minutes, Crazy hits a powerbomb to win it. That match made my head hurt.

Rating: D. This just made no sense. Crazy getting beaten on that much and consistently kicking out with no issue was just idiotic. He takes big move after big move and is fine 8 seconds later. Also like I said, these matches just run together time after time. This show is almost an hour in and it feels like a house show. That’s not a good sign at all. Ok match, but the booking was just horrible.

We recap Balls and Spike vs. the Dudleys. Pay no attention to the fact that this is the same match as last month or that it’s the fourth time in a row that Spike has fought them on PPV.

Tag Titles: Dudley Boys vs. Spike Dudley/Balls Mahoney

Something tells me this is going to take awhile to start. Bubba talks about how these are the only belts that mean anything. That explains them jumping in less than 5 months. Gertner is still selling the injuries from the missed fireball. Joey says he looks like the Invisible Man. Joey, you fail. This is a fairly infamous promo as Bubba more or less has the crowd on the verge of rioting with how much heat they have on them.

This is where he says there’s a *insert gay slur here* in the front row and a mother who taught her daughter to suck dick. The Dudleys say that if the fans won’t come to them, the Dudleys will come to the fans. This is intense stuff if nothing else as a woman spits on Bubba. Now it’s time for Gertner to talk. He makes sex jokes based on the names of movies in theaters at the time to really date the show.

Ok he gets in a great line to make up for it. “Whether the girls are at home or here in Dayton, or back at home and *********ing”. Yes he’s awesome. They’ve been talking for ten minutes now. Ok, we get it already. FINALLY Balls’ music kicks on. And now Balls talks. He says it’s a street fight with falls count anywhere. Wow I’m stunned. Naturally it’s a massive clusterfuck.

Seriously did you expect anything else? We get the cheese grater and I already hate this match. Seriously, what does this have to do with tag team wrestling? You never see more than two people on screen at once. D-Von and Spike are in the crowd doing whatever. Since there’s no referee with them, it’s rather pointless to follow them isn’t it? It’s just a big brawl with blood and random strikes. Spike dives off the balcony. Yeah I don’t care either.

Now I’m stunned as all four guys are in the ring at once. Holy shit. The fans chant for flaming tables. Being put through one of those sounds pretty good right now. D-Von just goes off on Mahoney in the corner with punches. Ok that was kind of cool. The faces hit their finishers at the same time and of course the Dudleys kick out. And it worked so well the first time that we should just do that all over again!

So of course the four finishers don’t do it so they win with a schoolboy. Wow that’s riveting. The Dudleys do the beatdown afterwards and the table is lit up. Make that two tables. What a waste of fake wood. The powerbomb on Balls is botched. Yeah there’s nothing unsafe about that. Spike goes through. And since this was an idiotic match, here’s New Jack to really cram it home. As I’ve said, he is the epitome of everything wrong with ECW. This celebrating goes on forever as we kill more time.

Rating: F. The camera work sucked, there was zero wrestling, the ending was idiotic, it’s the same match as last month and the same feud for four months and New Jack was involved afterwards. What do you think I’m going to give this?

Francine comes out with Dreamer. Well that’s an upgrade if nothing else. He’s in a silver shirt and shorts. Oh dear. He runs down King of the Ring and Bash at the Beach. Ok to be fair both of those shows sucked. Summer of 1999 was not a kind month to PPV. Dreamer makes the big announcement of ECW on TNN. Ok now at the time, this was a big deal for ECW, but it wound up killing them.

Actually that’s not true but whatever. The crowd boos Canada. Ok then. He goes over how they started in front of 50 fans and it went up and they eventually got on TV and then they got on PPV and now they’re on national TV and having sold out arenas for PPVs. While there is SO much more to it than that with how much trouble the company was in at this time with more or less more debt than a small country, it’s true that they came very far and getting a national TV deal was a big thing.

He has another thing to say and he’s crying as he tries to say it. And here’s Corino and his lackeys. Cornio’s gimmick of being anti-hardcore was great. Not as great as Foley when he did it but still. Apparently Dreamer’s back isn’t getting better. Corino makes the announcement that Dreamer’s career is over. This is the first thing so far that I remember happening in the original ECW. Cornio runs down the lack of wrestling in the company. Preach it man.

Dreamer was a great character as you could throw him in any angle like this and he was a perfect fit. Corino says he should lay down and put Corino over. Ok wait. He just said that Dreamer was worthless. Why then should he want to get put over by what he would consider a jobber? Dreamer does his big speech that always works very well. They get into it and Corino can’t do shit to him. Crowd is nuts for Dreamer. Francine gets a Bronco Buster on him.

Francine DDTs him and pins him. There was a referee there…why? Tajiri is here, finally looking like his normal self. Taz comes out to make the save. Well he’s defending against Tajiri tonight, so let’s do this.

ECW World Title: Taz vs. Tajiri

This was when Tajiri was pretty fucking awesome in the ring so there’s a tiny chance he could pull this off. He hits a picture perfect Asai moonsault over the railing to take out Taz. That was sweet looking. It’s all Tajiri to start us off. He’s fun to watch if nothing else. Taz gets a suplex and imitates the Japanese bowing. Can Taz do anything other than throw suplexes? It certainly doesn’t appear that he can.

To be fair can Tajiri do anything but kick? The Buzzsaw kick gets two. Taz shoves Tajiri onto Rhyno. This isn’t the most interesting match of the night really. We head to the ramp for some brawling of course because it’s ECW. Taz busts out a Batista Bomb on the ramp. Cool. Tajiri goes through a table. Yeah this is boring. Taz has left.

Good to see that he has intelligence still. He comes back with barbed wire but Joey insists we go wide. Never mind that we couldn’t see that at first. Taz puts him in the Tazmission with the barbed wire. Ok then.

Rating: D+. Well the kicks and suplexes looked good so I can’t complain there that much. It went way too fast though so it was hard to keep up with things. The barbed wire at the ending was just odd. Also it felt thrown together which is never a good thing. Not a very good match.

Joey and Cyrus talk about the main event. Yeah it’s more filler.

Impact Players vs. Rob Van Dam/Jerry Lynn

Everyone gets their own entrance as we have 35 minutes to go with just this match left. Lynn and Storm are guys I really like though so I’m happy here. Van Dam gets a great pop of course. We can’t put the title on him though. Apparently something is wrong with RVD’s wife in real life at this time. That’s not good. Van Dam walks around the ring for awhile to kill MORE time.

Seriously, his music is still playing 7 minutes after the intros for this match started. We get it: you don’t have enough stuff to fill in three hours. Have a quick match to make it seem like you do at least. Or give the world title match longer than ten minutes. Why does no one jump Van Dam when he’s doing his spinkick thing to start a match? Hey the bell rang! We actually get a fucking match! Storm and Lynn start us off.

Well one has talent at least. Let’s stall! Over FOURTEEN MINUTES after the intros start, we have our first contact. That’s fucking stupid. Lynn beats them up on his own. Well good to see that RVD is completely not needed. Instead I’ll just stare at Dawn Marie. Ah here’s Van Dam vs. Storm.

We get a decent technical sequence to start us off that ends in a standoff. Damn they’re moving out there. Storm gets the half crab but it means nothing at this point. LYNN VS. STORM!!! Heel evilness leads to Storm taking over. The heels like to throw chops way too much.

And here’s a chair. They’ve had the hardcore stuff toned down a bit on this show so that’s good. We get a nice pinfall reversal sequence from the two guys I like best and Storm ends it with one of those great superkicks of his. In a nice nod to the Clique, Credible hits the Razor’s Edge, complete with hand motions. Van Dam has been in maybe a minute out of ten so far.

This is a fairly solid main event tag match methinks. The big star finally comes in. Well the fans are reacting to him so the hot tag makes sense if nothing else. He hits the seated dropkick into the chair into Storm. For no apparent reason he threw in a moonsault that made no difference at all. Sure why not. Lynn hits Credible with a bulldog from the corner to the ramp. Cool looking move with the variation there if nothing else.

It’s broken down now of course with everyone all over the place. Storm hits a spinwheel kick from the top rope which is one of my favorite moves so he stays awesome. Apparently that’s his finishing move. Ok then. Credible manages to get thrown into the corner and dives over it without ever hitting the corner. Yeah that didn’t look stupid at all.

In a PAINFUL looking spot, Storm gets drop toe holded into the chair but just grazes it. That would hurt more than a full on shot. And here’s Sabu to put Credible through a table. Ok then. RVD misses the splash and it hits Lynn but he kicks out which is a very nice touch. Van Daminator and Cradle Piledriver ends this. Sabu shoves Van Dam into Lynn. Lynn hits Van Dam and then Sabu and it’s a three way brawl to end the show. The last three minutes are just a highlight reel of the show. Sure why not.

Rating: B. This was pretty good I thought. The teaming at least made something resembling sense. Also having Storm and Lynn in there for a good amount of time is nothing bad at all. It was a solid main event tag match so I’m happy with it.

Overall Rating: D. And that’s being rather generous. Seriously, 6 matches, MAYBE two of which belonged on PPV, and a really long talking segment. That’s what this show was. The card feels like a house show. I mean, did anyone give Tajiri a real chance at winning the belt? Do Lynn and RVD get anything from winning?

Spike and Balls win the tag belts. Good for them. Now if they NEVER INTERACT WITH THE DUDLEYS AGAIN I’ll be happy. This just felt like nothing happened here at all and like a big house show or TV show. That’s not a good sign at all. Avoid this one.
 
Anarchy Rulz 1999
Date: September 19, 1999
Location: Odeum Expo Center, Villa Park, Illinois
Attendance: 6,000
Commentators: Joey Styles, Cyrus

And so it dies here. No not the company as they held onto life, if you want to call it that, for about another 16 months after this. Taz leaves here though, as WWF came with a huge sum of money about three weeks after ECW debuted on TNN. The Dudleys already left about two weeks earlier. Word has gotten out that Taz is leaving too, so don’t expect him to be incredibly over tonight. Other than that, there isn’t much on the card. Storm vs. Lynn should be fun though. Let’s get to it.

We see Masato Tanaka showing up. He’s the number one contender. I’m not sure but I think that was Dave Prazak doing the interview. Awesome’s manager shows up and doesn’t like Tanaka. He gets smacked.

Cyrus and Joey do the intro you would expect before we throw it to the theme song.

Lance Storm vs. Jerry Lynn

We start with this? Really? I guess part of anarchy is that we’re getting rid of the best match right off the bat for some reason. Dawn Marie’s dress is almost not even there. These are two of my favorites from ECW so I’ll be pleased with this more than likely. Jerry’s ribs are messed up because the Impact Players beat him up about a week before.

Lance Storm having his own personal bitch is just amusing as all hell. Crowd is pretty one sided to say the least. We have a nice technical piece to start. Did you expect anything else? The fans applaud which is always a good sign. ECW fans were fair if nothing else. I’ve always liked Joey’s mentioning of the referees. They work extremely hard and rarely get the credit that they deserve. Storm’s chops kind of suck.

There’s a bad delay right before it connects and it makes them look really weak. The fans get bored with the match and would like to see some tits. Can’t say I blame them. Cyrus gets a nice line in by saying that Storm is a step ahead of Gene Kiniski who was billed as Canada’s Greatest Athlete: he’s CALGARY’S Greatest Athlete. That’s a great line and could be solid for a heel in a territorial promotion.

The referee yells at someone at ringside for a LONG time with his eyes totally away from the action. Nice one guys. Jerry hits a nice plancha from the top rope to the floor and down goes Storm. Having Cyrus as an analyst is a GREAT help. Joey is fun to listen to but there is simply too much to have one guy do. That’s not a knock on Styles. It’s too much for anyone. Having an analyst in there takes a ton of pressure off of Joey and it’s helping a lot.

Cradle piledriver is blocked. Again, can someone explain the difference to me? SWEET pinfall reversal sequence that goes on for nearly a minute straight. That’s DAMN impressive and literally gets a standing ovation from the crowd. They go wide to show it and they damn well should. Amazing stuff as I knew it would be. Cyrus points out that he used to be a wrestler which is something that needs to be done more often.

TNA has been doing it more often lately as they point out that Taz used to be a wrestler. He’s been retired what, 9 years or so? A LOT of fans likely haven’t seen him wrestle. How long has it been for King? Point out to the fans that he actually has experience. Jerry is a former world champion as is Taz. Let the fans know that once in awhile. There’s a chair wedged in the corner that hasn’t been doing anything yet.

Lynn is thrown into the corner but slides to avoid the steel macguffin. He slams his ribs into the post though and Storm goes after it like a Hart-trained wrestler attempting to use basic psychology. Lynn hits a Stunner out of nowhere to get us back to even. I love when wrestlers just bust out random moves.

It makes no sense that so many guys only use their signature stuff. Use whatever comes to mind, at least in kayfabe terms. Storm hits a knee to the ribs and hooks a ¾ nelson of all things for the clean pin? That came out of NOWHERE. It’s fine to end it that way as it looked solid, but DAMN that was random as hell.

Rating: A-. I loved this and yes it’s biased. Even still though, this was very solid stuff. See what happens with simple psychology and good wrestling? It works very well indeed and you get a great match that I was way into. This worked and to be fair it’s probably because they’re two of my favorites in ECW.

Joey and Cyrus argue about “the office.”

Simon Diamond is here. He used to fuck Dawn Marie so he’s awesome. He talks in the 3rd person but has none of Rock’s talent so there you go. He is looking for a partner and asks for Tom Marquez who graduated from the House of Hardcore. And that’s not good enough because Simon didn’t say it. There is no man here to fight Simon. And cue Jazz. Apparently he’s looking for a partner. Which is why he asked for someone to fight. Got it.

She’s a face at this point and is in no way shape or form a Chyna rip-off. Nope, not at all is she, the woman that looks tough and is overly muscular and fighting men a rip-off of Chyna. Not at all. Diamond runs his mouth off and yells at Marquez, the timekeeper tonight, to fight Jazz. Sure why not.

Jazz vs. Tom Marquez

Jazz gets beaten up for awhile and then hits a mat slam for a long two but a guy named Tony DeVito pulls the referee out. Yeah this wasn’t a match. 45 seconds at most.

Chris Chetti and Nova run out for the save and apparently THIS is a tag match now.

Chris Chetti/Nova vs. Tony DeVito/Simon Diamond

Apparently Nova is the most ripped off wrestler in the world as whatever he invents is on Monday night the next week. While that’s true to an extent, I’ll let it go and let Mr. Joey Pot and Cyrus Kettle, call this match. Wow that Jazz is BLACK. WOW that joke sucked. Anyway, you get the idea I think. DeVito goes for a Rock Bottom and botches the living fuck out of it. And after about two minutes Danny Doring and Roadkill along with that redhead chick named Angelica run out for the DQ. Yes it’s Lita.

Rating: N/A. Two minutes of just boring stuff.

They hit Jazz with the Hart Attack. A ton of jobbers come out to stop Roadkill and it’s just a massive brawl. And now we get the point to all this: it’s New Jack. Oh why does he have to come back? I’m sure you know my thoughts on New Jack by now. One of the jobbers in there is the semi-famous Big Vito.

Staple gun to the head of some guy. And we do it again. Make it three times. I hate New Jack. I truly do. Nova and Chetti seem to like him though. Ok to be fair, the crowd is going apeshit over this.

Tour ad.

Cyrus and Joey argue some more.

Yoshihiro Tajiri vs. Super Crazy vs. Little Guido

During the entrances, Joey says he’s more or less high on laryngitis medications. Ok then. Tajiri is in his traditional look now. Crowd seems to favor Crazy the best. They point out the three distinct styles here which is a nice touch. Well this is better than another combination them going one on one again I guess. Oh and Big Sal is now the Big Salbowski. Give me a break.

Yes I get that it’s an intentional parody, but if this was the other way around, ECW would be FREAKING over WWF taking another idea from them. When ECW does it, it’s a parody though. Yeah that’s annoying. The chant of Where’s My Pizza starts up. WOW those get annoying. It’s your basic spotfest to start: stupid but fun. Guido hooks a camel clutch on Crazy and Tajiri kicks the hell out of him. They set for it again and Tajiri kicks the hell out of Guido. Nice one.

Tajiri hits a picture perfect moonsault to the floor to take out both guys. It was of the Asai breed in case you were curious. Guido hits a second rope Fameasser which looked good. Not sure why but it did. Crazy one ups Tajiri by hitting a top rope Asai moonsault and lands ON HIS FEET. That was awesome looking. In a SICK spot, Tajiri goes for a sunset flip on Crazy but it’s blocked. Tajiri pulls himself back up, spins crazy around and hooks the Tarantula.

Guido throws in a great double foot to the face. That was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. Guido gets the Sicilian Crab at the same time Crazy gets a camel clutch. Tajiri was totally off the ground. Ton of sick spots in this match. That baseball slide dropkick in the Tree of Woe is always great. Crazy follows that up with a moonsault to put Guido out.

It’s elimination rules in case you didn’t get that so we’re down to Tajiri and Crazy. The ten punch count being in Spanish is always a nice touch. The handspring elbow hits for Tajiri. We get a Super Loco chant. When they get creative like that I can live with them. Tajiri blocks the triple moonsault and just goes off on Crazy. A SICK brainbuster ends it.

Rating: B-. This is an odd match. The spots were great and I liked them a lot, but I just could not get into the match as a whole if that makes sense. I think it’s because this has been done so many times now that there’s just no real reason to care about this match. It was fun, but there’s just nothing of substance to it. Nice spot fest though.

We throw it to Steve Corino who says they were going to bring in the Insane Clown Posse to fight Raven and Dreamer tonight. And they’re not here. Corino was the manager apparently and brought them in. Instead Raven and Dreamer get Rhino and Corino. Ok then.

Billy Corgin is here.

They rant about WCW or something or other for awhile.

Justin Credible vs. Sabu

Does anyone else find it stupid that ECW says Sabu is genocidal? That’s just a bit of overkill. Sabu was banned for no apparent reason. Justin has a restraining order. Sacre bleu. What a waste of my time. Yes I quoted Smart Guy of all things. The referee says it’s a legal document, but there is no law tonight since Anarchy Rulz. Justin drills the announcer for saying it and the lights go out. Let’s get to it.

Apparently the Impact Players got him banned for being too violent. Fonzie gets a table for Sabu. Justin gets a Russian leg sweep on the ramp which looked good. I’d expect that’s the only wrestling move for awhile. Sabu goes through a table for some reason. Did anyone care about Credible? I don’t really think so. We get a vague Kliq reference which Justin was a part of in the back.

Sabu hits a big spot and Joey calls it indescribable just before he, say it with me, DESCRIBES IT. A bunch of overblown table spots follow. I don’t care either. So since Justin is having his ass handed to him, I’m more or less counting down the time until the SHOCKING yes SHOCKING I SAY comeback that gives Justin the win. Cyrus finds Fonzie annoying. That’s very amusing. Justin is bleeding fairly badly.

A kendo stick shot gets two but Sabu has his foot on the ropes. Ok, so legally binding documents aren’t legal, but the ropes are. Got it. That’s Incredible gets two. Fonzie slides in a chair but it hits Sabu in the head. Nice one. BAD looking tombstone (That’s Incredible) on the chair ends it.

Rating: D-. The only word that came to my mind here was meh. I just totally did not care here for a few reasons. One, it’s Justin Credible. Two, you bring Sabu back to have him job? What sense does that make? The match was sloppy as hell and just bad. Didn’t like this at all, mainly due to the idiotic booking as Heyman continues to insist that Justin is some ring god.

ECW World Title: Masato Tanaka vs. Taz

No intro or anything. Joey just says it’s time for our world title match. The fans throw a TON of stuff into the ring because of Taz. He sold out apparently. No. Heyman fucked up the booking of him because no one cared about him as a face after he whined for a year and Shane Douglas wouldn’t drop the title like he should have. I still say that had as much to do with killing ECW as anything did.

That and not putting the belt on RVD about 5 months before this. Mike Awesome is in the crowd and Taz says send him in there too. Heyman comes out and holds Awesome back. I love how the fans go from YOU SOLD OUT to yelling his catchphrase with him inside of a minute. Remember that officially Taz hasn’t been announced as leaving yet but it’s the worst kept secret in wrestling. Heyman makes it a threeway.

So yeah add Mike Awesome to the title because I’m lazy. Oh and Awesome is in wrestling gear in the crowd. I’m shocked too. They double team him and that doesn’t work at all. Tanaka takes an Awesome Bomb. And then the Roaring Elbow and Awesome Splash puts Taz out in about two minutes. There you go then.

The locker room empties so that everyone can say goodbye to Taz. Yeah this was a total secret right? Awesome hits a sweet Tope (Taker Dive) to the floor to take Tanaka down. This is your standard solid match with these two. Naturally chairs and tables are brought into play but you have to expect that in ECW. Tanaka hits a Tornado DDT on a chair for two.

And Tanaka gets powerbombed over the top to the floor through a table. Top rope splash follows that for two. Ok then. Tanaka no sells three LOUD chair shots and this Diamond Dust which is an awesome move. It’s table time again with Awesome in control again. Awesome hits a top rope powerbomb for the pin. Yeah that works but a chair shot to the head from the top doesn’t? Taz hands him the belt after the match. The roster says goodbye to Taz as no one cares about Axl Rotten. The fans loving Taz now is kind of stupid. Taz tells them to chant for Awesome. Nice touch there.

Rating: B. Usual good stuff here from these two, but at times the no selling gets annoying as all hell. Still though, this was a shock to some people and it was a nice touch throwing Awesome in there as people knew Taz was losing, so here we didn’t know who was leaving with the belt. This was good.

Raven is hanging out by a swing and runs down the majority of the feud between him and Dreamer. The “It’s Tommy’s” line gets me every time. And no, I’m not running down that whole feud. The thing was excellent though. Raven and Dreamer are tag champions at the moment. Raven says he let Dreamer beat him that night. This is the Raven that everyone loved and he was awesome. He quotes Keyser Soze. How awesome is that?

Gertner comes out to interrupt the announcer and the crowd pops. And here are Francine and Dreamer. Man in the Box is always awesome so I can’t complain. To get it over with, the Dudleys were leaving and Dreamer stood up to them. Raven ran in to be his partner and they won the tag titles. They hate each other though and Dreamer is hurt badly so Raven is making him wrestle until he’s crippled.

Simple in a way I guess. Dreamer says he won’t be cutting a babyface promo. And cue the babyface promo. He’s going to wrestle no matter what the doctors say. And here’s Corino so I’d bet we’re getting a tag title match. Ok never mind as it’s a singles match with Rhino. Pay no attention to the fact that they said there would be a tag title match later tonight with these three and Raven which is inevitable. Yeah I’m not even counting this as a match because Raven is just killing time before he gets here. They’re just wasting time and HERE’S Raven.

Tag Titles: Raven/Tommy Dreamer vs. Steve Corino/Rhino

Jack Victory, the sidekick of Corino and Rhino comes in to help and a double DDT ends this about 12 seconds after Raven gets there.

Rating: N/A. Can someone tell me when the match ended and when it started?

Mancow, some annoying DJ that had TWO WCW PPV matches comes out with some fat guys since we have a ton of time left. They do nothing other than high five Raven and leave. WOW.

Ad for November to Remember.

So with 35 minutes left in the tape there’s just RVD to go.

Axl Rotten comes out to talk. Seriously, why does this guy keep getting on PPV? He wants the shot at Awesome. Please come murder him. Instead it’s the Impact Players and a British guy named Johnny Smith. Apparently Smith vs. RVD is the main event. Rotten says the people are cheering for the tits and not the talent.

Insert your Becca joke here. Balls Mahoney and Spike come in for the save and Dawn gets hit with an Acid Drop. Smith takes a BIG chair shot and leaves. So Balls gets the title shot instead. Oh dear.

ECW TV Title: Balls Mahoney vs. Rob Van Dam

And we have half an hour to go and this is the main event. Oh DAMN this could be painful. So we have Lynn who is obsessed with beating Van Dam and we get….Balls Mahoney vs. RVD. And people wonder why this company died. So Van Dam walks around for a few minutes to kill time. Wouldn’t a five minute match be a better use of time?

Oh that’s right: that army of jobbers had to be beaten up by New Jack instead of having a quick match. So with 25 minutes to go, NO ONE buys Mahoney having a prayer here. Seriously, they’re just blatantly wasting time now. I can’t get over Balls Mahoney main eventing a PPV. Seriously, no one cares about this match at all. All I’m doing is watching the clock on the player to wait until this is over.

Are those punches Balls throws supposed to be impressive or something? Van Dam hits a nice dive from the top into the crowd. And that ends anything interesting in this match. Seriously, the rest is more or less nothing but punches, kicks, chair shots and Balls doing moves he botches. This got TWENTY MINUTES.

Yeah I skipped a lot of the details here, but other than managing to kill an ECW crowd in a town like Chicago, this is the least interesting main event I can ever remember. Just terrible. A video package of the show fills in the final three minutes of the show.

Rating: F. Balls Mahoney main evented a PPV. That should be a meme somewhere for EPIC FAIL.

Overall Rating: D+. This wasn’t completely terrible. There are some good matches here, but DAMN the stuff that sucked was sucking hard. The opener and world title match were both very solid but the rest is completely forgettable. The three way cruiserweight match was fine for what it was but it’s been done WAY too much for me to care again. Not completely terrible, but nothing worth seeing. Storm and Lynn and the title match are good though.
 
Anarchy Rulz 1999
Date: September 19, 1999
Location: Odeum Expo Center, Villa Park, Illinois
Attendance: 6,000
Commentators: Joey Styles, Cyrus

And so it dies here. No not the company as they held onto life, if you want to call it that, for about another 16 months after this. Taz leaves here though, as WWF came with a huge sum of money about three weeks after ECW debuted on TNN. The Dudleys already left about two weeks earlier. Word has gotten out that Taz is leaving too, so don’t expect him to be incredibly over tonight. Other than that, there isn’t much on the card. Storm vs. Lynn should be fun though. Let’s get to it.

We see Masato Tanaka showing up. He’s the number one contender. I’m not sure but I think that was Dave Prazak doing the interview. Awesome’s manager shows up and doesn’t like Tanaka. He gets smacked.

Cyrus and Joey do the intro you would expect before we throw it to the theme song.

Lance Storm vs. Jerry Lynn

We start with this? Really? I guess part of anarchy is that we’re getting rid of the best match right off the bat for some reason. Dawn Marie’s dress is almost not even there. These are two of my favorites from ECW so I’ll be pleased with this more than likely. Jerry’s ribs are messed up because the Impact Players beat him up about a week before. Lance Storm having his own personal bitch is just amusing as all hell. Crowd is pretty one sided to say the least. We have a nice technical piece to start. Did you expect anything else? The fans applaud which is always a good sign. ECW fans were fair if nothing else. I’ve always liked Joey’s mentioning of the referees. They work extremely hard and rarely get the credit that they deserve. Storm’s chops kind of suck. There’s a bad delay right before it connects and it makes them look really weak. The fans get bored with the match and would like to see some tits. Can’t say I blame them. Cyrus gets a nice line in by saying that Storm is a step ahead of Gene Kiniski who was billed as Canada’s Greatest Athlete: he’s CALGARY’S Greatest Athlete. That’s a great line and could be solid for a heel in a territorial promotion. The referee yells at someone at ringside for a LONG time with his eyes totally away from the action. Nice one guys. Jerry hits a nice plancha from the top rope to the floor and down goes Storm. Having Cyrus as an analyst is a GREAT help. Joey is fun to listen to but there is simply too much to have one guy do. That’s not a knock on Styles. It’s too much for anyone. Having an analyst in there takes a ton of pressure off of Joey and it’s helping a lot. Cradle piledriver is blocked. Again, can someone explain the difference to me? SWEET pinfall reversal sequence that goes on for nearly a minute straight. That’s DAMN impressive and literally gets a standing ovation from the crowd. They go wide to show it and they damn well should. Amazing stuff as I knew it would be. Cyrus points out that he used to be a wrestler which is something that needs to be done more often. TNA has been doing it more often lately as they point out that Taz used to be a wrestler. He’s been retired what, 9 years or so? A LOT of fans likely haven’t seen him wrestle. How long has it been for King? Point out to the fans that he actually has experience. Jerry is a former world champion as is Taz. Let the fans know that once in awhile. There’s a chair wedged in the corner that hasn’t been doing anything yet. Lynn is thrown into the corner but slides to avoid the steel macguffin. He slams his ribs into the post though and Storm goes after it like a Hart-trained wrestler attempting to use basic psychology. Lynn hits a Stunner out of nowhere to get us back to even. I love when wrestlers just bust out random moves. It makes no sense that so many guys only use their signature stuff. Use whatever comes to mind, at least in kayfabe terms. Storm hits a knee to the ribs and hooks a ¾ nelson of all things for the clean pin? That came out of NOWHERE. It’s fine to end it that way as it looked solid, but DAMN that was random as hell.

Rating: A-. I loved this and yes it’s biased. Even still though, this was very solid stuff. See what happens with simple psychology and good wrestling? It works very well indeed and you get a great match that I was way into. This worked and to be fair it’s probably because they’re two of my favorites in ECW.

Joey and Cyrus argue about “the office.”

Simon Diamond is here. He used to fuck Dawn Marie so he’s awesome. He talks in the 3rd person but has none of Rock’s talent so there you go. He is looking for a partner and asks for Tom Marquez who graduated from the House of Hardcore. And that’s not good enough because Simon didn’t say it. There is no man here to fight Simon. And cue Jazz. Apparently he’s looking for a partner. Which is why he asked for someone to fight. Got it. She’s a face at this point and is in no way shape or form a Chyna rip-off. Nope, not at all is she, the woman that looks tough and is overly muscular and fighting men a rip-off of Chyna. Not at all. Diamond runs his mouth off and yells at Marquez, the timekeeper tonight, to fight Jazz. Sure why not.

Jazz vs. Tom Marquez

Jazz gets beaten up for awhile and then hits a mat slam for a long two but a guy named Tony DeVito pulls the referee out. Yeah this wasn’t a match. 45 seconds at most.

Chris Chetti and Nova run out for the save and apparently THIS is a tag match now.

Chris Chetti/Nova vs. Tony DeVito/Simon Diamond

Apparently Nova is the most ripped off wrestler in the world as whatever he invents is on Monday night the next week. While that’s true to an extent, I’ll let it go and let Mr. Joey Pot and Cyrus Kettle, call this match. Wow that Jazz is BLACK. WOW that joke sucked. Anyway, you get the idea I think. DeVito goes for a Rock Bottom and botches the living fuck out of it. And after about two minutes Danny Doring and Roadkill along with that redhead chick named Angelica run out for the DQ. Yes it’s Lita.

Rating: N/A. Two minutes of just boring stuff.

They hit Jazz with the Hart Attack. A ton of jobbers come out to stop Roadkill and it’s just a massive brawl. And now we get the point to all this: it’s New Jack. Oh why does he have to come back? I’m sure you know my thoughts on New Jack by now. One of the jobbers in there is the semi-famous Big Vito. Staple gun to the head of some guy. And we do it again. Make it three times. I hate New Jack. I truly do. Nova and Chetti seem to like him though. Ok to be fair, the crowd is going apeshit over this.

Tour ad.

Cyrus and Joey argue some more.

Yoshihiro Tajiri vs. Super Crazy vs. Little Guido

During the entrances, Joey says he’s more or less high on laryngitis medications. Ok then. Tajiri is in his traditional look now. Crowd seems to favor Crazy the best. They point out the three distinct styles here which is a nice touch. Well this is better than another combination them going one on one again I guess. Oh and Big Sal is now the Big Salbowski. Give me a break. Yes I get that it’s an intentional parody, but if this was the other way around, ECW would be FREAKING over WWF taking another idea from them. When ECW does it, it’s a parody though. Yeah that’s annoying. The chant of Where’s My Pizza starts up. WOW those get annoying. It’s your basic spotfest to start: stupid but fun. Guido hooks a camel clutch on Crazy and Tajiri kicks the hell out of him. They set for it again and Tajiri kicks the hell out of Guido. Nice one. Tajiri hits a picture perfect moonsault to the floor to take out both guys. It was of the Asai breed in case you were curious. Guido hits a second rope Fameasser which looked good. Not sure why but it did. Crazy one ups Tajiri by hitting a top rope Asai moonsault and lands ON HIS FEET. That was awesome looking. In a SICK spot, Tajiri goes for a sunset flip on Crazy but it’s blocked. Tajiri pulls himself back up, spins crazy around and hooks the Tarantula. Guido throws in a great double foot to the face. That was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. Guido gets the Sicilian Crab at the same time Crazy gets a camel clutch. Tajiri was totally off the ground. Ton of sick spots in this match. That baseball slide dropkick in the Tree of Woe is always great. Crazy follows that up with a moonsault to put Guido out.

It’s elimination rules in case you didn’t get that so we’re down to Tajiri and Crazy. The ten punch count being in Spanish is always a nice touch. The handspring elbow hits for Tajiri. We get a Super Loco chant. When they get creative like that I can live with them. Tajiri blocks the triple moonsault and just goes off on Crazy. A SICK brainbuster ends it.

We throw it to Steve Corino who says they were going to bring in the Insane Clown Posse to fight Raven and Dreamer tonight. And they’re not here. Corino was the manager apparently and brought them in. Instead Raven and Dreamer get Rhino and Corino. Ok then.

Rating: B-. This is an odd match. The spots were great and I liked them a lot, but I just could not get into the match as a whole if that makes sense. I think it’s because this has been done so many times now that there’s just no real reason to care about this match. It was fun, but there’s just nothing of substance to it. Nice spot fest though.

Billy Corgin is here.

They rant about WCW or something or other for awhile.

Justin Credible vs. Sabu

Does anyone else find it stupid that ECW says Sabu is genocidal? That’s just a bit of overkill. Sabu was banned for no apparent reason. Justin has a restraining order. Sacre bleu. What a waste of my time. Yes I quoted Smart Guy of all things. The referee says it’s a legal document, but there is no law tonight since Anarchy Rulz. Justin drills the announcer for saying it and the lights go out. Let’s get to it. Apparently the Impact Players got him banned for being too violent. Fonzie gets a table for Sabu. Justin gets a Russian leg sweep on the ramp which looked good. I’d expect that’s the only wrestling move for awhile. Sabu goes through a table for some reason. Did anyone care about Credible? I don’t really think so. We get a vague Kliq reference which Justin was a part of in the back. Sabu hits a big spot and Joey calls it indescribable just before he, say it with me, DESCRIBES IT. A bunch of overblown table spots follow. I don’t care either. So since Justin is having his ass handed to him, I’m more or less counting down the time until the SHOCKING yes SHOCKING I SAY comeback that gives Justin the win. Cyrus finds Fonzie annoying. That’s very amusing. Justin is bleeding fairly badly. A kendo stick shot gets two but Sabu has his foot on the ropes. Ok, so legally binding documents aren’t legal, but the ropes are. Got it. That’s Incredible gets two. Fonzie slides in a chair but it hits Sabu in the head. Nice one. BAD looking tombstone (That’s Incredible) on the chair ends it.

Rating: D-. The only word that came to my mind here was meh. I just totally did not care here for a few reasons. One, it’s Justin Credible. Two, you bring Sabu back to have him job? What sense does that make? The match was sloppy as hell and just bad. Didn’t like this at all, mainly due to the idiotic booking as Heyman continues to insist that Justin is some ring god.

ECW World Title: Masato Tanaka vs. Taz

No intro or anything. Joey just says it’s time for our world title match. The fans throw a TON of stuff into the ring because of Taz. He sold out apparently. No. Heyman fucked up the booking of him because no one cared about him as a face after he whined for a year and Shane Douglas wouldn’t drop the title like he should have. I still say that had as much to do with killing ECW as anything did. That and not putting the belt on RVD about 5 months before this. Mike Awesome is in the crowd and Taz says send him in there too. Heyman comes out and holds Awesome back. I love how the fans go from YOU SOLD OUT to yelling his catchphrase with him inside of a minute. Remember that officially Taz hasn’t been announced as leaving yet but it’s the worst kept secret in wrestling. Heyman makes it a threeway. So yeah add Mike Awesome to the title because I’m lazy. Oh and Awesome is in wrestling gear in the crowd. I’m shocked too. They double team him and that doesn’t work at all. Tanaka takes an Awesome Bomb. And then the Roaring Elbow and Awesome Splash puts Taz out in about two minutes. There you go then.

The locker room empties so that everyone can say goodbye to Taz. Yeah this was a total secret right? Awesome hits a sweet Tope (Taker Dive) to the floor to take Tanaka down. This is your standard solid match with these two. Naturally chairs and tables are brought into play but you have to expect that in ECW. Tanaka hits a Tornado DDT on a chair for two. And Tanaka gets powerbombed over the top to the floor through a table. Top rope splash follows that for two. Ok then. Tanaka no sells three LOUD chair shots and this Diamond Dust which is an awesome move. It’s table time again with Awesome in control again. Awesome hits a top rope powerbomb for the pin. Yeah that works but a chair shot to the head from the top doesn’t? Taz hands him the belt after the match. The roster says goodbye to Taz as no one cares about Axl Rotten. The fans loving Taz now is kind of stupid. Taz tells them to chant for Awesome. Nice touch there.

Rating: B. Usual good stuff here from these two, but at times the no selling gets annoying as all hell. Still though, this was a shock to some people and it was a nice touch throwing Awesome in there as people knew Taz was losing, so here we didn’t know who was leaving with the belt. This was good.

Raven is hanging out by a swing and runs down the majority of the feud between him and Dreamer. The “It’s Tommy’s” line gets me every time. And no, I’m not running down that whole feud. The thing was excellent though. Raven and Dreamer are tag champions at the moment. Raven says he let Dreamer beat him that night. This is the Raven that everyone loved and he was awesome. He quotes Keyser Soze. How awesome is that?

Gertner comes out to interrupt the announcer and the crowd pops. And here are Francine and Dreamer. Man in the Box is always awesome so I can’t complain. To get it over with, the Dudleys were leaving and Dreamer stood up to them. Raven ran in to be his partner and they won the tag titles. They hate each other though and Dreamer is hurt badly so Raven is making him wrestle until he’s crippled. Simple in a way I guess. Dreamer says he won’t be cutting a babyface promo. And cue the babyface promo. He’s going to wrestle no matter what the doctors say. And here’s Corino so I’d bet we’re getting a tag title match. Ok never mind as it’s a singles match with Rhino. Pay no attention to the fact that they said there would be a tag title match later tonight with these three and Raven which is inevitable. Yeah I’m not even counting this as a match because Raven is just killing time before he gets here. They’re just wasting time and HERE’S Raven.

Tag Titles: Raven/Tommy Dreamer vs. Steve Corino/Rhino

Jack Victory, the sidekick of Corino and Rhino comes in to help and a double DDT ends this about 12 seconds after Raven gets there.

Rating: N/A. Can someone tell me when the match ended and when it started?

Mancow, some annoying DJ that had TWO WCW PPV matches comes out with some fat guys since we have a ton of time left. They do nothing other than high five Raven and leave. WOW.

Ad for November to Remember.

So with 35 minutes left in the tape there’s just RVD to go.

Axl Rotten comes out to talk. Seriously, why does this guy keep getting on PPV? He wants the shot at Awesome. Please come murder him. Instead it’s the Impact Players and a British guy named Johnny Smith. Apparently Smith vs. RVD is the main event. Rotten says the people are cheering for the tits and not the talent. Insert your Becca joke here. Balls Mahoney and Spike come in for the save and Dawn gets hit with an Acid Drop. Smith takes a BIG chair shot and leaves. So Balls gets the title shot instead. Oh dear.

ECW TV Title: Balls Mahoney vs. Rob Van Dam

And we have half an hour to go and this is the main event. Oh DAMN this could be painful. So we have Lynn who is obsessed with beating Van Dam and we get….Balls Mahoney vs. RVD. And people wonder why this company died. So Van Dam walks around for a few minutes to kill time. Wouldn’t a five minute match be a better use of time? Oh that’s right: that army of jobbers had to be beaten up by New Jack instead of having a quick match. So with 25 minutes to go, NO ONE buys Mahoney having a prayer here. Seriously, they’re just blatantly wasting time now. I can’t get over Balls Mahoney main eventing a PPV. Seriously, no one cares about this match at all. All I’m doing is watching the clock on the player to wait until this is over. Are those punches Balls throws supposed to be impressive or something? Van Dam hits a nice dive from the top into the crowd. And that ends anything interesting in this match. Seriously, the rest is more or less nothing but punches, kicks, chair shots and Balls doing moves he botches. This got TWENTY MINUTES. Yeah I skipped a lot of the details here, but other than managing to kill an ECW crowd in a town like Chicago, this is the least interesting main event I can ever remember. Just terrible. A video package of the show fills in the final three minutes of the show.

Rating: F. Balls Mahoney main evented a PPV. That should be a meme somewhere for EPIC FAIL.

Overall Rating: D+. This wasn’t completely terrible. There are some good matches here, but DAMN the stuff that sucked was sucking hard. The opener and world title match were both very solid but the rest is completely forgettable. The three way cruiserweight match was fine for what it was but it’s been done WAY too much for me to care again. Not completely terrible, but nothing worth seeing. Storm and Lynn and the title match are good though.

While this is one of your best reviews of ECW yet KB, my god, dude, how can you stand by that overall rating? You gave two matches a B or above and one match an A. Considering those matches (one of which is the main event) take up the most part of this show, how can you possibly give this show an overall rating of a D+? Like, I know you don't like ECW, but come on dude, that's just being far too harsh, especially when you write about all the good stuff you did like from this show, and I've seen this show many times, it's a pretty good one.

Also, you were SUPER harsh on the main event man. Did you really watch that match? Balls Mahoney, I know as crazy as it sounds, actually DOES have an amateur wrestling background and he showed off some of that in this match. I'm not a big Balls fan or anything but the guy proved himself on that night in the ring against Rob Van Dam in my opinion, he could be decent when push comes to shove. I agree with you that Balls Mahoney shouldn't be ending a show, but that wasn't really the main event, the REAL main event was the world title match, which you liked.

Dude, come on. Stop being so harsh on ECW. How can you give half of the card good ratings of B and above and than give the card as a total a D+ when you're done?
 
D+ to me is a fairly decent show. It's not great, but it's far from bad.

Like I said, the good parts were good but the bad parts were REALLY bad. Simon Diamond taking up ten minutes for something that I'm not even sure had a point, the joke of a tag title....defense? They mentioned it earlier in the show but were shocked when it happened. Awesome wins the world title in a solid match. This doesn't close the show....why? It was a good match, it was a good moment, hell you oculd even call both great. Why in the hell was it in the middle of the show? The main event took a lot out of it for me. There was zero validation of putting Mahoney out there. None. To me, it was the definition of a failure of a main event, and by main event I mean last match of the show. The show certainly wasn't bad and a D+ isn't a terrible grade, at least not on my scale.
 
November to Remember 1999
Date: November 7, 1999
Location: Burt Flickinger Center, Buffalo, New York
Attendance: 3,000
Commentators: Cyrus, Joey Styles

Well it’s another of ECW’s Wrestlemanias here as we close out this millennium. The main event tonight is another tag match rather than a world title match or something stupid like that. This time it’s Rhino, Credible and Storm vs. Sandman, Raven and Dreamer. Oh how ready I am for this. Awesome vs. Tanaka is happening….again.

RVD vs. Taz….not a regular match but I have no desire to watch them fight since Taz is practically in WWF already. This looks like anything but a major show but with ten PPVs left in the company’s history I can’t complain much. Let’s get to it.

Joey and Cyrus open us up of course with Cyrus telling the smart marks to rejoice. Gertner interrupts him of course. And here’s Taz. Wasn’t he supposed to like, go to WWF? The fans think he sold out. Apparently Taz is looking for Joey. What the hell is going on? Apparently Joey never called Taz. Ah ok Joey thinks Taz Pearl Harbored RVD by jumping him from behind.

Taz interprets this as Joey wanting to fight him, prompting a FUCK HIM UP JOEY chant! Oh that’s priceless. This is seriously cracking me up. Taz is full heel here. Joey being taller than Taz is funny. Taz complaining about someone laughing at him is funny as hell given his current commentary style. Taz twists every word around and Joey just keeps digging himself deeper and deeper and it’s great stuff.

Joey FINALLY bails as the chant starts again. Gertner makes the mistake of smiling and you can tell his life is measured in seconds. Tazmission and he’s down. The fans really don’t like him, but that’s because he’s leaving I think. Damn he should have been heel and just choked people out a long time ago. He and Cyrus shake hands to prove he’s evil.

Theme song hits. Make your own John Cena references there.

Have to give them this: that song was AWESOME.

Simon Diamond and Dick Hertz are here. Yep the gay jokes abound. Dick slapping his ass doesn’t help. Oh and dick gets to slide. And here’s Jazz. She slaps him and Dick beats her up. Simon tells his giant to kill her. That’s close enough to Giant Killer for Spike to hit the ring.

Simon Diamond vs. Spike Dudley

Spike’s offense was more or less comprised of nothing but bumping and the Acid Drop. Oh and the occasional forearm. We’re on the floor already and Spike hits a chair shot off the top. Spike takes a short beating but then an Acid Drop ends it.

Rating: N/A. More of a long brawl than a match. Just a thing to kill time before we get to the, ahem, real stuff.

And the FBI hit the ring almost immediately and pound on Spike. Nova comes out to beat various people up as we hear about how much people imitate him. Nova is more commonly known as Simon Dean in case you didn’t know that. This is a match I think.

Nova vs. Little Guido

No clue when this actually started but whatever. Cyrus says Guido has one fatal flaw and them naturally lists two things. Guido more or less goes to the top with his back to Nova and stands there. He doesn’t get ready to do anything. He doesn’t look around or anything like that. He just stands there and gets low blowed. This leads to a Samoan Drop from the top.

It should be noted that 90% of Joey’s commentary here is talking about how no one comes up with more moves than Nova and how he’s the real “Innovator of Offense”, which was Kanyon’s nickname at the time. Literally as he’s saying that, Nova uses the Samoan Drop from the top, which was Kanyon’s finisher like two years before this. That’s just amusing.

Big Sal comes in and Nova beats him up pretty easily. A Tomakaze (Unprettier) ends it. Post match they beat up Nova some more but Chris Chetti comes back to make the save. Danny Doring and Roadkill come out and beat up Chetti. This is the biggest clusterfuck of a show I’ve ever seen. Roadkill does hit a GREAT splash from the top rope.

Rating: D. Short but long enough to be an actual grade, but still this was just bad. Half of the match was just the announcers bitching about Nova being copied by so many people. This was short and not very good though. And what a shock, more filler on an ECW PPV that means nothing at all.

Super Crazy vs. Tajiri vs. Jerry Lynn

None of those guys were announced. I just knew them once Joey said Extreme Three Way Dance. And I’m completely right. That’s not a good sign. Like not a good sign AT ALL. Did Jack Victory ever actually do anything? Tajiri has Corino and Victory with him here. Seriously I still can’t get over how different Corino used to look. He looks like Richards almost.

Corino runs down Crazy and Lynn, pointing out how many times he’s beaten Crazy. Yeah that’s a great thing to point out: we know you’ve seen this a bunch but just watch it again! Also, great to see Jerry this far down on the card and in a totally pointless match. Lynn and Crazy start us off and do perhaps the fastest sequence I have ever seen. I mean they were FLYING out there. Both guys get Tarantulas. And of course we go to the crowd.

Crazy…kind of hits a huge moonsault from a balcony. I emphasize the words kind of. Sweet damn Lynn and Crazy are fast. Lynn hits the Cradle Piledriver on Crazy but for some reason Tajiri makes the save. That doesn’t make much sense. Ah ok he wants to use the Brainbuster to get the elimination himself. That makes sense in a way.

In a smart moment Tajiri reverses a tombstone but turns it into a backbreaker because Lynn has bad ribs. Smart. I love smart wrestlers. Tajiri goes for them again but he just absorbs them all and is like come here bitch and piledrives him for the pin. He beats up Corino afterwards.

Rating: B-. Fast paced and fun, but I ask this: what does this prove? I mean seriously, it’s ANOTHER cruiserweight threeway. Good for them. What are they actually getting out of this? It makes no sense but whatever as it’s probably the best wrestling we’ll get all night.

We talk about Da Baldies who are the new Italian gang.

We see Angel using a staplegun on New Jack’s eye.

Da Baldies vs. Axl Rotter/Balls Mahoney/New Jack

Let’s get this over with. There are four Baldies: Spanish Angel, DeVito, PN News and Vito. Vito is the same Vito from WCW and WWE. You might remember him for wearing a dress. Naturally it’s a lot of punching and chairs and no New Jack yet. Ah here he is. There goes any quality the show had going for it. Seriously, why am I watching a guy slam a vacuum into a keyboard over a guy’s balls?

Rotten goes and gets a ladder for no apparent reason other than I guess he didn’t get beaten up enough already. New Jack goes to help him. This is all going on which their partner is getting the hell beaten out of him. Jack climbs up behind a banner which is covering a basketball backboard. Yep he dives off of it. I still don’t care about him. New Jack busts Vito over the head with an SNES. Ok then. Vito’s head get his head stapled. And a guitar is cracked over New Jack’s head for the pin.

Rating: F+. Seriously, am I supposed to be impressed or to care or something? It’s the same idiotic brawling and mindless violence that it always is. Is there supposed to be a point to anything like this? Again, New Jack is the epitome of everything that was wrong with ECW.

Alfonso says Sabu is going to go do what he does best. This is a really different kind of promo. He’s fighting Candido. Apparently his best friend died. Not sure who Ticho is.

Chris Candido vs. Sabu

Yep she still looks great. They had been in WCW for awhile and no one cared so here they are again. If Sabu is suicidal, why is he still alive? We get a punching contest to start and Cyrus gets a creepy line. “These are two guys that would probably die without the wrestling business.” For those that don’t know, Candido died after breaking his leg at a TNA PPV. There was a blood clot or something like that. The fans want tables, but I hope we don’t get them.

When Sabu doesn’t do all kinds of crazy stuff with weapons etc, he’s far more bearable. And just as I say that we get a chair. Yep it’s table time. I guess it was inevitable. Surprisingly it’s just used as a platform and no one goes through it. Well so far at least. If they save it for the end or something like that, I can live with that relatively easily. Table is in the ring. This isn’t much so far but it’s more of a slow build which is fine.

Candido goes through a table as he misses Sabu. Sabu gets the camel clutch but only with one arm up as the fans chant show your tits. And that’s why the crowds get annoying as hell. Sabu jumps into the crowd and you still can’t see the impact. Why would that be important though? Sweet damn ECW’s camera work was awful. While the weapons have been used here, they haven’t been the focal point of the match.

Sabu hooks the camel clutch for like the third time in the match. I like that as it’s constantly weakening the back. Candido goes through his second table but it just gets two. This is ok but it’s just not that interesting. There’s something missing from it which is hard to put into words. Candido’s power bombs were always decent. Candido looks pretty sharp here but the idea that he never went to WCW is kind of amusing to me.

The problem is that Candido is running out of stuff to do so he’s starting to repeat stuff. In a STUPID looking spot, Candido is put on a table but Sunny (yes I know her name is Tammy) goes for the save. Alfonso grabs her and Candido saves her. Then, with no one on the table, he leans over it so Sabu can dive on him. Looked stupid as hell. After an Arabian Facebuster to the back, a camel clutch ends it.

Rating: C+. Not terrible or anything here but there was just something missing from it. It worked as well as it could have I think. Sabu toned things down here to an extent and it worked far better. Candido was a guy that was always solidly in the midcard but never jumped above it. Either way though, this was ok.

Tanaka says he’ll win. This was stupid.

Awesome says he’ll win. This was just bad.

The announcers talk about the world title match and about how Tanaka has the advantage over Awesome.

We see a segment from earlier with Heyman where everyone gets fired. Ah it’s not Paul. It’s Lou E. Dangerously, more commonly known as Sign Guy Dudley. This would have been funnier had the main event introductions not have been heard in the background.

ECW World Title: Masato Tanaka vs. Mike Awesome

This is always fun. Joey tells us to keep our eye on Tanaka. It’s a bit hard to do that given how bad the camera stuff is. Tanaka hits his running chair shot which is always a nice shot. Awesome busts out a Taker Dive that looked great. Joey tries to make fun of Hogan by saying he never leaves his feet anymore. When did he do that in the first place? Cyrus busts out the word troglodytes. That’s my boy.

Awesome hits an INSANE chair shot from the top rope and it doesn’t even put Tanaka down. WOW. They just start crashing each other’s heads in with the chair and it looks great. These matches would go so far beyond ridiculous that they were awesome. Tornado DDT on the chair gets two. Awesome counters the second one though to stay alive.

Awesome hits more or less a Batista Bomb from the apron through a table to the floor. See what I’m talking about? Holy shit is very accurate here. Naturally it only gets two. Back in, Tanaka gets a superplex through the table. Nice one too. Diamond Dust, a Dragon Sleeper from the second rope flipped over into a Stunner doesn’t even get a cover. Uh, any reason why not? A HUGE Awesome Splash gets two. The kickouts here are amusing as hell. FINALLY a superbomb from the top ends it.

Rating: B+. Again, this is a different kind of match. These are designed to be closer to a Japanese strong style and it works very well. At the end it’s nothing but finishers and big power moves and it’s pure fun. Again, you flat out can’t take this one seriously and you absolutely shouldn’t. Pure fun and they work every time.

TV Title: Taz vs. Rob Van Dam

Oh Paulie. My sweet little Paulie. If this had been about a year earlier and for the world title and not the TV Title, you could have legitimately been around another year or even two. THIS was the money match that he just totally passed on because Shane just HAD to carry the belt an extra six months while Taz killed the rest of the roster. RVD is of course the most over guy in the company so he never won the world title. Brilliant indeed Paul. But hey, we got that Justin Credible run that we all were begging for right?

They build it up as a clash of the titans even though there is NO WAY Taz is winning here. This is as much of a slam dunk as you could ask for. Taz’s accomplishment takes forever to list off. Again, why not jump Van Dam when he’s doing his intros? They flat out say Taz is going to New York after this. Seriously, what’s the point to having this? They do a long back and forth segment to start and RVD poses. We get a LOT of strikes so far.

It’s kind of dull but not bad I guess. Van Dam is REALLY BAD at whispering spots to Taz. It’s kind of pathetic. We brawl on the floor for a bit and this whole thing is just lacking. They’re just going through the motions and it’s really obvious. Taz sets a table in the corner. We get some really bad looking stuff in an attempt at the Van Daminator and RVD gets suplexed through the table. Can you feel my enthusiasm here? Van Daminator hits from the top.

Good thing Taz put the chair in front of his face like he did or that wouldn’t have worked. Taz goes for a head and arms suplex off the top and Van Dam just falls off the top. Nothing more than that: he just fell. I guess everybody fucks up now and then, but the match sucking isn’t helping. Five Star ends it with no drama anywhere in sight.

Rating: D. Seriously, this was boring as hell. It should have headlined the biggest show ever for the company and have gotten RVD the world title but instead it’s another defense for RVD in a match with zero heat on it because no one believed Taz would win. The match was just bad too with blown spots and contrived looking stuff all over the place. Not the worst match ever, but completely underwhelming on all levels. The bad grade is more for the disappointment than anything else.

With NO transition, it’s main event time.

Rhyno/Justin Credible/Lance Storm vs. Sandman/Tommy Dreamer/Raven

Literally, we see RVD celebrating and then Rhyno’s music is playing. At least we get to look at Dawn Marie. Francine comes out in a bikini. Ok then. Raven and Dreamer are tag champions at this point. Sandman’s entrance effectively kills five minutes of the show. Why is this a big match? Not important. Why are they fighting? Not important. Why are these people teaming together? Not important.

Actually, I don’t think any of these feuds/matches have been explained. Not important I guess. So with like 5 minutes, the heels don’t bother jumping Raven and Dreamer at all. Brilliant there guys. It’s a good sign when you can walk around for the length of Enter Sandman. We’re already past the prayer. Tommy has a case around hits elbow. Wasn’t he supposed to retire? We kill more time by doing entrances.

Seriously nearly fifteen minutes have passed since the end of the previous match. Hey it’s a bell and we’re going to get a match! Sandman vs. Rhyno start us off since Justin makes a fast tag when he sees who is starting for the faces. And we stall. Raven won’t tag Dreamer. The showdown here is Sandman vs. Credible but we don’t get it yet due to Credible running. Credible had allegedly run Sandman out of ECW to WCW where he sucked for the most part.

We actually have something close to a wrestling match for a little bit. You can tell this is the super show. Storm vs. Sandman is a weird pairing to say the least. I’m not sure if Rhyno had the Gore or not yet. Raven punches Dreamer to get the hot tag. Apparently he does have the Gore as he uses a bad one on Raven. Yep it’s a big brawl. They lasted all of 7 minutes without one. That has to be a record for a main event here.

DDT to Credible gets two. Raven and Dreamer working together is weird and just as I say that Raven drop toe holds him into a chair. NOW THAT’S MORE LIKE IT! The Gore hits Storm and Sandman has a cane. The girls go at it for a bit. Dawn isn’t wearing underwear. Nice. Raven possibly accidently canes Sandman and Credible hits the Tombstone for the pin.

Raven didn’t make the save though. That’s how it ends? Also Joey is SHOCKED that Raven would be a heel. Uh why? That’s the end of the show mind you. Well that and the 4 minutes of highlights. Show ended after two and a half hours for all intents and purposes.

Rating: F+. This is the main event of the biggest show of the year and it doesn’t even break ten minutes? This felt like a total filler match and nothing more. Does this actually change anything? Raven is a bad guy. Is this supposed to be like surprising or something? Seriously, why was this on last? With RVD and Taz at least it would have felt huge. This feels like just another match. I have no idea what Heyman was thinking back then, but it couldn’t have been coherent.

Overall Rating: D. Again, how in the hell is this supposed to be the main show of the year? It felt like it was missing about thirty minutes. The opening half hour is a massive clusterfuck and Taz being pissed off, the two more hardcore matches are forgettable at their best with Sabu and Candido being ok at best, the title matches had nothing of note at all, and the main event was entirely lackluster.

Tell me: what is different after this show? Nothing at all has changed. Tanaka would take the title from Awesome around Christmas on television only to drop it back six days later. This show is just totally lacking any kind of special feeling to it and it would for any kind of PPV, not just a mega show like this. Take a pass here, but it’s not terrible I guess.
 
Guilty as Charged 2000
Date: January 9, 2000
Location: Boutwell Memorial Auditorium, Birmingham, Alabama
Attendance: 4,700
Commentators: Joey Styles, Cyrus

To show you where this company was at this point, Spike Dudley is in the main event fighting Mike Awesome for the world title. What does that tell you? The company was on life support at this point with WWF beating the hell out of everyone and WCW just generally sucking. Other than that we have the Impact Players vs. Dreamer and Raven. That’s about ir. Oh and RVD vs. Sabu in what I’m sure will be forgettable. Let’s get to it.

ECW’s video game is the sponsor, resulting in a massive logo on the mat. That could get annoying. Joey points out that Cyrus’ headset isn’t plugged into anything. So that’s where Otunga got the idea from. Gertner of course shows up for like the 9th PPV in a row. He makes sex jokes, Joey asks if that’s all he’s there for, Joel says he made his joke, got a pop, is more over than Cyrus, is getting laid later, and has already gotten paid. Was there a point in this at all?

Theme song.

CW Anderson vs. Mikey Whipwreck

Anderson is allegedly Arn’s son or nephew or whatever. It’s an easy way to get a guy over. Hell Ricky Steamboat got his name by pretending to be the son of a local guy named Sam Steamboat so this is fine. He’s also the enforcer of the new Dangerous Alliance with Lou E. Dangerously. It more or less sucked but it was a midcard stable so I can’t complain about that much. And now Lou wants to talk.

Ok his imitation is pretty good. Whipwreck fights off a double team and hits a nice spot where he grabs Anderson in a wheelbarrow and slams his ribs onto the railing. I love that. Anderson works on the arm like a true Anderson would so at least the mythology for lack of a better term is there. Mikey hits a NICE clothesline off the top. When I say nice I mean it didn’t look that professional, but it looked realistic which a lot of the time is the most important to me.

I’d rather have it look like a normal person executing a move than looking well trained and choreographed etc, but that’s just me. Mikey hits the Whippersnapper but the referee gets pulled out. A cell phone shot sets up the Anderson Spinebuster for the pin.

Rating: C+. This felt like a TV match but it came off pretty well. If nothing else it gives the stable a credible win and Mikey was great at getting the crowd into his matches. While not the best match in the world, this was decent enough as an opener.

Joey and Cyrus talk for a bit and you can tell they get along well behind the scenes.

Simon Diamond/Roadkill/Danny Doring vs. Nova/Jazz/Kid Kash

Simon and his valet get and likely deserve gay jokes that are made about them. Elektra, Doring and Roadkill’s manager was always one of my favorites. She was a total **** character but I didn’t care. This was a midcard feud that went on forever and never really went anywhere. Kid Kash was based on Kid Rock. Yeah that’s not dated at all. Oddly enough though, Rock wound up at a Mania and I don’t think Kash ever did.

That’s very amusing. They say Mitch is like Conan O’Brien but with a worse haircut. Elektra does the Pec Dance. Oh dear. Jazz still gets no reaction. When Kid Kash gets a better reaction than you, you’re in trouble. Hey we’re actually starting! We’re getting wrestling in ECW! I don’t believe it! Ok that’s not fair. Jazz and Doring start us off and Not Chyna is in trouble. Aww I wanted to see Roadkill vs. Jazz.

Roadkill is a guy that is better than he’s made out to be I think. ECW’s camerawork is just atrocious. It’s all over the place and they miss SO much. Jazz hits the X Factor, her finisher, and when I say hits I mean his head never actually hits the mat, but Dick Hertz is back to do nothing at all. I hate the lack of pads. There’s a difference between tough and stupid and dives onto concrete are stupid.

So Jazz, Diamond and Kash are gone so it’s the future tag champions vs. Nova. Nova hits a DDT that they say will be on TV tomorrow night. That would imply someone is watching this show so he’s safe. This is one sided obviously since it’s 2-1. In a funny spot Doring goes into Nova’s corner and pretends to be his partner and punches him when he reaches for a tag.

Chris Chetti who is still injured at this point comes down to be the partner. He even hits a pescado and takes out the fat man. And now everybody dives over the top. Nova does it, Doring does it, the referee does it. Seriously it’s ECW did you expect anything else?

Doring and Nova fight on the top rope and Nova just falls to the floor. No mats remember. That’s such a scary bump. A top rope splash from Roadkill ends it. Post match two guys named the Dupps come out and beat up everyone until Nova and Doring make the save.

Rating: D+. Not bad but of course it’s a massive clusterfuck. These guys feuded forever and this is just another chapter in it. I don’t think they ever went past this spot on the card but you got two decent teams out of it. Not bad but not great.

Mike Awesome and his manager cut an interview that I can barely hear because of the crowd cheering for Elektra in the ring. Oh it’s about Spike.

Spike cuts probably the best promo of his career, “breaking character” saying he’s going to hurt Mike Awesome tonight and yelling at a production guy who tells him to stay in character. He says he’s not an actor and says fuck a lot. Better than it sounds.

Yoshihiro Tajiri/???vs. Super Crazy/???

This is a dream partner tag match and allegedly Jerry Lynn and Tajiri are working together and Lynn will be the partner of Tajiri. Steve Corino is here with Tajiri and is starting to look like his familiar self, mainly due to his beard. He talks to the audience before the match and they HATE him. Corino picks Crazy as Tajiri’s partner, and here’s Little Guido for no apparent reason.

He’s mad at Corino (take a number) for not picking him. IT’S THE BOSS! Heyman makes a rare appearance and is more over than anyone else likely is. We get about our 9th F Bomb in less than an hour. Guido has a partner (he was in the match?) tonight (make that ten) and it’s Jerry Lynn. Heyman censors New Fucking Show. Why? Whatever, at least it’s almost over.

Yoshihiro Tajiri/Super Crazy vs. Jerry Lynn/Little Guido

It’s like they wanted to do a four way dance and they just forgot how to book it. So Tajiri and Crazy were going to pick their own dream tag partners and Guido is mad that Corino didn’t pick him to be Tajiri’s partner so Heyman inserted him and Lynn together into a team together to fight Tajiri and Crazy as Tajiri picked him opponent as his partner. No explanation given as to why he did that but whatever.

We get some nice technical stuff to start us out so I’m happy. This was more or less the Cruiserweight division as they kept having meaningless matches that ran together really badly, but to be fair there are two TV Champions and a World Champion in this. This is more or less all of them doing all of their stiff strikes on each other. I can work with that. What would an ECW show be without a fairly solid botch?

Let’s break out those high spots people! We’re into the crowd already and we can’t see ANYTHING. Tajiri vs. Lynn in the ring as Crazy does his big moonsault. Both Crazy and Tajiri do the ten punches in the corner and both take powerbombs out of it. For two guys like Lynn and Guido that don’t team together they sure think alike don’t they? A double powerbomb can’t beat Lynn.

Now remember, this is the same Lynn that was never put over RVD (to this point). So they’re saying that RVD could take this much and do better? Lynn never got pushed like he could have. With him being fairly conservative with the hardcore stuff he would have been far better than Corino for the anti-hardcore stuff. Anyway, the partners finally turn on each other and Tajiri hits a brainbuster on Lynn to end it.

Post match, Corino and his boys come out and beat up Lynn and Corino runs down Dusty Rhodes for no apparent reason. Dusty is here of course, despite being everything ECW was supposed to not be about, as he is the epitome of old school and old mentality of booking but with them this close to death I guess it’s whatever. Rhyno beats him up and the majority of the roster comes down to save him. To be fair, he got an eruption so maybe they’re onto something.

Rating: D. The match was decent, but what in the hell were they going for here? Whatever it was they didn’t get it. This just didn’t do it at all for me as I have no clue what they were trying to accomplish. It was confusing as hell and no one really got it I don’t think, plus it somehow sets up the manager vs. Dusty Rhodes? What the hell?

New Jack talks about being pissed off at Da Baldies and having a staple in his ass. Well they were loyal to him. I have to give them that.

Ad for their TV shows and live events. It’s sponsored by their video game. That really was a fairly big deal. It pretty much sucked, but it was a nice accomplishment I guess.

Angel vs. New Jack

This is for King of the Streets, which is just a name I guess. The other two Baldies are with Angel. So we have a black man beating up a Latino in the Deep South. Yeah this isn’t going to go bad at all. Oh an it’s the song too. Can’t you tell how thrilled I am by that? I wonder how much they spent on his toys over the years. New Jack “drops” an “elbow” from the top “onto” Angel.

This is just not that interesting at all as it’s just New Jack beating him up with weapons. It’s limited to this match so far though so I can’t complain that much. If they keep it isolated I can live with it. Grimes and DeVito, the other Baldies are beating him up now. So we’re on the floor in the middle of the crowd now with New Jack fighting some other guy.

Jack dives out of the balcony and while it’s a big jump, it’s been done. That’s how I would sum up New Jack’s issues: we’ve seen it all before and it just loses its specialness. Angel remembers he’s in this match and comes to beat Jack up. At least Angel’s selling is funny. A shovel to New Jack’s head ends it.

Rating: D-. Like I said, we’ve seen this all before. What is the point of seeing it all over again? We get it: New Jack is a street fighter and Angel can beat him. What’s the point to it? I just don’t get it.

Alfonso goes into Van Dam’s dressing room and says it smells great in there but we need to air it out a bit. He’s stoned about out of his mind but whatever. Seriously is there any reason at all why he never got the world title? RVD says he’s beaten everyone with Fonzie saying he’s not Sabu. Fonzie says he’s behind Van Dam 100%.

And then we go down the hall to talk to Sabu and Fonzie. Fonzie cuts a promo talking about how Sabu is going to win. That’s a funny idea actually but it sets up the match quite well. If Sabu doesn’t win he leaves apparently.

ECW TV Title: Sabu vs. Rob Van Dam

Ok, this actually is a big match. I’ll give them that. RVD’s wife is here after having a bad Jetski accident. She’s ever pretty actually. Joey says it’ll be a classic. I doubt that but maybe. We’re on the floor already and Fonzie is the most interesting thing here as he’s saying he’ll be the winner no matter what. That’s brilliant actually. We break out the high spots and Cyrus calls the fans troglodytes.

Sabu is of course sloppy but this time it’s not as bad. He’s not blowing basic spots which helps a lot. Fonzie set up a table earlier on and there it goes. Sabu gets hurt putting Van Dam through it as it’s just been a fight so far. He calls for some athletic tape for his knee as it’s in trouble. This is still a big crazy fight, but it’s far less annoying here as instead of just mindless violence and making it look silly, this takes the weapons and violence and puts them in as parts of a wrestling match.

The Triple Jump Moonsault hits but there’s no referee. Van Dam kicks out of a legdrop version. Fonzie tries to wake up the referee but not really, which is nice again as he’s unsure if he wants to go with Sabu but he kind of does. Van Dam sets for the Van Daminator but fakes Sabu out and counters his counter to hit it. That was nice. They fuck up a hurricanrana as Van Dam doesn’t go down.

That might have been intentional so I can give them that. Fonzie is in the ring with a chair but can’t decide who to give it to so Van Dam hits him with a Van Daminator. SWEET. After blocking a springboard splash, Van Dam hits the Five Star to retain. Post match Sabu leaves the out cold Alfonso laying there.

Rating: B-. I liked it. I have no idea why but I liked it. I think it was the Fonzie thing but this came off as decent to me. I have no desire to watch them fight again, but for a one time thing I liked it. By far the best Sabu match I can remember but not one of Rob’s best. Still this is a major match so that’s good.

The Impact Players say they’ll win the belts because they’re better.

Cyrus and Joey say Sandman/Rhyno won’t happen because Sandman had to take care of a family emergency. I like that. It sucks that a match had to be canceled, but at least be honest about it. I like that as it’s something different.

Tag Titles: Impact Players vs. Raven/Tommy Dreamer

The Players come out separately for no apparent reason. To be fair the champions do too. Apparently the Impact Players are trying to take over the company so Dreamer and Raven are fighting for ECW. Sure why not. Raven is RIDICULOUSLY over. They can’t get in the ring as the Impact Players (I feel like I’m doing OCW again) fight them off. We hit the floor because that makes sense to give up your advantage like that.

The champions throw the other guys off the stage as they’re working together. Hey we go to an actual tag sequence. I’m stunned. Ok to be fair ECW matches usually do go to rules after the insanity dies down. Dreamer is both busted up and in trouble as we HIT THE CHINLOCK! It’s fun seeing these guys actually wrestle for a change rather than just having mindless brawls.

If nothing else we get to look at some rather hot women during this with Francine and Dawn Marie. Storm misses the second best superkick in wrestling and Dreamer gets the hot tag. Well kind of as he hits the hand but no one calls it. The referee realizes they kind of blew the spot and just lets it go I guess. Raven hits his drop toehold. I’ve always liked how simple yet awesome that was.

And there’s the Tombstone but surprisingly it only gets two. I would have bet on that being the ending. Storm sets up a table and then like an IDIOT stands in front of it. As he goes through it, the only thing I can think of is YOU FUCKING DESERVE IT. The girls go at it and it’s nothing special. There’s your Bronco Buster which still is freaking stupid. Raven takes a Singapore cane shot for Francine but walks into That’s Incredible for the pin.

Rating: C-. Give this more wrestling and a bit more time and this can be pretty good. This was just too short on wrestling and too little Raven who is the best guy in here not named Storm. This was a decent enough match though but it just needed more time to make it a good bit better.

We go outside to the parking lot to talk to Corino and company who say they’re proud of beating up Rhodes. Rhyno tells the guy to shut the fuck up. THAT is the first moment from ECW that I ever remember. Rhyno wants an ECW Title shot. He would get it and be the last champion of the company.

Cyrus is REALLY happy about the Impact Players getting the belts.

We go to the recap of Spike vs. Awesome which is because Spike’s girlfriend took a clothesline and knocked her teeth out.

ECW World Title: Mike Awesome vs. Spike Dudley

This should be going on in the spot of the TV Title match and the TV Title match should come on last. Spike has lost a lot of that ANGER from an hour and a half ago. He starts setting up tables before Mike is even here. Oh well we get to listen to some more AC/DC so I can’t complain. He sets up FIVE tables including two on top of each other before getting into the ring with a microphone.

He talks about how he makes his living getting put through tables. Ok thanks for admitting you’re a glorified jobber getting a title shot at a PPV. Why was Awesome managed by a “judge?” That never made much sense to me but whatever. Spike goes through a table less than 15 seconds in. Ok then let’s go home now as this is rather pointless. There go two more.

We’re MAYBE a minute and a half in and Spike has done nothing at all other than a few punches. Them calling the split screen replay Double Vision is funny. Spike is in the crowd and Awesome dives over the railing to knock him back down. Joey wants the match stopped but then cheers when he kicks out of a splash. Is this supposed to make sense? Oh that’s right it’s Spike Dudley in the main event of a PPV.

Of course it’s not supposed to make sense. Awesome Bomb is blocked and Spike jumps at Awesome and hits something close to an Acid Drop on the guard rail. Spike might have hurt his leg. Wow I wonder how he could have done that. Spike hits a hurricanrana which Awesome (rightfully) no sells and then kills Spike with a clothesline for two.

Spike hits the one move that I’ve never been able to understand how it can be done safely: a double stomp from the top rope. In an INSANE spot, Spike gets on the top rope and hits a springboard clothesline from the ring to the front row. That was impressive as hell and Joey/Cyrus make fun of Hogan for doing such limited stuff. That’s rather amusing as Awesome is actually Hogan’s nephew or something close to that.

Spike hits an Acid Drop from the apron to the floor through a table and chokes Awesome out with a cord to take over. Joey shouting AWESOME IS DEAD over and over after a big chair shot is rather creepy. Spike is thrown through a table and is more or less out cold. Spike then further proves his idiocy by going up when Awesome is on the top rope in front of a table. Of course he goes through it for the pin. He deserved that for general stupidity.

Rating: D-. The problem here is simple: the credibility just wasn’t there at all. Spike is still his size and Awesome is his size. That’s why this didn’t work very well. We get it: Spike can do moves to big guys, but chair shots and a Diamond Cutter from the ropes isn’t enough to make this believable. They tried….kind of, but this just didn’t work that well at all.

Overall Rating: D+. It’s by no means the worst ECW show ever, but seriously, what happened here? Van Dam keeps the belt again, Awesome dominates again, the dream partner match made no sense. Oh right the Players won the belts. Guess what they do at the next PPV. They win the belts since they lose them in a few weeks. Anyway, this wasn’t horrible I guess, but that’s not saying much. Just a very lackluster show and you can clearly see the things just getting ready to come crashing down.
 
Living Dangerously 2000
Date: March 12, 2000
Location: O’Neil Center, Danbury, Connecticut
Attendance: 4,000
Commentators: Joey Styles, Cyrus

The main story here is that the TV Title is vacant. Why is it vacant you ask? That would be because no one holds it at the moment. Tonight is about getting it some tender loving care. We’re trying to find someone that will curl up with it and give it the affection that it deserves.

For the less creepy version, RVD broke his leg/ankle so we’re having a TV Title tournament here. Other than that, this is the scaffold show with New Jack and Grimes, so expect a decent sized rant on that. Let’s get to the final Living Dangerously.

Sinister Minister (Abyss’ former manager) talks about the seven deadly sins of ECW. There’s a great long joke in there but I’ll spare you from it. Oh I forgot there’s a new massive heel stable: the Network, which is more or less a parody of TNN bitching at Heyman over what they want. One funny line here is him getting to Wrath and says been there and done that (he managed a guy named Wrath in WCW. It didn’t go well.)

We hear Joey warming up the crowd and telling them to cheer. I know everyone does it, but come on now. Gertner says a few decent jokes but here’s Cyrus. He says excuse me a lot. Someone sue Vickie for trademark infringement. Are we ever going to get like, a fight between these two?

Gertner just stands there and takes it of course like an idiot. Every time they say TNN I expect them to say TNA. Actually Gertner goes after him but Cyrus winds up hitting him when he’s not looking. Joey makes the save which is just odd.

Hit the theme song.

And here’s Steve Corino dressed like a cowboy. While he’s talking the audio messes up and we hear part of a Lou E. Dangerously promo. Paul…come on. Corino runs the fans down and in particular Sandman’s wife who is in the front row. Apparently she’s more of a **** than Missy Hyatt and for you WCW fans, you get the idea. Allegedly the Raven thing wasn’t an angle according to Corino. Damn his wife isn’t that attractive.

She slaps him and he throws her in the ring. Damn that girl wasn’t afraid to mix it up. There’s a table in the corner which I’m sure someone will go through. Sandman comes in to save her. And he gets a piledriver. His wife is gored through the table. Not that we see it or anything but she’s standing in front of it, the camera jumps to the crowd, and we hear it being broken and they Rhyno is on her and the table is broken. The production values here are awful.

Sandman gets his wife out of the ring and is likely going with her to the hospital. This of course means he’s out of his tournament match, which is another bait and switch by Heyman but whatever. Corino now calls out Dusty Rhodes of all people. Oh that’s right they’re feuding. Also pay no attention to Dusty being everything ECW was supposed to be against.

Steve Corino vs. Dusty Rhodes

Should be noted the bell hasn’t rung yet and we’re 20 minutes into the PPV. This is a bullrope match too and it’s the pinning version thank goodness. There’s the bell at 20:40 of the PPV. Apparently Corino and Jack Victory beat up this referee at a house show. Dusty hits Corino with the cowbell. Know what I think we need now? NEEDS MORE COWBELL! Sorry I had to do that at least once.

And we’re already in the crowd. Steve is bleeding. I know he’s old school, but DAMN he could give Flair a run for his money in bleeding. Victory helps and it’s all about the cowbell. Is this a Christopher Walken special or something? This has been more in the crowd than in the ring of course. Dusty is bleeding now. Corino bites the cut over Dusty’s eye which I think is bleeding barbecue sauce instead of blood.

And now it’s all about the blood. Also, WHO CAME UP WITH THE DAMN COWBELL IDEA? I know it’s Dusty’s signature thing, but damn I can’t stand this thing. Dusty is dominating by the way. Yeah the old guy that is in his mid fifties and hasn’t been a regular competitor in about ten years is beating a guy that is being groomed to be the top heel in the company. Sure why not.

Both guys have bells now. The referee helps Dusty tape a cowbell to the top of Corino’s head. And there’s a chair to the bell to the head. A Bionic Elbow ends it. Yes, the fat man goes over. I hate this company.

Rating: D. This was just stupid. Seriously, why is Dusty going over here? I know Corino isn’t as great as he’s made out to be, but there is ZERO justification here other than Dusty’s ego or position in the past or whatever. Why in the world would he need this win for a run in the company of all of four months? Just a bad match too with far too much cowbell (screw you Walken).

Sandman won’t be in the tournament tonight. Shocking.

Guido says he’ll win the title tonight.

Dangerous Alliance vs. Danny Doring/Roadkill

The Alliance is CW Anderson and Bill Willes. Yeah I don’t know the second guy either. The announcer looks like a mean gerbil apparently. Lou E. Dangerously can do a great Heyman impression but that’s about it. He says…nothing yet since the people are all booing him. Apparently the PPV is named after him. Can we get on with this?

The fans won’t shut up to let him do his thing. He does it and I don’t care at all. The Dangerous Alliance thing was at least a good idea. Elektra was hot if nothing else and Roadkill was always a funny gimmick for some reason. The Alliance is supposed to be a throwback to the original Dangerous Alliance back in 91-92 which had perhaps more pure talent than any other stable ever, and that’s including the Horsemen at their best. This Billy guy is worthless. He’s supposed to be the Bobby Eaton guy of this team? That’s very funny.

Also the non Alliance team has become face since the last show somehow. Anderson works on Doring’s arm so at least he’s got that part of the gimmick down. Anderson is an interesting guy and not bad in the ring. This Billy guy simply isn’t. Doring hits the Stroke but it’s called the G-Spot Sweet here. Oh dear.

It all breaks down of course and the heels are in trouble. Willes takes a Lancaster Lariat of Lust. I can’t make these names up. Roadkill goes up for his top rope splash but Elektra turns heel and crotches him, allowing Anderson to hit the spinebuster for the pin as Elektra joins them.

Rating: C+. I’m not sure why but I liked this. They kept this WAY reeled in and it worked quite well. It’s a basic story and it came off well. Maybe it’s just a basic wrestling match happening and my mind being blown by that. Maybe Elektra’s ass did that. I’m not sure, but this was fine.

The Impact Players promise to get their tag belts back. Damn Dawn was hot as hell.

Simon Diamond vs. Kid Kash

Seriously, a gimmick based on Kid Rock? Could we not get Billy Joel or Englebert Humperdink? And here’s Mike Awesome. No one gets why, but here he is. Oh and he and Raven are the tag champions now to go with the world title. He actually says get out of the ring or die. Diamond and company bail, leaving us with this.

Kid Kash vs. Mike Awesome

Sure why not. Kash kicks out of the splash early. It’s all Mike here as you wouldn’t expect. Shouldn’t Kash get in at least an early flurry? Ah there we go. Kash could do high spots if nothing else. For some reason I liked him when I was 12. It was a very strange time. Kash hits a modified Pedigree on Awesome’s manager but gets knocked the fuck out by Awesome.

Kash hits a rana which of course DOES NOTHING because that move is worthless and gets knocked out again. And there’s your table. Powerbomb through it in 3, 2, 1…yeah there it is. Awesome wins of course.

Rating: D. Well Awesome lives up to his name and Kash gets destroyed. Was there a reason to not have the original match or am I just missing something? Apparently this was a world title match too. Pay no attention to the fact that we’re not told this until the very end and by that I mean when they say he’s still champion but whatever.

Post match Jazz comes out to help Kash but Jado and Gedo, two guys from Japan come out with Diamond to beat up Jazz. Here’s Nova and Chetti for the save and of course it’s an impromptu match!

Jado/Gedo vs. Nova/Chris Chetti

I’ve heard incredibly mixed reviews on Jado and Gedo but I think I’ve seen one match of theirs and it was a 6 man. We hear about how great Gedo is and he’s got a decent resume actually with wins over Jericho, Benoit and Malenko. Joey: Nova and Chetti have been together as a team now for a year minus the six months Chetti was out with a back injury. I think that’s grounds for just saying they’ve been together for awhile.

They tag with other people though but it’s all good. The Japanese guys like to mock opponents apparently. Joey can you freaking say who is who? I think Gedo is in the ring but I’m not sure. This show has been such a train wreck I’m not sure. Ah never mind that’s Jado. Gedo has a shirt on. Got it. Nova gets a NICE superkick to the throat of Jado. That looked great and sounded great too.

Chetti tries one and does damn well too. His only missed by six inches or so. Cyrus doesn’t know the referee’s name which means nothing at all but I need to fill in some space here. The Tidal Wave hits Gedo to end it. It’s a combination splash and leg drop but both guys jump from the same rope. It looked pretty damn cool.

Rating: D+. This was just a mess. It wasn’t bad or anything, but it was just a total mess. I know I said that already but it’s the only way to put it. Why are the Japanese guys here? Why did Nova and Chetti pick this time to run down? How was a contract agreed to and sanctioned so fast? Yes I know I’m nitpicking but damn man. That’s two in a row with nothing but random match to explain it. That’s not good.

Dangerously talks about doing well tonight. Elektra is REALLY, REALLY bad at talking. Good grief SHUT UP ALREADY!

TV Tournament Semi-Finals: Little Guido vs. Super Crazy

Hey look: another cruiserweight match but this time there’s something close to meaning! The winner fights Rhyno for the title in the main event. The Network doesn’t like Crazy apparently. Crazy hits a great moonsault to the floor. Again this match is just all over the place and going so fast you can’t tell if anything is working or not. We’re told that Heenan put vodka in his water cup. That explains a lot.

Guido hooks a Fujiwara Armbar on Crazy on the floor to take over. See what I mean? That was decent, but it came and went so fast that it’s hard to tell if it was good or not. And there’s a chair. Wow we went awhile without many weapons tonight. Crazy gets the ten punches in Spanish and then does it again to Big Sal.

You have to give the ECW fans this: they were well rehearsed. During this fight for a belt we get a fight over a belt. See how low I have to sink for jokes here? Guido misses an elbow and goes through a table. A brainbuster and a moonsault gives us our finals.

Rating: C. So? That’s all I can say here. So freaking what? This match or a combination of these two and Tajiri has been on every show for like 8 months now. SO? I mean seriously, why in the world should I care? They had a decent match and then they’ll likely have more later. It’s entertaining and to be fair one is getting a midcard title shot, but I flat out do not see a reason to care one bit here.

Buy this video game! You can wrestle as Joey Styles! Yeah the game completely sucked as it was just War Zone but with ECW characters and blood.

W*ING Kanemura vs. Balls Mahoney

Kinemura is from FMW and is something close to a hardcore legend. THIS gets a big match intro? Joey insists that this will be a hardcore match. Thanks Joey as I never would have guessed that. Kanemura hits a nice senton from the top. Oh and his first name is Kintaro here. He’s more known as W*ING though (and yes that’s the real spelling) so I’ll go with that. Not like it matters though as it’s a 2 minute match with a sitout powerslam ending it with Balls getting the win.

Rating: N/A. Just nothing here but a transitional thing to this.

The Baldies run in and beat the hell out of Balls but here’s New Jack and THAT FUCKING SONG. This is a very infamous moment so I’m not going to call this an actual match or anything. Expect a long rant later on. New Jack beats them up with stuff including a Playstation and I don’t care at all. We fight over a pizza cutter for a bit and this is just wasting my time.

Come on I have the Smackdown Pilot waiting on me but I have to do this first. And let’s go into the crowd because that hasn’t been done at all tonight. And now we get to the famous part of this, as we fight to a scaffolding.

There are two tables set on top of each other and they climb up the scaffolding. It should definitely be noted that it’s just that: a scaffold. In scaffold matches there was usually at least something solid to stand on. This is a beam that is only a few inches wide. They’re both clearly scared to death and I can’t blame them. This is one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. And there it is. New Jack I guess tries a suplex off the scaffold. It doesn’t work. At all.

New Jack completely misses the tables and lands feet first. Grimes on the other hand lands on his head, and I mean both versions of his. Grimes lands head first and his body lands on New Jack’s head. Both guys are of course completely unconscious and we go to a wide shot while medics come in. Remember that Grimes weighs about 400lbs. Sure let’s show replays and keep the damn song going while the fans cheer.

New Jack had brain damage and was at least temporarily blinded by this. It resulted in him attempting to severely injure or even kill Grimes (his words) at another show after ECW closed. This brings the show to a complete halt and lets the fans cheer incessantly.

So again we have violence for the sake of violence and stunts for the sake of stunts. And look what happened: two guys were almost killed because of it. But hey, the people are cheering right? Hey, people are going to buy more New Jack stuff now because he’s hardcore right? This is another example of having no regard or respect for the lives of workers.

Having them stand on a two inch bar 20 feet in the air is just flat out irresponsible, negligent and arguably criminal. Why in the hell did we need to do this? Ah yes: we needed to top what we did last month. Seriously, why do we have to do this? Instead of a regular wrestling match, we had to see a crutch to the balls and a vacuum shot to the back before we dive twenty feet and nearly kill two men.

Not only that, but in a promotion called XPW, they had another match and New Jack tried to kill him for revenge. And these incidents happened on a professional wrestling show. What do these things have to do with professional wrestling? I’ve yet to see any connection between being slammed into the concrete from a scaffold and a wrestling match.

This was just flat out not needed and the fact that they didn’t die, which isn’t an exaggeration as allegedly a six inch difference would have killed New Jack, is a perk is just not acceptable.

After Joey and Cyrus stall for time, it’s time for the three way dance.

Tag Titles: Tommy Dreamer/Masato Tanaka vs. Impact Players vs. Mike Awesome/Raven

So the Impact Players were the champions and Tanaka/Dreamer beat them and held the belts for a week. Then Awesome and Raven took the belts and are defending here. They won them 8 days ago so the Impact Players lost the titles just over two weeks ago. Raven and Awesome hit the ring at a sprint and we’re already going. Awesome takes out Justin and Jason in a nice looking dive.

Dreamer gets a nice pop and here are the other former champions who were just thrown together but that makes them a great team of course. We get a Rocky Horror reference and Cyrus points out that the Players are the only real team here. Raven and Dreamer fight in the ring which just feels right. Awesome goes through a table as it’s just a massive clusterfuck rather than anything close to a coherent match.

The Roaring Elbow puts Awesome and Raven out in like 4 minutes. Ok then. So get the nameplates ready for the Impact Players again. Oh come on like they’re going to lose to Dreamer and Tanaka. Dreamer is bleeding. Justin botches a spinning DDT to the complete lack of shock from me. Hey look: TAGGING IN A TAG TEAM MATCH! Dreamer hits some stuff to make the hot tag and Jason comes in to make it 3-2 which is just fine.

Tanaka beats them both up just because he can and we’re doing nothing but near falls already. A kendo stick to the head of Dreamer puts him down and at least we get Diamond Dust so I can be somewhat happy. A belt shot and spike piledriver to Dreamer give the Players the belts back. Cyrus runs down to celebrate. The belts would be vacated in about a month when Justin won the world title and wouldn’t be replaced for about four months, so you won’t see a PPV tag title match for a good while.

Rating: D. Again just a total mess here that nothing came from. Also this lasted 9 more minutes. Everything has flown by here and there has been no substance to anything whatsoever. Also, why drop the belts if you’re just going to get them back in two weeks anyway? Ah right: it’s ECW. I just don’t care again here.

ECW TV Title Tournament Finals: Rhyno vs. Super Crazy

Cyrus just stayed in the ring and introduced this so there was almost no transition at all. Now common sense booking would say Sandman interferes here and costs Rhyno the belt. The fans get this too so they cheer for Sandman the majority of the match, completely taking the focus off of the guys in the match. Before the match though Paul comes out and cusses out Cyrus, dropping about 5 F Bombs in just over a minute.

And here’s Gertner to yell at Cyrus as well. He doesn’t do anything of course, but here’s Super Crazy. I’ll give them points for elevating a midcard guy, but no one cares as neither guy has beaten RVD so there’s no point to this really. The company is completely dead at this point but they kept going for about another 10 months or so. And Crazy dominates the monster with flips and stuff as the fans chant for Sandman.

It’s table time already and Crazy goes through it. Rhyno hits a nice powerbomb for two. The Triple Moonsault hits and down goes the referee. Tajiri comes down and mists Crazy then kicks him. Oh look: ANOTHER table. Rhyno mocks RVD, which of course brings him out to make whoever wins this look even less important. Scotty freaking Riggs comes in to help and RVD puts Rhyno through a table.

Great way to make him look important. Crazy hits a moonsault to win the title. He would hold it for a month then Tajiri would hold it for two weeks and then Rhyno would hold it for a full year save for a two week reign by Kid Kash in August. Rhyno beats everyone up afterwards and here’s Sandman who breaks the stick over his head. Metallica plays and the faces celebrate to end the show after two hours and twenty minutes. WOW.

Rating: D. I never would have dreamed it possible but this was somehow worse than the previous stuff. It had at least four different people running in and four tables used. What’s the point of having a champion again? This was just bad and RVD beating up Rhyno on one good leg is just idiotic. The Sandman chants didn’t help either. Horrible finish to a horrible PPV.

Overall Rating
: F+. Where do I start? For one thing, the longest match of the night is the Bull Rope match at ten minutes and thirteen seconds. After that it’s the tag title match which is in essence a 2/3 falls match at 9 minutes and three seconds. Other than that I don’t think anything broke 8 minutes in length. SERIOUSLY? You end a PPV at 10:20 which includes a long opening segment and a highlight package at the end and you have DUSTY FREAKING RHODES win the longest match of the night?

Like I said throughout this review, it felt like they were in a rush all night. What could they possibly have been rushing to? They could have had another thirty minutes on this show but instead almost everything stays under 9 minutes? Are you telling me you couldn’t add five more minutes to the tag titles? Or to Guido vs. Crazy? Or hell had ANOTHER MATCH? Hell even add five minutes to the Mahoney/Kanemura match and it would have helped.

I get that the botch (which I’ll spare you more complaining about) in the New Jack thing made them run short, but you can’t thrown two guys out there for a squash or something? Even with the intros and such it would have filled in some time. Or hell even have some promos and it gets better. Just give us SOMETHING dude. Was there a reason for the Sandman/Rhyno match not happening? Don’t tell me an injury, because it’s not like Sandman matches require a ton of actual wrestling or anything. Just a horrible PPV and the worse ECW show in a LONG time.
 
Hardcore Heaven 2000
Date: May 14, 2000
Location: The Rave, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Attendance: 3,400
Commentators: Joey Styles, Cyrus

We continue the climb towards the end of ECW with the final Hardcore Heaven. So the big deal now is that Awesome has bolted for WCW. He was champion when he left though, so somehow ECW got Taz from WWF to come in and win the belt at a house show and then drop it to Dreamer at an internet PPV.

That night, Justin Credible challenged him for it and won it. He then dropped the tag belts so Storm wants a piece of him because of it. Dreamer was supposed to be in the main event also but got hurt so he had to bail. Other than that we have RVD back as he fights Jerry Lynn one more time. Let’s get to it.

We actually open with the theme song for once. What a concept. Joey and Joel are in the ring and try to figure out what Milwaukee is home of, with the answer being beer. It’s Mother’s Day. Oh dear. Gertner has a bowtie around his neck brace. That’s just awesome. I didn’t realize Joel was that tall.

Joey says the censors can go to hell because they’re in Hardcore Heaven. Nice line, albeit clichéd as hell. And since the theme song already played, they just walk to the announce position while the fans sit there. Wasn’t there an entrance you could do there instead? It just looked bad.

Balls Mahoney vs. Masato Tanaka

The Balls song sounds a bit different. I think it’s a cover. Ah yes it is. I know this because it plays for about three and a half minutes with Balls just playing to the crowd. This is a long running rivalry that never really went anywhere for no apparent reason. Also, Tanaka can give Awesome every bit he can handle, but has trouble with Balls Mahoney?

Does that just not make sense for anyone else? Cyrus comes out and says the Network is taking over, despite not being on the network for this show. Ah he’s mad about Gertner being there on commentary. Yeah this isn’t bringing the show to a halt at all. Cyrus says Gertner’s fat body is a ratings killer. Strange I thought that was the booking, the look of the show, the wrestling, the language, the stories and the lack of new talent being pushed other than the same old guys.

Joel threatens Cyrus and W*ING Kanemura chokes him out from behind. Masato and Balls are just standing in the ring during all this and Cyrus takes over on commentary. Now they get the big intros, which to be fair was a tradition in ECW. Tanaka’s tights look like Too Much’s when they were heels (Too Cool later on). Mahoney actually does amateur stuff of all things and it works. This has been ALL Mahoney so far which is just weird.

Damn Balls is horrible at selling anything. Tanaka hits his running chair shot and the tornado DDT on the ramp. I guess Doug Williams stole it from Tanaka. Balls finds a chair and the fans pop. They both have them and let the duel begin. Tanaka continues his weird thing of no selling chairs. How does that even work? The crowd is white hot here, so at least it’s typical for ECW.

There are like 5 chairs in the ring now. Balls takes a tornado DDT onto the pile of them for two. The lack of pins after these ridiculous moves gets a bit tiring at times. Sweet damn I love Diamond Dust. Balls hits the Nutcracker Sweet on Tanaka as we’re approaching the Awesome/Tanaka levels of insanity. Roaring Elbow (which sounds like a reject from World of Warcraft) gets two. A top rope chair shot and roaring elbow ends it though.

Rating: B-. Better than I expected, but it got completely ridiculous at the end. Tanaka is a different kind of character though as he goes to such ridiculous lengths of kicking out at times but it still works fine I think as it’s supposed to be over the top, which this certainly was.

Storm says he’ll get back at Justin tonight because Justin is all alone tonight.

Simon Diamond vs. Little Guido vs. Mikey Whipwreck

Simon has a musketeer with him now for no explained reason. I’m pretty sure he was around back during Raven vs. Dreamer as well. Everyone thinks Simon is gay of course. Simon says (oh shut up) he’ll prove why he isn’t a comedy act. Mikey is an insane Satanist now along with Sinister Minister and later on Tajiri. Well it’s not like he was doing anything else with his time. Guido is on a roll apparently.

If nothing else he has solid music. There are 9 people here for this match with the referee making ten. Big Sal is now the Big Salbowski. Oh give me a break. Mikey as a crazy man is kind of cool actually. Everyone goes for their finishers in the first 8 seconds or so and nothing comes of it. Mikey hits a GREAT superkick on Guido. That looked painful as hell.

One thing I’ve always liked about ECW three ways is that they try to keep it with all three people at once rather than the one on one matches with rotating people. Mikey hits a sweet top rope clothesline and we go to the floor. Ok we’re back in already so never mind. And the lights go out. People wonder why this place was looked at as a joke of a company. All of Simon’s guys beat up Big Sal but he catches Simon in a dive.

Then Mikey dives on EVERYONE and takes down everyone not named Sal. Guido hits the top rope Fameasser on Mikey but Simon makes the save in an elimination match for no apparent reason. Mikey gets a Whippersnapper (Stunner but Mikey actually was using it years before Austin did) to put out Simon. Mikey hits an elevated Pedigree on Guido for two.

The fans think there is some shit worthy of worshipping. Ok then. Sal comes in and they try the Jimmy Snuka/Andre dive thing which misses. Mikey hits Sal with ANOTHER fireball but a Maritano (Unprettier/Killswitch) catches Mikey and it’s over.

Rating: C-. This is just another run of the mill cruiserweight elimination three way in ECW. These never went anywhere but always ate up like twelve minutes of PPV time and were decent so I can understand why Paul kept running them. This was nothing special at all though so I can’t really go that high on it.

Justin says he’s been here seven years (lie but maybe he means in wrestling?) and has sacrificed everything for the ECW Title which he now has. Justin just wasn’t anything special. That’s all there is to it.

Please come to our house shows so we can pay our bills for another month, even though we won’t pay them. It’s a bad sign when you’re back in the same building six weeks after a PPV. Heat Wave has a SPONSOR?

Here’s the Dangerous Alliance with Lou E. Dangerously. Cyrus is mad that Elektra is wearing a jacket now. This was a cool idea for a stable but it came at a bad time. Ah the lights are back now. Dangerously: “When I have the mic, you be quiet.” Someone teach this guy how to be a heel talker.

Lou calls out any woman that thinks they can kick Elektra’s ass. And here’s Jazz. We’re totally just killing time here. Jazz beats up all the men and pulls off Elektra’s jacket to reveal what is known as a mankini now. Oh here’s Kid Kash for an actual match.

Kid Kash vs. CW Anderson

Jazz gets carried out. Literally, they just pick her up and carry her out. Kash hits a HUGE dive to take out the Alliance. And THERE is the bell. This company makes my head hurt. I used to like Kid Kash for some reason. I love sitout powerbombs. They’re just awesome. Kash is in jeans here and this is just a total mess. There’s no flow to it at all, mainly due to the consistent interference from the Alliance.

Anderson was great at the old school style but he was never able to get a big push. He was more interesting than Corino for sure, at least to me. Even Joey is tired of the interference. Beautiful Billy takes a phone to the head and Anderson becomes the 800th person in ECW to use a superkick. Kash hits a rana from the top for the pin.

Rating: D. Just a total mess here and while it could have been a decent match, the interference got way too annoying to mean anything in the end. This just wasn’t worth much and with such a mess going on around them you can’t really blame the wrestlers that much.

RVD is ready and Scotty (Riggs) Anton will be in the corner.

Joey says that the reason for the insanity earlier on was that Joey and Gertner saw Tommy Dreamer stagger out all bloodied and collapsed which shook them. It’s not like we got to see it or anything but whatever. Cyrus mentioned that Vince was about to come to TNN, which is why ECW got thrown off. Joey says it’s still a three way dance for the title tonight.

Angel/DeVito vs. Danny Doring/Roadkill vs. Chris Chetti/Nova

Nah it’s not for the belts or anything which are vacant. Why have tag champions? They would just be vacant for like four months so it wasn’t anything serious. Nova and Chetti were the best tag team forever in ECW but they never got the belts for no apparent reason other than the Impact Players and other bad teams and a lack of tag titles for the summer of 2000.

We start in the aisle of course just for a nice change of pace. Nova and Chetti just stand in the ring which is smart when you think about it. Screw that as Nova dives off the top to take out Angel and Doring. The Baldies go to the floor and the four faces go at it which was a very long running feud back in the day. Chetti and Doring give us a hand pound then slug it out. Nova hits a SWEET Swanton Bomb on a bald guy for two.

Doring and Roadkill hit the Lancaster Lariat of Lust (I can’t make this stuff up) on Nova for two (it’s a Hart Attack from the top rope). It’s chair time already as this is just another mess. I love that DDT/Stunner combo move that Nova uses. Here’s Grimes, the other Baldie with a guitar. Doring beats him up but Angel destroys the guitar over Doring’s head to eliminate them.

Roadkill, who weighs about 400 pounds, stands on the top rope and CRUSHES Grimes on the table. His team is out but who cares? And Grimes was never in it anyway so it really doesn’t matter. The Baldies try Poetry In Motion. Guess how well that goes. The Tidal Wave on DeVito ends it. I love that move more and more every time I see it. Joey says they’ll be the next tag champions, which they should have been.

Rating: D+. Another clusterfuck of a match, but WHY WAS THIS NOT FOR THE BELTS? Seriously, give me one reason why this wasn’t a title match. There are no champions and you have two of the top three teams in the company here, so why not add in a title match as a reason for the PPV buy? Ah that’s right: it’s ECW.

The Baldies (actually Da Baldies but fuck that) beat on Nova and Chetti so of course he’s New Jack. Somehow this is a match with him vs. Angel now. Sure why not.

New Jack vs. Da Baldies

We’re in the crowd and you can’t see a damn thing. He’s beating up DeVito anyway so it’s not like it matters. Fuck this as it’s not even a match but just a big brawl. These things really get on my nerves as you can’t see ANYTHING during this as there aren’t any screens and the camera work sucks since the lighting sucks. And Jack of course does a balcony dive.

If nothing else I’m glad ECW went out of business so he wouldn’t have as easy of an outlet to do stupid shit like this. Chetti and Nova beat up Angel in the ring as New Jack comes back. Jack breaks a guitar over his head and gets a chair. I can’t describe my disdain for this bullshit. A top rope chair shot makes New Jack King of the Streets. Yeah whatever. Not even a match as he beat up one guy then hit two weapons shots on Angel for the pin. Like I said, whatever.

Same house show ad from earlier.

Steve Corino vs. Tajiri

Corino NOW looks like his usual self with the blonde hair and black beard and regular tights. This should be good at least. Tajiri is face now as Corino is a Network guy. Corino tries to get out of the match but Tajiri doesn’t understand English I don’t think. He kicks him in the face instead. I love directness in wrestling. That and Tajiri can throw some damn kicks.

Corino is great as well but he was still really young and not that experienced in ECW at this point. The Tarantula is just AWESOME looking. There’s a Brainbuster on the ramp and Corino is bleeding BADLY. There’s blood on the camera. That’s either a great blade job or hardway. Tajiri rubs Corino’s blood on his chest. That’s sick but would be topped by Lynn vs. Corino in a few months.

Tajiri is totally dominating here and is kicking the hell out of Corino’s badly damaged head. Corino is just spurting blood at this point. His hair is red now instead of blonde, almost to Flair levels. Tajiri gets a table as Corino is either dead or playing possum. Nope he’s dead. Tajiri beats up Jack Victory to give Corino a chance to remember how to stand up. Tajiri gets back dropped through a table, not that it means much.

A Fisherman’s Suplex gets two. His hair is COMPLETELY red. This is sick. I love leg lariats (which Joey misses the call on, calling it a dropkick). Tajiri gets the Octopus Hold on Corino and mists Victory in a nice spot. Tajiri goes INSANE with kicks and punches for literally 20 seconds straight, getting a well deserved standing ovation for the rush he does. A double stomp through the table and Corino is DEAD.

Rating: C-. That’s mainly for the blood here as Tajiri just beat the hell out of Corino who looked legit messed up. This was all about the violence and that’s all it needed to be. Corino would become legendary for his bleeding the beatings he would take and this was one of the first ones. Also the clean win by Tajiri is a good sign, but it’s not like he went anywhere but into a tag team after this.

Kanemura comes out and jumps Tajiri and Dusty freaking Rhodes makes the save. Here’s Rhyno for the beatdown on the old man, and CUE METALLICA!

TV Title: Sandman vs. Rhyno

Rhodes literally was on screen for 40 seconds. That’s worthy of a big payday of course though right? We hear about how Sandman has never held this title, which should imply he wins it here. That would make sense of course, so I’m betting against him. His entrance is always cool, but it’s a glorified way to kill 3 minutes. That being said, it’s still completely awesome and I’m hardly complaining.

We go straight to it after a four and a half minute intro. This is the third attempt at this match so it’s a long time coming. Joey admits that this is going to be a fight and not a match, which is about what I expected. There’s your first table. The fans want Sandman to fuck him up. Could we please wait until we’re in a hotel for that? This is back when Rhino was still insane and awesome looking so he’s a big favorite.

He misses a shoulder block/spear thing though and crashes through a table. Sandman gets a piledriver for two on a table. Since it didn’t work he does it again. Here’s Sandman’s wife to beat up Jack Victory and Corino stops her. Sandman takes a piledriver on the ramp…and Lori takes a piledriver from the apron through a table which was one of the most played spots in ECW’s following history.

For some reason her being dragged with her feet crossed is making me laugh. Sandman picks her up and gets Gored through a table to end it. Rhyno says Happy Mother’s Day to “you fucking bitch”. I like that for some reason.

Rating: D+. Another wild brawl with Sandman getting his ass kicked for the most part. It did its job of making Rhyno look like a badass though it was too short and of course had too much interference. Again though, did you expect anything more? This just wasn’t anything special and it came off like another big mess. Decent little brawl though.

AGAIN WITH THE HOUSE SHOW ANNOUNCEMENTS!

Rob Van Dam vs. Jerry Lynn

This is Van Dam’s return match and his BEST FRIEND Scotty Anton is at ringside. I’m sure nothing bad can happen there. DAMN Van Dam is over, and yet he wouldn’t get the world title until he beat Cena in 2006. Brilliant Heyman, brilliant. Van Dam is so over it’s scary. Let’s get it on! I’ve always wanted to say that, so I said it out loud and then I typed it.

We start with a wrestling sequence and then we stall for a bit. We do another nice sequence with little contact being made but ending with a standoff and a standing ovation. The best part about it was that in their first match it ended with Lynn hitting a legdrop. In the second it ended with the legdrop missing a Van Dam kicking him. Here both of those missed and they continued the sequence.

That gets this match major points as that’s incredibly intricate thinking in there. Van Dam poses and stalls again so Lynn just pops him. I like that as we’re physical now. Where’s Olivia Newton-John when I need her? Now the fans like Jerry. Sure why not. Van Dam goes to some of his old favorites and Lynn is in trouble. Van Dam beats him down again and so he poses for a third time in about five minutes.

Apparently Lynn has been out for like five months or so also. This is one of if not his first matches back. In a strange moment, Fonzie just walks into the ring and puts a chair down before leaving. Lynn does what only Dreamer has done that I remember and counters the Van Daminator by just throwing the chair at Rob. That was awesome. Cyrus wants Fonzie to be flogged.

The spots here are pretty cool, but they’re just kind of preplanned. Of course they are, but they’re not supposed to look like they are. Ah ok Lynn has been back for about a month now. There have been a lot of counters and such in this and it’s been cool, but I’d like some more contact. Ah there we go as Lynn bulldogs Van Dam through the table. The problem was that he went through it at the same time so it hurt them both about equally.

Lynn hits a front flip onto Anton so we’re down to only three people being involved in the match. Fonzie interferes for the fourth time as it’s just stupid at this point. Van Daminator hits with Lynn sitting on the top rope. RVD hits the Five Star onto a chair onto Lynn and Cyrus leaves the broadcast place. Here are Corino and Victory as Lynn is a part of the Network…ok no he’s not. Rhyno Gores Lynn for no apparent reason. There’s a powerbomb for RVD.

Cyrus takes a Van Daminator, causing Joey to need new pants. Fonzie takes a chair shot to FINALLY make it 1-1. And of course Anton shoves Anton off the top. Let’s see: Corino, Victory, Fonzie, Anton, Cyrus, and Rhyno. Hey only six people interfered in this. Cradle Piledriver gets two but a Cradle Piledriver on the chair ends it. If this was a year ago, this would have changed ECW. Now it means nothing.

Rating: B. Solid stuff here, but GOOD FREAKING NIGHT DO YOU THINK THEY HAD ENOUGH RUN INS HERE??? Anton and Fonzie are the only two that mean a damn thing here or make enough sense. This is a much better match if you have only them running in but it’s still overbooked to hell and back.

This could have been great but instead it’s just good. Lynn needed the win, but he needed it for the title and a year ago, not here with six guys all attacking RVD. It makes it almost meaningless, but it was still a good match.

ECW World Title: Justin Credible vs. Lance Storm vs. Tommy Dreamer

So basically Dreamer is busted up like hell but is going to fight anyway. Francine turned on Dreamer and cost him the title at Cyberslam which was the show where Dreamer won the title from Taz in the first place. Justin says that if anyone other than Storm comes out he’ll throw the belt in the trash. Why not it’s not like it means anything. Dreamer’s music hits and here he is.

You know for a guy that was allegedly bleeding to death about two and a half hours ago he looks pretty damn good. Heyman comes out to talk some sense into him and here’s Storm and Dawn Marie. Ok so it’s just one on one and Dreamer gets the winner at Heatwave. What the fuck ever. Let’s just ever this over with. Heyman keeps screaming that Justin has the company by the balls. That’s 8 times he’s said it now.

Dreamer shakes Lance’s hand, which is good since I think this is Lance’s last night as he left for WCW since he never got paid or anything like that. I actually remember this match which is a rarity for me and the original ECW. Storm hits him, Justin runs. Then we do that about 5 more times. Hey we’re getting some contact that lasts more than a second! Ah never mind he’s running again.

The cane comes into play and down goes Storm. Storm appears to be bleeding. Hey look it’s a table, because we’ve only used those in like 5 matches so far tonight. We chop it out for a bit and that goes nowhere. The fans want Dreamer. Psh, why would you want him? He’s only an advertised main event contender here. Why would you want him? Storm hits a decent rana.

This guy is just flat out talented. Joey talks about how they managed to keep Credible from destroying the ECW Title’s lineage. Yeah I’m sure the whole WCW wrestler losing to a WWF wrestler in an ECW ring and then the ECW Title being on Raw and Smackdown didn’t do anything close to that. Superkick (see what I meant earlier?) by Credible gets two.

Credible actually hits a decent cross body off the top, showing he can actually do a basic move properly. This is a major step for him I tell you! He then goes through a table, because that’s just how we roll around here. Storm hooks his finisher, the single leg Boston crab and it’s catfight time. Was there ever a point to these things? Dawn takes a Tombstone and nothing of note is happening.

Tombstone on Storm of course gets two. And now we just slug it out. Credible goes for a swinging DDT which he of course, messes up. The second tombstone ends it and it was just completely uninteresting as it just happened for the pin. And here’s Dreamer to beat up both Credible and Francine. Ok then.

Rating: D+. This just felt like another match. This would have been great on a big TV show or something like that, but this just didn’t do it for me. It’s ok, but for one thing does anyone buy Justin as world champion? I never did, and I didn’t buy Storm as a legitimate challenger. This just went nowhere at all and the ending was pretty boring too. Weak ending.

Overall Rating
: C-. This actually wasn’t that bad, but with so few months left in the entire company, it’s kind of hard to care. RVD should be in the main event, and for some reason never was. There are just weird choices in booking so many times and this is another great example of that. Why wasn’t Dreamer in the main event again?

Oh yeah: we’re never really told other than he was hurt and we never saw it. Either way, this show was just oddly booked, although there is some decent stuff on it. It’s hard as hell to find, but it’s not a terrible show. Nothing really recommended, but don’t run away like some recent ECW shows would make you do.
 
Heat Wave 2000
Date: July 16, 2000
Location: Grand Olympic Auditorium, Los Angeles, California
Attendance: 5,700
Commentators: Joey Styles, Cyrus

We have reached the final five shows as ECW hits the west coast. The company knows it’s more or less done at this point but they just wouldn’t accept it. I think their TV deal was done by the time the next PPV aired if that tells you anything. The main events here are RVD vs. Scotty Anton (Riggs) and Justin Credible vs. Tommy Dreamer for the Title. Let’s get this over with.

We open with Blue Boy and Jasmine St. Claire (porn star) on the beach. He was more commonly known as Blue Meanie minus about 100lbs. He makes fun of a guy on the beach and Jasmine hits the other guy low. The Sinister Minister shows up to say that Blue Boy sold his soul and these are the benefits. He makes puns of WWF PPV names and my eyes roll. Mikey is buried in the sand. Yeah whatever.

Joey and Gertner are in the ring of course to start us off. Let’s see how long we can get into the show without an actual match. Five minutes so far, but at least Gertner is funny. He comes complete with vanilla flavored semen. Cyrus, channeling his inner Vickie Guerrero by shouting EXCUSE ME comes out. The fans think he sucks dick and is an asshole. There are about a million jokes there.

Super Crazy has been deported. Tajiri is gone or something. We get a ROLLERJAM reference! That’s the skating show that was constantly promoted on ECW and was considered this brilliant show while ECW kicked its ass in the ratings. Gertner makes gay jokes about Cyrus. This has been going on for MONTHS now and it needs to end or go somewhere.

Gertner doesn’t want to be on TNN anymore and now ECW is canceled. It would end in early October so this has 3 months left. Gertner is called a fat ******. Gertner calls Cyrus one. Can you hear my enthusiasm here? I mean it’s BLEEDING man. Ten minutes so far by the way. Cyrus says Gertner has never paid his dues as we’re in the worked shoot area. Joel leaves instead of fighting and gets booed loudly. Ok scratch the leaving part.

Joel (Gertner in case you’re an idiot) jumps him and security stops him. Cyrus wants him in jail and for no apparent reason Big Sal and Tony Mamaluke come out and beat up security and referees. And here comes Balls.

Balls Mahoney vs. Big Sal E Graziano

No bell or referee or anything. This is just kind of a fight and it only took fifteen minutes of TV time to get here. The big chair shot does nothing and Sal crushes him with a belly to belly. One of the referees that broke up the fight counts the pin. This wasn’t even two minutes long.

Van Dam says he’s going to use the Van Terminator to beat Anton.

We see a video of Bobby Eaton helping some guys and getting in a fight with Simon and Swinger and CW Anderson.

Simon Diamond/Swinger/CW Anderson vs. Kid Kash/Danny Doring/Roadkill

Simon and Swinger are no longer comedy guys anymore. I guess the Dangerous Alliance is dead too. Diamond says they have a problem but Anderson is the solution. Elektra and Lou try to come out with Anderson and he throws them out. This is just kind of meandering along and it’s not a good sign at all. Roadkill gets a NICE pop. The first bell rings over twenty five minutes into the show.

Kash and Diamond do some nice technical stuff to start. There go the WOOS. Kash is underrated I think, or at least his early stuff was. Anderson, allegedly the best guy on the team comes in and promptly gets his ass handed to him. The faces clear the ring and we cut to commercial. Oh wait I forgot this isn’t TV. Anderson launches Kash into the air but he hits a rana on Diamond.

The heels take over as this is actually a pretty solid match so far. Doring comes in and cleans house with some nice stuff. Diamond hits what we would call Three Amigos and the heels take over again. This has been a fun match thus far. I wonder how they’ll screw it up. Road Kill comes in to a big old pop. Heyman might have had something here with him. Kash takes everyone not named Roadkill out with a huge flip. THEN ROADKILL DIVES TOO! Ok I think I’m a fan of his now.

Cyrus takes a shot at Hogan, 7 days after his last WCW match. Simon and Swinger manage to suplex Roadkill off the top. Well they have power if nothing else. Problem Solver (Snapshot) on Doring is blocked and Swinger takes a double underhook piledriver from Kash to end it. Very good match.

Rating: B+. That’s probably high but I loved this. This is a great example of what happens when you just let guys go out there and have fun and put on a good match. That’s what they did here and it worked very well. This was well structured and it came off as a back and forth match that was interesting. Great match and the best on PPV in a good while.

Rhyno wants Sandman and drops some F bombs to prove how serious he is.

Steve Corino vs. Jerry Lynn

Corino is in the Network still. Lynn dives through Victory’s legs and we’re off fast. Corino was in a weird place here as he was awesome on the mic but he never really won much of anything but he was getting tons of big matches anyway. Lynn takes out both he and Victory as the crowd is oddly quiet here. Not dead quiet but just not making a lot of noise quiet.

Cyrus is on gay joke #3 about Gertner 3 minutes into the match. We go to the floor and you can see Corino reach for his tape. Yep he slams into the concrete and puts his head under the ring. There’s the blood of course as he tries to rival Flair for most blood in a career. I think I know where this match is going and it’s insane if it is. Steve gets more energy from blood I guess as he takes over.

Corino does the Flip Flop and Fly as I continue to wonder what the point of his mimicking Dusty was. Lynn can freaking move out there. Steve gets into it with a fan on the floor ala Flair. He really is good at doing a lot without doing much at all. Corino actually looks like he’s wearing a crimson mask. That’s some serious blood flow there.

Chair doesn’t work as Steve gets it slammed into his head. This is ECW vs. Network. Thanks for explaining that ten minutes in. What exactly does Jack Victory get paid for? Lynn puts him down then dips his hand into the cut and puts Corino’s blood onto his own face and then uses it to write DIE on his stomach. Yeah that’s not over the top at all.

Old School Expulsion (reverse Twist of Fate) gets two on Lynn. The referee is down thanks to Victory. He threw powder at him and punched him. Overkill much? They mess up a spot where Victory was supposed to smack Lynn with a cowbell. They get it right the second time and Lynn kicks out anyway. A pinfall reversal sequence gets us nowhere but the Cradle Piledriver ends it.

Rating: B-. Solid match here. Both guys kept things simple for the most part, although the one thing I’m thinking here is “now what?” I mean where do they go from here? Corino looks a bit tougher but still lost. Lynn wins a match he’s supposed to win. It helped Corino somewhat but at the same time not very much. Then again they’re out of business in like 9 months so it’s not like it means much anyway.

We recap (as in show) the Sandman/Rhyno incident from Hardcore Heaven where Rhyno kicked his ass. This is of course different than the other three times Rhyno kicked his ass. It’s also where Sandman’s wife got pile driven through a table on the floor. This is pure filler as it’s going on WAY too long.

We go to Sandman’s house where he says he’s going to get back at Rhyno later. His house looks like you would expect it to. I get Kenny McCormick’s dad when I see him. And Rhyno is in his house. Wait…that’s at the arena? He tried to drown Sandman’s wife in the toilet or something. This was WEIRD.

Dawn Marie is on commentary for no apparent reason. She and Cyrus make sex jokes.

And here’s New Jack, complete or maybe incomplete I guess with a broken leg. Da Baldies run out to beat up New Jack since that’s all they know how to do. Nova, dressed as the Flash of all people and Chris Chetti come out for the save.

Da Baldies vs. Nova/Chris Chetti

And remember, even though Nova and Chetti are the best tag team in ECW, they can’t have the tag belts because we’re not going to have tag champions for about four months. DeVito “hits” a “dropkick” on Nova as we’re actually having something close to a tag match here. Wow Chetti is sloppy. His punches more or less hit their arms. It’s his birthday though so I can’t complain that much. Well I could but whatever.

Nova misses a Swanton and Cyrus says Chetti has educated feet. I wonder who stole that from whom. Nova hits a very nice double piledriver into a helicopter bomb (think the Three Amigos but with piledrivers and a spinning powerbomb to end it). Since that’s a totally awesome move, it doesn’t end the match. The Tidal Wave ends it as I shake my head over these two never winning the tag titles.

Rating: D+. This was a glorified squash as the high flying guys were never in anything close to danger here. These guys are kind of like the MCMG in TNA at the moment but not as tandem based. Still though this was good for them as the Baldies remain completely useless yet employed.

We go to Dreamer who is breaking his silence. I have no idea what he’s been silent about or since when but whatever. He talks about how much he loves wrestling and how he keeps losing things in his life because of it. One of those is six months’ pay but that’s more Heyman’s fault. He’s mad about TNN and he’s mad about Credible. Almost everyone was cutting semi-shoots on TNN at this point since they knew they were done and they knew no one from TNN cared anyway. Dreamer cuts himself open on a locker. This would have been FAR better if we hadn’t heard the ring announcer starting the next match very loudly at the end of it.

Little Guido vs. Psicosis vs. Tajiri

Psicosis is back after being fired from WCW as they were hemorrhaging money so they cut EVERYBODY young and talented that they never used. Yep it’s another international three way dance that isn’t going to mean anything at all in the end. This is Psicosis’ return to ECW and he’s unmasked here. During Tajiri’s entrance we have Mikey Whipwreck and the Sinister Minister. He just kind of interjects himself into this.

The other three promptly beat the hell out of him for his troubles. He hits a Whippersnapper on Tajiri as we hear his resume for the 1000th time. Tony Mamaluke runs out for no apparent reason and Mikey beats him up. Big Sal kills Mikey and Guido pins him to get us down to the original three, making Mikey’s thing more or less completely pointless.

Tajiri stands in the ring on his own for about a minute as nothing happens at all. This is just one big mess of course. Unprettier hits Psicosis and then a German suplex ends him. So now it’s Guido and Tajiri. I wonder who will win this: the relative jobber or the guy that was in some main event level stuff recently. We get some nice counter wrestling and then the Tarantula.

It’s chair time and it’s all Tajiri here. He does the baseball slide into the Tree of Woe chair. Guido just falls down on his face which looked funny. Somehow this energizes him or something as he comes back. The fans want their pizza. Tajiri gets the mist and a brainbuster on a chair to end it with a resounding SO? Guido gets applause for no apparent reason as he leaves.

Rating: C-. This was fine, but again I say so what? I mean really what does this mean at all? They had like 8 of these and it wasn’t for a title or anything like that. This was entertaining though so I’ll give it that, but it means nothing and that’s part of the reason why the fans stopped caring.

Justin Credible, looking like the walking (sitting actually) definition of a douche says that barbed wire isn’t his thing but he’ll do it if that’s what it takes. It’s a Stairway to Hell match vs. Dreamer later.

TV Title: Sandman vs. Rhyno

Sandman comes out first for no apparent reason. Sweet I managed to marinate my turkey in the time it took to do his entrance. We’re at two and a half minutes so far. Wow I love this Stephen King guy. I managed to finish that IT book during the intro as well. Make that four minutes and he’s nowhere near the ring yet. Yes I read IT in less than five minutes. The intro is now longer than the Nova/Chetti match.

Ok he’s in the ring FIVE AND A HALF MINUTES after his music started. Rhyno makes it in 9 seconds. Sandman breaks the cane over Rhyno’s head to start and it does nothing of note. For some reason it’s weird looking that Sandman is taller than Rhyno. And yes I know that’s the WWE spelling. Sandman is more or less bombed here and no one seems to care. There’s a guardrail in the ring now as I have a bad feeling I know where this is going.

Cyrus badmouths Sandman’s wife as this is going nowhere. Basically this is just about doing moves onto the guardrail, including a Heineken-Rana from Sandman. The crowd is hot now if nothing else. With the rail on Rhyno Sandman hits a Swanton onto it. Sweet damn. Victory and Corino come out to beat up Sandman a bit so Spike Dudley comes out. Yeah you knew this was coming.

Sandman and Spike hit Corino with 3D to pop the crowd. Spike gets gored and then takes the table piledriver. He has a broken leg at the time but who cares? Rhyno hits a piledriver on the guardrail to end this damn mess.

Rating: F+. This was of course a mess with no chance of Sandman winning. The guardrail was the focus of the match and no one cared about it. Sandman never beat him but since he was so over it didn’t really matter. The hardcore stuff was all Sandman could do most of the time and a lot of the times, such as this one, it failed.

Dawn Marie was there for the whole match? Wow. Joey and Cyrus argue a bit.

Scotty Anton vs. Rob Van Dam

Hmm I wonder who wins here. Anton is a Network guy, more commonly known as Scotty Riggs from WCW jobber fame. He claps his hands over his head and his Sharpshooter finisher is called the Clapper. He even has a song called I Want to Give You the Clap. And remember, the insane pops Van Dam gets absolutely do not mean he should be world champion in the slightest.

Tonight the Van Terminator debuts tonight. Anton is the US Male. Shoot me please. Yeah Scotty Riggs was supposed to be one of the top heels in the company. It’s kind of hard to believe RVD is mad as hell at Anton when he keeps smiling all the time. Van Dam busts out a gorilla press of all things. Anton caves his skull in with a chair as he tries desperately to make someone believe he has a chance. This of course fails miserably since no one buys that.

Anton hits a bulldog onto the guardrail from the apron which looked awesome. Wrestlers are very fickle. They have so many best friends over the course of a career that it’s unreal. The problem becomes very clear: Anton is a career jobber and no one really believes him as a credible threat to someone the caliber of RVD. He hits a DDT. Is that his finisher? Has he ever won a match for that matter?

Anton dominates for awhile with some decent stuff but there’s just no reaction from the crowd. And remember: RVD is fighting Scotty Riggs while Justin Credible is in the main event. Maybe Heyman deserved to go out of business. In a horrible looking spot, Anton puts him in the Tree of Woe and gets a chair for a running shot to his bad knee. He clearly slows down and stops his swing so RVD can get his foot out to kick the chair into his face. That looked awful.

RVD comes back though and hits the Skateboard (He has a chair and gets a running start so he can hit a running dropkick that knocks the chair into the other guy’s face) which wakes the crowd up a bit. While he’s celebrating with Fonzie though he takes a chair shot to the knee and Anton gets the Clapper. Oh how I hate this guy. Fonzie gets put into it later and then JUST STANDS THERE while Van Dam throws him a chair for the Van Daminator. He held the chair in place over his head for like 3 seconds for the kick.

Five Star follows and RVD says it’s time for the Van Terminator. It’s what we would call the Coast to Coast (Shane’s dropkick thing). This of course leaves Anton dead for the most part so the pin is simple. This got twenty minutes. Yeah Scotty Riggs gets twenty minutes and Chetti/Nova get less than 5. In a hilarious moment, RVD says he’s the reason ECW is going where it’s going.

Rating: D. This was just WAY too long and there was absolutely no drama. Hmm the biggest star in the company has promised a new finishing move against a guy he’s mad at that is a career jobber. I WONDER WHO WILL WIN! Anyway this just wasn’t that good. Anton was ok at his absolute best and no one bought him as having any chance here. This was just not that good.

We recap Credible vs. Dreamer. This is the rematch from where Credible took the belt from him less than 20 minutes after Dreamer won it. In essence it’s barbed wire on a pole.

ECW World Title: Justin Credible vs. Tommy Dreamer

Francine is with Justin as she abandoned Tommy for Justin the night he won the title. The barbed wire is above the ring and you have to get a ladder to get it. It’s called Stairway to Hell. Wouldn’t the stairs go down then? Dreamer has Jazz and the formerly Gorgeous George (Randy Savage’s wife who was in WCW for a little while) with him. If the fans cared any less about Justin then they would reach negative caring.

George is the SECRET WEAPON. She’s so secret that she’s right in front of us. Dawn thinks George has big boobs. Wasn’t Dreamer supposed to be crippled or something like a year ago? Before we get going there’s a legit disturbance at ringside. Joey claims it’s a drunken fan but in reality it was a group of wrestlers from a company called XPW who were more or less ECW West Coast, minus the talent, the intrigue, the national attention, the writing, the music, the distribution or the influence. The locker room emptied for the most part and the XPW guys got taken away. Francine would later say she was never grabbed or touched, which makes me wonder what started this. There was also later an alleged fight in the parking lot between ECW wrestlers and XPW crew (not wrestlers) where the more famous guy won decisively.

In a match based on violence, we of course start with technical wrestling. There’s a full nelson in an ECW match. Joey: “I’ll be damned this has broken down into a wrestling match!” We head to the floor and it’s all Tommy. It’s one of those brawls where they’re not really doing anything other that just walking around and ramming each other into things. Dreamer carries him up to a balcony and just kind of leaves him there.

He gets a ladder and climbs up so that he’s on the balcony Credible is on. And there goes the ladder. This is one of the least interesting brawls I’ve ever seen. They’re barely doing anything and the barbed wire hasn’t even been mentioned yet. With just seven minutes left in this tape that isn’t a good sign. Oh and Dreamer is fine after his fall from about 12 feet. Joey goes off on Cyrus which goes nowhere.

They lay a ladder on the bottom rope and Dreamer “hits” a “slingshot” that nails Justin square in the arm. Dreamer goes up the ladder and Francine low blows him. He falls and literally crushes her. He landed right on her and here are Jazz and George. George, of course, turns on Dreamer and Jazz to join Credible. Jazz proceeds to kill George, making me wonder what the point of her was in the first place.

Jazz rips Francine’s top off, even though she’s well covered in tape. Tombstone to Jazz and we’re back to one on one. Tommyhawk (Reverse Razor’s Edge into a Diamond Cutter. Sweet move) Dreamer gets the barbed wire with about 3 minutes left in the show. Francine is back. Credible gets crotched on the wire. Good thing you can see that his crotch is about 4 inches away from it.

That’s Incredible (Tombstone) on the wire gets two. DDT does the same for Dreamer. End this already. A regular tombstone ends it to HUGE heat. Yeah this guy would be world champion for about 6 months to less heat than Siberia. The next PPV is in October. This is July. That should tell you something.

Rating: F. This was AWFUL. There’s practically no blood, a total of two barbed wire spots, and an anti-climactic ending. This was just freaking terrible all around and was boring as hell. Credible was the worst choice for a champion they made, and all during his reign RVD was doing nothing of note. And you wonder why Heyman went out of business.

Overall Rating: D+. I’m going to give this one the benefit of the doubt. The main event is freaking terrible and the match before that is only slightly better, but the first hour is quite decent. It’s not a particularly good show, but on the ECW scale it’s one of their better PPVs somehow. The booking really was going badly here and that comes down to three letters: RVD. He’s been by far and away the most popular guy for at least a year and a half now and he’s fighting Scotty Riggs. Anyway, things could change a good bit next time, so hopefully it’s for the better. This isn’t a horrible show, but there’s nothing worth going out of your way to see.
 
Anarchy Rulz 2000
Date: October 1, 2000
Location: Roy Wilkins Auditorium, Saint Paul, Minnesota
Attendance: 4,600
Commentators: Joey Styles, Joel Gertner

We it’s the final countdown here as we only have four shows left. The main event here is Lynn vs. Credible which is a big match for some reason I guess. It’s not like it matters much as their TV show’s last episode was five days after this. RVD gets his TV Title shot against Rhyno here in what should have been the big feud for the last 8 months or so but whatever. Let’s get to it.

Joel does his usual sex promo which is always funny and this is no exception. You could always tell he was having a blast doing those and he clearly is here too. We get the theme song with no real issue beforehand.

Christian York/Joey Matthews vs. Danny Doring/Roadkill

Matthews is more famous as Joey Mercury. Doring and Roadkill continue to be the insanely popular team that finally got the tag belts once the company was dying. Doring and Matthews start us off. Roadkill is ridiculously popular and gets a ton of cheers as he destroys York. He’s Amish in case I didn’t mention that. York counters a slingshot into a leg drop from the middle rope which was pretty sweet.

The better faces clear the ring but Doring goes for a tope but just misses completely and crashes into the concrete in a HORRIBLE looking bump. York and Matthews hit stereo suicide dives which is one of my favorite spots. Roadkill hits a SWEET double clothesline off the top. By that I mean he was standing on the rope, not the corner. That was awesome. This is an awesome high flying match.

Roadkill hits a huge powerbomb on York and the squash is on. A double team slam/top rope leg drop ends this. They hug it out afterwards and Simon Diamond and Swinger show up with chairs to take out the winners.

Rating: B-. Solid opener here that got the crowd into the show quite well. The tag titles meant nothing at all though as they were gone for so long and Nova/Chetti was the best team in the company for like the last year or so. This means nothing though as the belts aren’t even on the line on this show. Decent match but it’s not like it means anything.

Gertner eats Lucky Charms as his diet regimen. Someone has been training him apparently.

Cyrus comes out and bashes Gertner while using the I’VE GOT POP line that TNN had back then. They have a match tonight which should be one sided as Cyrus used to be a wrestler. Cyrus says to get him, Gertner has to beat a guy named EZ Money. Money was a no name guy that wound up in the very last month of WCW as Jason Jett. Gertner gets scared. Cue Spike for no apparent reason. Apparently he’s the commissioner now which has to be a parody of WWF or WCW. He says Money has to beat Kid Kash for no apparent reason, setting up this.

Kid Kash vs. EZ Money

Somehow the segment I just went through took about 8 minutes. To the shock of NO ONE, Kid Rock music gets no reaction in Minnesota. This should actually be fairly awesome. Kash could go, there’s no question about that. He had been pushed as a big time guy, actually beating Rhyno for the TV Title for two weeks. Money hits what would become his finisher in WCW (vertical suplex but he just lets him go so that Kash goes flying) for two.

The fans want tables and Money crashes onto all of his buddies. Kash hits an INSANE double jump front flip to the floor. If Kash could do nothing else, he could REALLY do big flips well. Gertner tries to get the crowd into things as Money hooks a reverse Boston Crabd and hooks Kash’s arms up with it in a PAINFUL looking move. Kash is just insane with these jumps and flips.

He hits a 360 tornado DDT for a long two as the fans are way into this. Kash hits what would be more commonly known as Whisper in the Wind and a bunch of other big flips and springboard moves for two. He was definitely exciting. Money Maker (double underhook piledriver) gets nothing due to interference.

The referee doesn’t notice three guys in the ring other than Kash apparently. None of this works though as Kash is too big of a star to lose to EZ Money. Money goes for a top rope powerbomb but reverses into a rana for the pin in a sloppy but difficult as hell move. Gertner vs. Cyrus now.

Rating: B-. This was supposed to be entertaining and it certainly was. Kash was fun as hell to watch at times and this would certainly be in that list. Money was never anything all that special but he was ok here. This was just filler but for about 8 minutes it was a very solid cruiserweight style match.

The heels beat the hell out of Kash, Spike makes the save, Spike gets beaten up and Sandman comes in without music or anything to blow the roof off the place. Elektra tries to seduce him but gets beer poured on her chest and Gertner’s face shoved into them. Match finally.

Cyrus vs. Joel Gertner

Joel takes his shirt off and has Kamala paint on his chest. He goes for a People’s Elbow, even taking the neckbrace off. This is weird as Joel has no idea what he’s doing and Cyrus is a trained wrestler in a suit. It’s ALL Cyrus here of course as Gertner is pretty much dead. Pay no attention to Sandman out there. I’m sure he won’t do anything. Beer to Cyrus’ eyes and a rollup ends it for Gertner.

Rating: N/A. This was just for the ECW fans and it worked fine. It only took six months to get to this. They talk about how this is a victory over the Network, even though they would be canceled in 5 days anyway.

Beer bash follows.

Website plug and house show ads to fill time.

Da Baldies vs. Chilly Willy/Balls Mahoney

Angel and DeVito for the combination here. Willy was this guy that never meant anything but got a push near the end of the company due to no one else being around to get it. Joel comes back to commentary here and talks like a New Yorker in a funny bit. Mahoney has a fork and starts stabbing people with it. There’s a fork shot from the apron to the floor. Yeah this is going to end well.

This is the big blood/violence match of the night as Balls bites the cut and might have licked it a bit. There isn’t much here at all other than a DeVito moonsault in the crowd which mostly misses. Willy and Angel are more or less not involved here, leaving us with a one on one in the ring which isn’t that good. Angle runs back in and we get the staplegun to the eye. Three stereo chair shots to the faces end this.

Rating: D-. It’s your standard big brawl that means nothing at all but it got the fans into it so I guess we can pass it. A match with a staplegun to the eye though is just hard to get anything close to caring about or taking like pro wrestling as you probably guessed. I never got the appeal of these.

Lou E. Dangerously jumps Gertner. Joey goes after him and security drags him off. We go to the control room for no apparent reason where a guy is freaking now.

We go to Justin and Francine who we can’t hear at first. Oh he’s bashing Jerry Lynn. Credible is in a Favre jersey, which will NEVER mean anything in Minnesota. Nope not a thing.

Lynn says he’s tired of just being the best. He wants to be champion. If that was the case about two years ago, things would have gone differently for ECW.

Joey and Cyrus on commentary now. Is there a point to this after Cyrus got beat earlier?

Steve Corino vs. CW Anderson

The winner gets the title shot at the next PPV. I don’t remember either guy winning a PPV match recently but whatever. I think Corino is a face here but I’m not sure. Anderson is older than Corino? I wouldn’t have guessed that one. A long counter sequence starts us off and the fans are for Corino. They chop it out and amazingly Steve isn’t bleeding yet.

For a guy based around the idea of old school, Corino wasn’t very old school. As I type that Cyrus calls him out on it. Anderson is bleeding. Also isn’t Anderson supposed to be based on Arn Anderson? Therefore both of these guys are old school, and isn’t that completely against the idea of ECW in the first place? Corino takes a great chair shot and hey Steve is busted open. Even Joey points out how easily he bleeds.

Anderson goes for a Stunner on Corino’s arm as this really is old school based. They slug it out and Corino takes over for a bit. This has been pretty decent. Anderson gets crotches on a chair and they’re both down now. Corino goes Dusty Rhodes and I shake my head at him. Dusty, the guy that was supposed to be everything ECW was against, is getting tributes here. Simon and Swinger come out but Victory holds them off.

Anderson keeps trying to hit the spinebuster and never can get it. He sets up another chair in the middle of the ring but gets superkicked into it. He goes for the spinebuster AGAIN but gets caught in an Old School Expulsion (Reverse Twist of Fate and a great name for a move) on the chair for the pin and the title shot at November to Remember.

Rating: B-. This wasn’t bad but it was lacking that pop to get it to be something good. The chairs were used far too much in this for a match that is supposed to be about who is the best wrestler. Again I ask, who else have these two beaten? I certainly can’t remember them getting a major PPV win but I guess they’ve been hot on TV or house shows. Not bad but certainly lacking something.

Mikey, Tajiri and Sinister Minister (James Mitchell) read a book about witchcraft and demonology and it lights on fire. Riveting.

Rhyno wants RVD tonight. Good thing he has him. He says he’ll shove Fonzie’s whistle up his ass. Up Fonzie’s that is. He’s not some KB tribute character or something.

Tag Titles: FBI vs. Mikey Whipwreck/Tajiri

Once the titles hadn’t been in place for four months, Mikey and Tajiri won the belts in a tournament and held them for one day. The FBI, a former comedy team, held them for a few months before the final change at the next to last PPV. Nova and Chetti never got them of course. The challengers are in masks which is a weird look.

To my complete and utter shock, we start with a glorified comedy match. The Unholy Alliance (challengers) dominate and we get a Tarantula on Guido. Tony is tied up in the corner and gets a pair of baseball slides and a fireball. I continue to wonder why they called this wrestling after a certain point.

Can someone get these people a pizza before they all die? Tajiri slaps the turnbuckle to go with the clapping, but if he doesn’t speak English, how does he know it’s something he should clap to? Guido is busted open. They’re actually tagging in and out here which is rather odd. Unprettier is blocked by Mist but Sal pulls the referee out.

The Alliance is dominating here, meaning of course they’re going to lose. Yep there’s the belt into the ring from Sal. In a kind of creative ending, Tajiri takes Sal out with a moonsault but he lands on him and Tajiri can’t get out. A belt shot and an Unprettier keeps the titles on a completely uninteresting team for no apparent reason.

Rating: C+. This was ok and formula based but they could certainly have a better one. On TV where the titles changed hands, they apparently had a classic which I’ve heard a lot about but haven’t seen. This wasn’t bad at all but it was just kind of there. I still don’t get the appeal of the Italians as the champions though but they company was out of business in like four months anyway so it didn’t really matter.

More house show/website stuff.

TV Title: Rhyno vs. Rob Van Dam

The whole RVD never got beat and Rhyno is the bigger and better champion is decided here apparently while Justin Credible is main eventing another PPV. Rhyno charges while RVD is doing his spin kick to his name. We immediately go to the floor and I’m not sure if there was a bell yet. This is another of those big brawls that doesn’t really prove anything at all but the fans love them so they kept happening.

The lights are weird here as things are really dark. It’s likely the company just couldn’t afford it I guess. Van Dam hits an over the ropes dive to take out Rhyno. The idea here is RVD’s usual stuff isn’t working so he’s having to hit and run. The skateboard dropkick hits in the corner and the challenger is dominating. Cyrus calls the fans troglodytes. It must be a Canadian thing.

Rhyno hits a middle rope clothesline to kill RVD and take over. And it’s table time. You knew it was coming. Rhyno hits a chinlock as Alfonzo blows his whistle in time with the RVD chants. Five Star gets two and he’s stunned. The Gore hits and there’s the piledriver through the table. Fonzie hits Rhyno with a chair to set up the Van Daminator.

Van Terminator misses thanks to Justin interfering for no apparent reason and it hits Fonzie. Rhyno hits a running spinebuster through the table and then a piledriver on a chair ends it. I always hated that move for him as he’s a power guy using a move that Jerry Lawler used a lot. Never got that.

Rating: D+. You know for a big clash, this was pretty damn weak. RVD loses….why? Heyman wouldn’t put the spotlight on him because of guys like Justin? This wouldn’t have saved the company but it would have given them a better chance. This was a pretty weak match that didn’t feel special. It’s not really that good and while it’s entertaining, this should have been a main event somewhere instead of a throwaway match. But that would be logical booking which didn’t exist around this time so there we are.

Fonzie is more or less dead and takes forever to get taken out. There might have been a heel referee making a fast count too.

Did you know about the website and the house shows?

We’re at about 8 minutes of nothing at all happening at this point.

ECW World Title: Justin Credible vs. Jerry Lynn

Lynn is the home town guy here so the ending should be clear but it’s ECW so of course it’s not. Justin is still wearing the Favre jersey in Minnesota which is supposed to get heel heat. That doesn’t date the shot at all. Francine has a broken rib or something. Again, these two are in the main event and RVD isn’t. Lynn gets the hometown boy pop and it’s not bad.

We stall FOREVER as it’s been fifteen minutes plus since the last match ended and this one hasn’t even started yet. We start with some technical stuff and the fans think Francine is a crack ****e. Joey isn’t sure if Justin can outwrestle Jerry. Great to see that kind of thought going into things here. Lynn hits a middle rope bulldog and we hit the mat again.

Justin goes into the corner and goes to the floor. It wouldn’t have been as bad if he hadn’t jumped over the ropes like that. The plancha mostly misses though and everyone is down. This is moving pretty slowly but there’s a TON of time left so they have time to set something up. I knew the in ring stuff was going on too long. We head to the floor to get away from this wrestling nonsense. Can’t have that now.

Lynn hits a DDT on the chair to get us back to even. This match feels like something that should be in the midcard rather than the main event. Justin gets on a mic and yells at Lynn which is cheap heat 101 and there’s nothing wrong with that. We get our like third DDT of the match on the chair. Mix it up a bit guys. And there are a pair of legdrops to fix that.

Francine makes a save so there’s no table for Credible. He can’t beat Jerry though and Lynn hits the Cradle Piledriver for two, killing the crowd. Credible gets his own piledriver for two and they’re back. The referee gets kicked in the face and another is here. He gets to two and then just stops. It’s the same referee from the RVD match so yeah he was cheating earlier. Belt shot gets two.

He’s counting so fast that Jerry is having to in essence kick at what would be a two in a normal match but is almost three here. Tombstone again gets two and it’s New Jack. Damn it. He was supposed to be the referee for no apparent reason and here he is. Cookie sheet (New Jack needs his own cooking show) for the referee but Credible knocks out Jack. He walks into a Cradle Tombstone to give Lynn the title though.

Rating: C+. Not bad here, but like I said this feels like a big midcard match and not a main event on a PPV. That’s not a good sign at all but at least Credible isn’t champion anymore. Again, RVD is never champion but Credible was for over five months. Yeah that’s intelligent. The match was good, but it was Jerry Lynn vs. Justin Credible for the world title. See a problem here?

The locker room empties and Lynn makes a big speech. Or at least he would if the mic works. Seriously?

A Limp Bizkit video to Rollin with highlights of the show ends it.

Overall Rating: C-. This didn’t suck. It’s certainly not a great show or anything like that, but this was certainly one of the better ECW shows. The problem is of course though that the company is dead at this point and this show really didn’t mean much of anything. The booking here is a bit odd but at the same time it came off as a fun show and there was some good stuff on here. If you’re incredibly bored and can actually find it, take a look.
 
November to Remember 2000
Date: November 5, 2000
Location: Odeum Expo Center, Villa Park, Illinois
Attendance: 4,600
Commentators: Joey Styles, Cyrus

Ok so the company is dead, it’s off TV now, touring is dying and the talent seems to not get the hint. The main event is an old ECW concept called Double Jeopardy where there are two different matches going on at the same time. In this case it’s Lynn vs. Credible and Sandman vs. Corino at the same time. The winners would then have a regular match, all for the title. Other than that the rest of the show means jack so let’s get to it.

Lynn says he’s champion and doesn’t care who he has to get through to keep the title.

Justin wants the title back because he isn’t getting any from Francine until he wins it again. Yeah, he’s getting cock blocked because of the title. That’s either hilarious or really stupid and I’m not sure which. Francine is actually pretty hot here for once.

Sandman is the King of ECW so he wants his title back. He just meant nothing by this point.

Corino says he’s going to win but Dawn Marie comes in to mess up his promo.

Oh and Van Dam is hurt so he’s not here.

Joey and Joel do their thing and here’s Simon Diamond to complain a lot. His partner isn’t here because of Matthews and York but Joey hasn’t mentioned that, ticking off Simon. He also hurt Dreamer and had retired him apparently but Joey hasn’t said that either. Diamond yells at Gertner for no apparent reason so Gertner sucks up to him and then bashes him, prompting Simon to punch him in the face. Joey tries to save his buddy but Swinger, who allegedly isn’t here tonight, comes in with a chair. Dreamer comes down and beats up Simon so CW Anderson comes down and beats him up. And here are the aforementioned Matthews and York for an impromptu tag.

Swinger/Simon Diamond vs. Joey Matthews/Christian York

There’s no commentary to start this up as Joey is still getting back to the booth. Matthews is more commonly known as Mercury, as in the member of the SES. They hit a nice double suicide dive onto the heels and take over for a good while. They’re kind of like the Guns or the Hardys which is definitely a good thing. Anderson hits York to let Swinger and Diamond take over.

Still no commentary which I’m guessing might not get here for awhile. Ah there we are and it’s Joey and Cyrus. Make that just Cyrus. Mercury gets a hot tag and has to avoid the broken face of Swinger, which is ironic given how bad his face got busted up around 2007/2008. A double team move for the heels get them a two count as Cyrus makes fun of the referee for being fat and slow. Can’t say I disagree. Anderson comes in with a spinebuster and Matthews takes the Problem Solver (later the move he and Nitro used as the Snapshot in MNM oddly enough) for the pin.

Rating: C-. Not bad but the lack of commentary for awhile and the whole insanity aspect made it hard to follow. This was more about pushing Simon and Swinger and that’s fine, but this just didn’t ever really get going. That and having only five minutes to work with didn’t help things at all.

The heels beat up York and Matthews so Kid Kash makes the save. HUGE DIVE and everyone is down.

CW Anderson vs. Kid Kash

Joey is back here and is comparing Gertner to Wile E. Coyote for some reason. Anderson botches the hell out of something so Kash just does another flippy rana. This is wrestler vs. flier here so I would expect a lot of insanity from one of them and some solid stuff from Anderson. As you can likely tell I’m not very interested in this so far. Joey is trying to figure out all of the card now that the format has been changed. Good for him.

Anderson goes for a swinging armbar but the fans let him know how much he fucked it up. He goes for the arm and hits a Stunner on it of all things. Kash comes back with a chop and that goes nowhere at all. This is decent at its very best but nothing special at all. A TKO (awesome move) gets two but apparently it was to the arm. I think it was more of a botch but whatever.

Kash gets all flippy but that gets him nowhere. Well at least they’re even at this point. They lay on the mat and get into a slapfest. Ok then. Double springboard gets the hurricanrana for two. The crowd is hot at least as Anderson hits a suplex off the middle rope with a delay. The spinebuster gets two and a running tornado DDT ends it foe Kash. And I say, so what?

Rating: D+. Not bad or anything, but seriously, who cares man? I mean what difference does it make that he won this? It’s a random match that went nowhere and came from nowhere. The fans liked it and I guess that’s all that matters. It wasn’t horrible but you can tell there’s just no point to anything that’s going on out here. I know it’s one of the last shows and everything, but they didn’t know that at the time, so this is kind of inexcusable.

Hey….it’s the theme song…..half an hour into this. Sure why not.

Danny Doring/Roadkill/Spike Dudley vs. Hot Commodity

Hot Commodity is EZ Money, Julio Dinero and Chris Hamrick. Dinero is from Treasure Island or something. This is supposed to be a tag but Spike and Hamrick add themselves. Hamrick says let’s make it 3-2 and then Spike comes in to a huge pop. They triple team Roadkill to take him down and this is just not very interesting at all.

He’s Commissioner or something like that and still has a bad leg. Everyone does flips and Spike does the big dive to take everyone out. Roadkill crushes Hamrick in the ring and gets cheered. He was way over near the end which was kind of weird. Doring hits a nice elbow off the top and a triple Hart Attack more or less ends Hamrick. Oh hey let’s have a regular tag match now.

The fans want Spike who of course scares the heels more than Roadkill. Well of course he does. Roadkill and Spike both get hot tags and both guys are beaten down which lasts only a few seconds. I really want this match to end. Roadkill hits a cool double clothesline off the top to end the pain a bit. He then hits a double team Acid Drop with Spike on Hamrick to end this.

Rating: D-. Another huge crazy-fest with no story or structure at all. I know I bash ECW a lot but this is just ridiculous at this point as there hasn’t been a good match out of the first three and I have little reason to believe that’s going to change at all throughout the rest of this whole show.

Rhyno says New Jack has to wrestle to beat him.

Chris Chetti vs. Nova

They were the best team forever in ECW and this is loser leaves ECW. Yeah because we need to split them up before they get too good. Dangerously, as in Lou, Chetti’s manager, runs down Chicago for some basic heat to start. Nova is Spiderman here which is better than the Flash I suppose. Nova busts out a Crossface Chicken Wing of all things. Chetti has a bad back and it gets hurt here.

Lou comes in and Chetti was faking it. What a brilliant man. The crowd is a bit dead here which is saying a lot at an ECW show. Nova is bleeding and Chetti is as well to an extent. The problem with these kinds of matches and this one in particular is that you have to have a team built up high enough to have a match like this mean something. These guys were good but only for a few months and they never won anything. That’s why this isn’t incredibly interesting.

Chetti steals Nova’s move so Nova steals Chetti’s move. Nova just goes insane with punches in the corner, beating the hell out of Chetti. And it’s chair time since this is an ECW match. The fans finally wake up a bit for this due to Nova’s insanity. I don’t think anyone ever actually liked Chris Chetti which is the biggest problem here. Nova hits a double arm DDT but Lou makes the save.

He gets nailed to a nice pop. The crowd is trying so hard to care about this match but it’s just not happening. Why were these guys never tag champions? Nova goes insane and tries rolling piledrivers. He gets two of them but Lou pops him with the phone. Nova kicking out gets a solid pop as well. Kryptonite Krunch from the middle rope ends it and Nova can stay for the remaining two months!

Rating: C-. The fans wanted to like it but this just missed so many times that it never got together. No one liking Chetti hurt it a lot like I said. Nova could have been something special but he was in midcard/tag hell forever. This wasn’t anything special though and it never went anywhere. Of course it’s the longest match of the night so far.

New Jack says he’s going to gut Rhyno and doesn’t want the belt. This is uh….yeah.

Balls Mahoney/Chilly Willy vs. Da Baldies

This is a flaming tables match. It’s a tables match but the table has to be on fire for it to count. Yeah that’s not overkill at all. Honestly, who thought Chilly Willy was a good name? It sounds like a name for a frozen drink that a 4 year old would drink. There’s a table in the ring already so we head to the floor. We hear the whole Balls used to be a big deal in high school wrestling. Is he the Al Bundy of wrestling or something?

We’re in the crowd and you can’t see a damn thing just to make it really feel like ECW all over again. They’re in a balcony as we continue to wait for something to happen. Lots of beers are being slammed onto people’s heads. It’s one of those brawls where each punch gets a cheer but they come every minute or so. They brawl in the aisle to fill in some time.

Willy gets powerbombed through two chairs on the floor. FREAKING OW MAN. Hey we’re actually in the ring now. Something tells me this isn’t going to last long. The lighters finally get brought into play with bottle after bottle of fluid. DeVito goes through the table and it’s finally over.

Rating: F+. This was TWELVE MINUTES LONG. Yes, this, is the longest match of the night so far. It’s the freakshow match of the night I guess but that doesn’t mean it was any good. Da Baldies go from being what was supposed to be a semi-big heel stable to jobbing to Chilly Willy. That’s ECW for you.

The FBI gets to the Sinister Minister. Yeah because we need to see that match again.

TV Title: Rhyno vs. New Jack

Who is old Jack? Brisco I’m guessing? Yep the song is going to play through the whole damn song isn’t it? New Jack pops him with a Bears helmet. It’s a bunch of weapons shots which something tells me isn’t going to wind up going well for Jack in the end. Joey makes sure to point out that this isn’t a wrestling match and we shouldn’t think of it as such. Good to know that on a wrestling show that I would have bought that I shouldn’t expect wrestling in a contest for a wrestling title.

ALL New Jack so far but we’re only about five minutes in. Also he said he only wanted to wrestle and not fight. You know this is kind of making him look weak, but Rhyno is supposed to look awesome I guess so maybe it’s ok. There goes the referee and it’s staple gun time. The evil referee takes it to the head. Rhyno misses a top rope splash but no sells a guitar show. Gore though a table ends it.

Rating: D+. It was another weapons based match which hurt it a lot. The whole killing of Rhyno made limited sense to me but that’s ECW for you again. No way Jack was going to win here but I really don’t get the whole have Rhyno sell everything and then no sell a guitar shot for the end. That made no sense but whatever.

Sandman wants the title.

Tag Titles: FBI vs. Unholy Alliance

What the hell happened to the tag division in this company? Oh that’s right: they decided to have the good tag teams either split up or have bullshit midcard feuds. No Minister with them here either as we mentioned earlier. The fans think Sal is a fat fuck. He’s the manager/enforcer and gets more heat than the champions combined. Mikey vs. Mamaluke to start and they do a wrestling sequence that isn’t bad.

All four guys get in on this and it indeed is a decent one. The challengers go for the spot where one guy holds a guy’s legs on his shoulders and his neck is on the top and the other guy jumps over his partner’s shoulders to land on his back. I say go for because it’s not even close as Tajiri lands on Mikey’s back instead of Guido’s.

With Guido’s head on the middle rope, both challengers get chairs and put them around Guido’s head and kicks them in. Why Guido doesn’t, I don’t know, LET GO OF THE CHAIRS, is beyond me. Double Whippersnapper from the top and Mikey “hurts” his shoulder. This was planned coming in so that something can happen here in a bit. The match completely stops and Mikey goes out on a stretcher.

The FBI do their combination Boston Crab and camel clutch but Super Crazy makes his return as Tajiri’s partner to a big pop. Triple moonsault mostly fails but whatever. Tajiri gets his arm worked over as we actually get to a tag match here. The fans cheer Crazy loudly so he and Sal go off into the crowd. Well yeah I mean we can’t have the popular guy being out there now can we?

In something that just made me shake my head at their idiocy, Crazy goes up for the big balcony dive. The camera follows him up, they see him jump off, he’s upside down….and then they go to a wide shot for the landing. Either show it or don’t show it. You’re dropping F Bombs all over this show and you can’t show a guy famous for his dives landing on a massive fucking target? Are you kidding me? You can’t possible be that inept can you? An elevated bulldog on Tajiri ends it. I shake my head harder at that.

Rating: C-. Decent match but I can’t believe the booking. You’re seriously going with the damn Italians when you bring a guy back into the match to a huge pop, have him do a huge spot and he gets the biggest reaction of the match? The fans boo the ending out of the building and I can’t blame them a bit. This was damn stupid to put it mildly. Decent match like I said though.

Jasmine St. Clair is on the website with pics in the shower. Egads.

We run down the rules for Double Jeopardy: two matches at the same time but only the people in the same matches can get the pin. The winners then fight. You know, because the whole four way dance thing wouldn’t work at all.

Steve Corino vs. Sandman/Justin Credible vs. Jerry Lynn

Francine needs her hair down more often. Justin not getting any until he wins is a cool idea I guess. If nothing else Dawn Marie looks hot. There’s no Sandman here either. Why does that not surprise me in the slightest? The fans want Sandman and let the wrestlers know it. So Corino just kind of sits off to the side and lets Lynn vs. Credible happen, which isn’t that bad of an idea.

They do a nice little pinfall reversal sequence and Corino jumps in for no apparent reason. The fans chant for RVD. Nah he’s not coming out. This is for the top spot in the company so we can’t do that right? It’s your usual let’s fight each other while the other guy is down thing which really is the only way to go about these things more often than not. And cue Sandman!

Of course EVERYTHING stops and everyone looks at the crowd for him because clearly the match isn’t important in the slightest right? Literally, the guys in the ring stop what they’re doing for his entrance. Ah wait Justin is choking a bit I think. Not that we see it or anything but you get the idea right? I get that this is supposed to fire up the fans, but the problem is it’s kind of disrespectful to the guys in the ring. Who cares about that though right?

Sandman canes Credible and Lynn but Corino slaps away the beer. Wow he’s an idiot. Everyone goes after Sandman but remember that only Corino can pin him. The matches actually pair off with Sandman and Corino on the floor. Justin gets a Boss Man Slam of all things for two. Sandman busts out a ladder because that’s what this match needs. Sandman’s hand might be hurt.

This is a big mess and the rules are just getting in the way here. They did this before but they weren’t all in the same place at once and more importantly the winners didn’t fight. Now we switch opponents to make this even more pointless since nothing is going to happen while these guys are fighting. The guard rail is brought in because everyone has one of those lying around. Corino is bleeding.

The guard rail is put up on some chairs and Corino goes through it. Lynn gets a tombstone on Credible but Francine stops the pin. No cat fight even though Dawn is back. Old School Expulsion and That’s Incredible get rid of Lynn and Sandman to get us down to this.

ECW World Title: Justin Credible vs. Steve Corino

The fans HATE this for some reason. They really wanted Sandman to win but that just wasn’t going to happen. He and Lynn are outside now as lumberjacks. So much for that big run for Lynn too I guess as it’s done a PPV after it starts. Lynn beats up Corino on the floor and Sandman does the same to Credible. Is a regular title match too much to ask for? It’s table time and they chop it out.

Corino puts Justin through the table with a Northern Lights Suplex for two. Justin shoves Francine in the way of a superkick but kicks out of Old School Expulsion. Another expulsion but Dawn turns on Corino with a low blow. Justin canes the hell out of Corino about three times so Corino kicks him in the shoulder and pins him to win the title. Lynn is pissed and hands him the title to end the show.

Rating: D+. Just a huge mess here with the double match thing. It didn’t work and it was WAY more complicated than it needed to be. The main issue here is that this belongs in the upper midcard and not for the world title. This is very much the Hogan in 86 issue. He was the champion, but until he beat Andre, he wasn’t the true top star. This is the case here but with RVD instead of Andre. The match was insanity anyway which didn’t help things. Corino wins, but beats Credible to do it? As in, not the champion. Yeah….this didn’t work.

Overall Rating: F+. And remember, this is supposed to be the biggest show of the year. This went NOWHERE and nothing is gained from it. The matches are more or less random with no rhyme or reason for them and to top it off they’re not very good either. The booking is nonsensical as well. Corino is champion now. Ok cool. Who does he fight? Likely Justin or Jerry but does that really matter? Again, with RVD never even getting a shot, no one buys these guys as champions and that’s a big problem that was never addressed. The company is clearly on its last legs here and this didn’t make things any better at all.
 
Massacre on 34th Street
Date: December 3, 2000
Location: Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City, New York
Attendance: 2,600
Commentators: Joey Styles, Cyrus

We hit the final two and things look very bad all around. The company is completely over and I think everyone knows it. Most stuff here is either a rehash of last month or just more randomly thrown together matches. Their touring was dying around this time as well since there were few arenas that would rent to him because of his issues with money. This card looks somewhat better than last time but not by much. Let’s get to it.

Corino and Jack Victory open the show with Corino talking about all the champions that haven’t gotten to perform here, including a fairly funny imitation of Sammartino. Basically he’s not afraid of Lynn or Credible and will do whatever it takes to beat them tonight. Corino makes sure Victory doesn’t want the title because the internet says he wants it. Funnier than it sounds, but would have been better if we didn’t hear the announcer welcoming Joey and Joel to the ring and making Corino hard to hear.

Joel does his usual stuff but goes a lot longer than usual, although it’s still rather funny.

Cue theme song. This has come off like a TV show so far rather than a PPV, but then again we’re only about seven minutes in.

Simon Diamond/Swinger vs. Joey Matthews/Christian York

Simon doesn’t like Matthews and York. York and Matthews have matching tights and do the same poses now. Dawn Marie comes out just before the match starts to double the pop of the two teams combined. She says she needs some men and that whoever wins gets her. Gertner wants Joey to team with her as the Missing Link in a funny bit.

Matthews and York do a funny bit where they manage to get a look under her skirt. York and Matthews are good but like every other team in this company they’re never going to go anywhere because they’re a tag team and tag teams never go anywhere here. York is in trouble early on and takes some nice double team stuff. And there’s the heel miscommunication to end that.

York and Matthews make the hot tag and they crank it up. We get a bunch of double team stuff, setting up Matthews hitting a nice rana off the top to set up a top rope elbow from York to end Swinger. And then Dawn turns on them 20 seconds later, kissing her real life husband Simon. Joel sprints (just go with it here) to the ring and is worried about Matthews and York. This led to a match in Queens or something which turned out to be a one night return of the Dudley Boys.

Rating: D+. Total paint by numbers match here that didn’t have enough time. Yeah I actually think an ECW match should go on longer. This was a fun opener but the post match angle hurt it as it makes Dawn Marie look pointless since she turned 30 seconds in. Why change over just after that rather than just going with Simon and Swinger in the first place? Better than last time though.

EZ Money vs. Balls Mahoney

Money is part of Hot Commodity which never went anywhere due to a lack of talent. And we see Money’s g-string. Why can’t we at least see Elektra in one? And here’s Cyrus because Joel left earlier. Is there a point to him being around since Joel beat him on PPV? Even Balls’ song is weak. Money does Rude’s hip gyration and no one cares.

Mahoney is just a folk hero character at this point, having no real value otherwise. Money hits a top rope dive to take out Balls, making him more of a face than he ever should be. More stuff about Balls being an amateur champion or whatever which even Joey says we’ve talked about before. Balls dives off the top as we have Balls in the air. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be funny or not but I’m a bit bored here so let me have that one.

Top rope leg drop completely misses though and Money takes over for a bit. Again mind you, there’s no explanation for why this match is happening. It just kind of is. Balls hits a superkick for two. And there goes Ball’s shirt. What is with men taking their clothes off in this match? Dinero and Hamrick both interfere and hit their finishers so that Money can hit a top rope moonsault for the win.

Rating: D. Not much here at all and it never went anywhere at all. Mahoney isn’t worth much at this point but he’s still worth more than Hot Commodity. This was another paint by numbers match that was there to fill in about ten minutes on the card. It wasn’t horrible but I need more than this.

Big old beatdown on Balls leads to this.

Nova vs. Julio Dinero

Nova runs in for the save and beats the hell out of everyone, hitting his finisher on Elektra. And that more or less ends the fun part of the match as Nova nor Dinero manage to hit more than a single move in a row. This is more or less a big mess. Nova dominates for awhile. Dinero takes over with a superkick and controls for a bit. Balls pops him and the rest of Hot Commodity with a chair. Nova hits a swanton to end it.

Rating: D-. Well that’s six minutes I’ll never get back. This was mainly just a big mess and another of those impromptu matches that has no purpose at all. I don’t think there was any connection here other than a face helping out another face. If there was Joey never brought it up. Oh well.

Rhyno wants to kill Spike. You know this works a lot better when he couldn’t kill Spike with one shot.

Tag Titles: FBI vs. Roadkill/Danny Doring

Doring and Roadkill will split if they use. The champions cut off Roadkill’s beard too. “You don’t cut an Amishman’s beard! You just don’t do that!” Roadkill is TINY compared to Sal. That’s damn freaky. Doring and Guido start us off and Guido just destroys him at first. At least it becomes a mat sequence that isn’t half bad. Mamaluke beats up Roadkill for a bit until they wake up and realize he’s tiny and that Roadkill is a monster.

Hart Attack and down goes Mamaluke. The big fat guys go at it until Mamaluke hits a diving tornado DDT to the floor. Hokey smoke. FBI is winning handily here. Roadkill gets the hot tag and takes over including a huge powerbomb to Mamaluke…and then he dives off the top rope onto Sal in a cool as hell looking spot. They botch the hell out of something but it lets Doring get two.

Belt to the head of Doring gets two and Roadkill misses a top rope double clothesline. The FBI both throw on Fujiwara Armbars on Roadkill but it gets them nowhere. The challengers finally get a combination wheelbarrow slam and Fameasser to get the tag titles that they long since deserved. They were the final champions too.

Rating: B-. Not bad at all here despite a slow start. They got things going well by the end and they were beating each other up pretty well. The big dive by Roadkill was damn cool looking and got the crowd way into it. Fun match that worked better than I expected it too, mainly due to awesome chemistry between Doring and Roadkill which came out of nowhere.

Spike doesn’t think much of Rhyno because he’s beaten a bunch of big guys. Him cracking up at the end doesn’t help.

Tommy Dreamer vs. CW Anderson

Anderson thinks Dreamer is a stepping stone to the world title. I’m not sure if that makes sense or not but at least there’s a bit of logic in there. Dreamer is still incredibly popular. Amazingly enough his shirt doesn’t have any writing on it. Anderson cuts off the announcer on the Innovator of Violence line and spits in Dreamer’s face. Naturally that sets us off.

Dreamer destroys him to start and puts an Octopus Hold on while on the mat which is a different looking thing. He imitates Anderson and goes for the arm. This is a very different style of Dreamer here and it’s working to a degree. And now Anderson works on Dreamer’s arm. Damn CW could throw a left hand. Dreamer is busted open and he gets his arm destroyed on top of that. This isn’t a good night for him.

We fight outside with a chair for awhile which never really goes anywhere. Since they went to the floor they have to go into the crowd so we do that for awhile. Anderson’s arm is fine now apparently as he hammers on Tommy’s. We’re back in the ring now just to change things up a bit. Dreamer lays Anderson on a chair and drops an elbow from the middle rope.

Some plant is brought in by Anderson but winds up kicking him in the face. He was seen toweling the ropes down earlier so at least he has a reason for being here. Lou E. Dangerously is here and SHATTERS the phone over Dreamer’s head prompting the REAL Heyman to come in and beat up Lou. A Spicolli (Death Valley) Driver gets two which really should have been the ending.

Baseball Slide dropkick in the Tree of Woe hits in a spot I’ve always liked. Anderson pelts a chair at him ala Sabu to take over again. I like the whole hardcore vs. old school style we’ve got going on here. Tommyhawk hits…..to a certain extent but whatever. I like the move so I’ll let it slide. A table is set up in the corner bottom up so that the legs are sticking out. Dreamer takes a spinebuster onto those to end it.

Rating: D+. Not bad, but WAY too long. Did we really need 16 minutes here? Also I get that Dreamer is an ECW legend, but with a total of like one big win in the previous year, how much does a win over him really mean? The psychology here was all over the place too with the arm stuff being completely forgotten about halfway through. Heyman coming in was a nice touch, but it didn’t change anything. This wasn’t horrible, but it certainly wasn’t good.

Mikey and Tajiri do a weird thing with sock puppets. Sinister Minister is back and they’re happy.

TV Title: Rhyno vs. Spike Dudley

Rhyno had hurt Spike’s knee and put him out for 9 months. Acid Drop is missed about 3 seconds in and Spike spears him. Basically Rhyno beats up Spike, Spike moves and beats on Rhyno to no avail, repeat. Spike is busted open after some chair shots. The problem here becomes very apparent: Spike is tiny and Rhyno is a monster, so there’s no reason the beating should last more than like two minutes.

The fans chant boring until Spike gets a chair shot from the top. After that they do nothing at all. Well that’s better than hating it I guess. We head into the crowd because that’s never been done in this company before right? Spike does a balcony dive to take out Rhyno which of course lasts a few seconds only. Acid Drop in the ring doesn’t work and Spike goes through a table for his troubles.

The Gore sends Spike to the floor as the fans chant Goldberg. Spike is of course up about 12 seconds later and blasts him in the knee with a chair. Spike tries to tape Rhyno’s ankle to the ropes so he can beat on it with a chair. Rhyno just pulls his leg loose and chokes out Spike for the win. Uh….why not Gore him or powerbomb him? Whatever, at least it’s over.

Rating: D+. The booking here was stupid. We get it: Spike is tough. He needs to actually win something to validate that toughness. The choke out was just a dumb choice at the end of the day. Rhyno is a power guy, not a submission guy. Why would you not have him destroy Spike if that’s how the match ends? I don’t get that at all, especially in a revenge match for Spike.

Web site ad.

House show ads, including the Dudleys coming back.

Francine steals Victory by offering to “get him over”. They go into a room and Corino tries to join them. Justin jumps him with a kendo stick. Victory screams and Francine comes out, talking about her sharp teeth. That was funny.

Tajiri/Mikey Whipwreck vs. Super Crazy/???

Yeah so I guess Crazy is heel here? No apparently not. He has no partner to start so it’s 2-1 in the beginning. And cue Kid Kash to give us the actual tag match. Mikey and Kash start us off and they last about a minute. We get the REAL match here as it’s Tajiri vs. Crazy, which is indeed a great pairing. We get an INCREDIBLE back and forth sequence that ends in a standoff. That was great stuff and is another reason as to why the whole midcard fell apart: none of these guys that were just awesome ever got anything past these random matches with nothing to shoot for. Elevating guys is always a good thing, even to something like the TV Title. And yes they got up there to a point but then they were just dropped right back down in favor of guys like the FBI for the tag titles, which doesn’t work.

DAMN Kash could fly like few others. Those flips just looked awesome. Everyone not named Tajiri goes through a table due to a Whippersnapper as this breaks down again. Triple Moonsault to Tajiri but no cover for no apparent reason. This turns into Tajiri vs. Crazy which to be fair is better than the tag match would have been. Tajiri gets him in the Tarantula but Kash makes the save.

Mist to the face of Crazy and it’s table time. Kash puts Mike through it in a nice rana to the floor. DAMN those kicks from Tajiri are awesome. It’s hard to fake being kicked in the face. Tajiri piles up a bunch of chairs and a table on Crazy then jumps on him for the pin. Solid match.

Rating: B. I wanted to go a bit higher but I couldn’t. It’s not exactly a great match, but it’s certainly entertaining. This is one of those insane matches like ECW could do very well when they had to. This got a lot of time and you get a good match out of it because of it. See what happens when you just let them have fun? But of course, Mikey and Tajiri can’t get the titles for more than a day so the FBI can have them for a few months right?

Blue Boy and Jasmine St. Claire do a bad comedy thing.

ECW World Title: Jerry Lynn vs. Justin Credible vs. Steve Corino

Cyrus likes Jerry Lynn lately, and I think you know where that’s going. This is elimination rules which is something I like better. Justin still isn’t getting any until he wins the title back. Corino is in long tights here for a change. The fans want Sandman but who cares what they want right? Lynn gets the cane to start and beats the hell out of everyone.

We’re like three minutes into this and Cyrus wants to give the match to Jerry already. Justin might have hurt his knee on the railing. We finally go back into the ring and the fans are all over Francine. Justin imitates Rock and grabs a mic to talk trash during the match. Everyone goes for a bunch of pins but they all get two, including a double sunset flip from Lynn for two on both guys.

Old School Expulsion is blocked as Corino is waking up a bit. Lynn has them both in trouble so Francine comes in to hit on Lynn. She accidently kicks Justin low and he accidently hits her. It lets Justin get That’s Incredible on Lynn to get us down to Justin vs. Steve, just like last month. Don’t you love this new Jerry that isn’t jobbing anymore?

Cyrus has left the announce table which makes me wonder where Joel has been all night. We brawl up to the entrance way to kill some time. Justin is rammed face first into the “steel bricks”. Corino brings in a ladder which foreshadows the final PPV. And now we just stop to kill time by going into the crowd and into the balcony. What does this have to do with wrestling? I’ve always wanted to know that.

Corino gets knocked out of the balcony but since you can’t see anything it’s not like we know if he’s dead or whatnot. The match more or less stops because of this of course and we’re going nowhere at all. The fans are all behind Corino here once he gets back in the ring. Old School Expulsion ends it out of nowhere as Sandman’s music hits. He beats the hell out of Corino and steals the belt.

Rating: C. Well I’ve seen worse. This wasn’t horrible I guess but it was just way too long of a match and the brawling didn’t help things. I will give it this though: they gave this about 23 minutes but it didn’t feel that long at all. That’s always a good thing which is why the grade is a bit higher than it likely should be. The match worked for what it was supposed to be but nothing really came of it. The Sandman thing at the end didn’t really mean much since he was around last time and lost there but whatever. Corino vs. Sandman doesn’t do much for me though.

Cyrus and Lynn join forces.

Overall Rating: C-. Not terrible, but it’s not like it matters much at this point. The show was far better than last month’s as it definitely had a flow to it with some good matches thrown in. The whole card was at least had a point to it which helps this be bearable. There are still some weird things going on but the main matches were all watchable and there’s nothing overly stupid. Something tells me this is their last good show, but at least they had a decent one before they went under. Not worth checking out but not bad.
 
Guilty As Charged 2001
Date: January 7, 2001
Location: Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City, New York
Attendance: 2,500
Commentators: Joey Styles, Cyrus

It ends here. Or at least it should have since there was the WWE version which was good but not ECW and then there’s the TNA version which will be bad but ECW. This is the final ECW PPV in the original incarnation of the Tribe of Extreme. The main event is more or less a ladder match with Sandman vs. Credible vs. Corino for the title. Other than that there’s a semi-famous Dreamer vs. Anderson I Quit match which I’ve never seen. Let’s get to it, even though this is all that’s left to get to.

Oh and RVD isn’t on the card here since he wasn’t paid either.

We open with a long music video with no real purpose other than highlights of the previous few PPVs. Keep in mind there were no national TV shows and very limited syndicated channels and barely any touring. In a sense, the company was just going PPV to PPV for anything. The video is at three minutes already.

A little telling sign of ECW’s problems: while the place looks full, notice the listed attendance. A full house is great, but not when it’s less than 3,000 people to fill it. Joel does his usual stuff but gets dirtier than usual, although it’s rather funny. He introduces Matthews and York who he is now managing.

Random note here: it wasn’t known that the company was going out of business. There was supposed to be another PPV in March but they canceled it in February and went out of business just after Wrestlemania. In other words, for about 10 days, ECW was in fact the second biggest wrestling company in the country due to WCW being out of business. Pay no attention to the fact that Heyman was working for WWF or that they hadn’t had a show in about two months and let Heyman have his moment.

Anyway Da Baldies jump York and Matthews and beat up Gertner in the aisle. And here are Cyrus and Lynn with an evil referee while the Baldies continue the beatdown. Lynn hits York with a Cradle Piledriver and Cyrus gets the pin. That somehow was an opening match. Between Joel finishing his poem and the three count, which included a speech, the intro, the beatdown, an extension of the beatdown and the pin, five minutes passed, hence the short description and no official inro to a match.

Lynn says he’s not a jobber to the stars anymore and he’s the New Fucking Show. He also lets us know that RVD isn’t the biggest star. Lynn won’t wrestle a non man event either.

Theme song. I still fail to see why we needed a few minutes out of every PPV for this.

Tag Titles: Hot Commodity vs. Danny Doring/Roadkill

The backs of the belts are purple. I wouldn’t have bet on that one. Doring and Dinero start us off. We really need to do something about the apparent crack epidemic in ECW since there are a lot of crack ****es there. Basically we’re just waiting for the hot tag to Roadkill to have him clean house. And there he is, earlier than I expected, for the beatdown. Hart Attack (called the Lancaster Lariat of Lust) connects.

We go to the floor and Doring kind of botches a Poetry in Motion over the top rope. Hamrick interference gets two as this isn’t much of a match. It’s ok but it’s going a bit too fast. Money hits the Crash Landing which would be his finisher in his brief run in WCW at the end of the company. Dinero hits a SWEET dropkick to put Roadkill on the floor.

It’s back to waiting on the big hot tag to Roadkill which is basic and smart booking. I like the funny little names that are all based around sex for Doring. At least they’re trying. He comes in and destroys everyone and the big double clothesline has Hot Commodity in trouble. Dinero’s finisher is called the Jalapeno Popper. Seriously? Hamrick comes in but does nothing as the Buggy Back (wheelbarrow/legdrop combo) ends it.

Rating: D+. Nothing that special here but it was ok. The champions were in trouble a bit too long for my taste but it certainly wasn’t horrible. This was just a gimme tag title defense for the champions which is fine. The match wasn’t much, although that could be that I can’t stand Hot Commodity.

The heels start a big beatdown and here’s Nova for the save, leading to this.

Nova vs. Chris Hamrick

Sure why not. Nova is different here somehow apparently. He’s leaner and very popular, so of course he’s in a thrown together match early in the show against a guy that’s no challenge to him. He goes for the leg for some reason and hooks a figure four. Well that didn’t last as Elektra comes in to break it up.

Hamrick gets a nice rana off the top to take over. Nova Hulks Up and an enziguri takes Hamrick down. He gets a huge chant as Cyrus insists he’s not fan friendly now. Elektra comes in again to annoy me so she gets kicked in the head by Nova. I like this new guy. Down goes the referee. Sure because in a company where there are no disqualifications we need a referee.

Chris Chetti, who Nova beat in a loser leaves ECW match, comes in and counts a pin on Nova. And here’s Spike for no apparent reason. Lou E. Dangerously says he would never be a Dudley, which is the joke since he used to be Sign Guy Dudley. A big brawl erupts and Nova hits a Swanton on Chetti and Kryptonite Krunch to end Hamrick because that was still going on.

Rating: D+. Decent match between two high fliers but the insanity just got annoying as hell of course. I have no idea why Spike had any point there but whatever. Naturally Chetti and Nova would be supposed to feud again because having a Loser Leaves ECW match wasn’t enough somehow. This was of course angle building with wrestling on the side. Not a fan of that at all.

Cornio says he’s getting his belt back tonight, which Sandman stole.

CW Anderson vs. Tommy Dreamer

This is an I Quit match and is your standard veteran vs. young punk with something to prove feud. Dreamer is in a damn Logan’s Roadhouse shirt. Is he a waiter on the side since he’s not getting paid? I’m not sure if I’m kidding there or not. We’re on the floor immediately as Cyrus is irritating as hell. Back in the ring and Dreamer has a Dragon Sleeper of all things.

Anderson goes to the arm which is likely hurt since it’s Tommy Dreamer. Why should an I Quit match be a wrestling match? Cyrus wants it to be technical which is completely against the idea of the match but whatever. Dreamer goes violent with the ring bell hammer and busts Anderson open. Fairly sick drop toehold into the back of a chair busts Dreamer open.

CW works on the knee which doesn’t really get him anywhere. Dreamer takes some very bad looking unprotected chair shots and busts out a ring of barbed wire. The towel boy from the last show comes in and helps Dreamer beat him up. And there’s a metal sheet to the non-wrestler. Throw in a suplex and I’m sure he’s perfectly fine right?

Spinebuster onto the wire, called razor wire here, and of course Anderson goes for the arm instead of the back which was just slammed into barbed wire. We switch back to the spine as he goes through some chairs. Ok make that the neck as it’s all Anderson here. It’s table time but Anderson goes through it. They take part of it and Dreamer chokes him out for the victory.

Rating: C. Not bad but if this is supposed to be a classic in ECW I fail to see it. Also, nice job of elevating Anderson there by giving the win to the old man that still has never quit. I don’t get this one really and while it was a good beatdown, the psychology was just not there at all as Anderson couldn’t just pick a body part. It’s ok but nothing great at all.

We now hit the WTF part of our show.

Francine is making jokes about a huge sandwich and Corino comes in. He says he’s the world champion so she should fuck him. She says no because of the lack of belt. He asks where Justin is and she says in the bathroom with Missy Hyatt. Naturally Corino doesn’t buy it but after he leaves, out walks Justin with his pants unbuckled and is followed by Missy Hyatt in a towel. She says she’s fucked him twice already today and to just let Justin fuck Francine already. Missy leaves and Corino and Jack Victory are STUNNED. Victory wants some too because she used to manage him in Texas (true story) but she doesn’t remember. She asks if she fucked him. This was completely pointless but absolutely hilarious.

Website ad/house show ad (including the final show 6 days after this)/ad for Living Dangerously which didn’t happen.

FBI vs. Kid Kash/Super Crazy vs. Tajiri/Mikey Whipwreck

The winners are the #1 contenders. Tajiri in a hat is just funny for some reason. It always has been. Three people in at once here and it’s elimination. Kash, Mikey and Mamaluke start us off. Mikey’s laugh is awesome. Kash botches the hell out of a springboard and faceplants to draw a huge chant against him.

The fans do the whole pizza/Sal E ate it deal which gets old fast. Crazy vs. Tajiri starts up and the value of the show instantly rises. Kash misses another big dive and it’s breaking down very fast. Yeah forget that whole three in the ring at once. Crazy does a big dive and of course Kash out does him. Make no mistake about him: the guy could fly with the best of them.

Crazy goes for another dive and completely misses in a painful looking spot. Sal kills Kash with a splash to take out him and Crazy. And so of course it’s these two teams again because we haven’t seen this match enough. Mikey drops DiBiase punches which makes me smile. Mamaluke gets freaking destroyed and both he and his partner are put in the Tree of Woe.

Naturally they take over in about 9 seconds because they can. Double Powerbomb off the top to Mikey to more or less end him. And of course that gets two also. Mikey gets the hot tag and is of course fine just afterwards. The lack of selling in this match is painful. Chairs are involved and are of course nothing special. Double suplexes end it. Well at least it’s over.

Rating: D+. This was just a tag team triple threat. There was no real point to it and while it wasn’t horrible, there just wasn’t anything at all to talk about in it, which is clearly why I wrote four paragraphs on it. It just wasn’t an interesting match in the slightest and it never got off the ground. The title match would have been good too which is a shame they had to go out of business.

Same ads as early.

Sandman says he’s the most likely to win. How did he get into the world title picture without winning anything for like a year?

Simon Diamond/Swinger vs. Balls Mahoney/Chilly Willy

What kind of a name is Swinger? In WCW he was Johnny Swinger and here he’s just Swinger. That never made sense. Swinger talks about not getting any from Dawn Marie while Simon has, so he’s gone out and gotten Jasmine St. Clair. She and Blue Boy come out and apparently Blue Boy is his new manager. Oh look: another pointless midcard faction. After about a minute of brawling, Rhyno comes in and gores everyone including the women. Well there’s five minutes filled. Jasmine takes a piledriver off the middle rope.

Again with the ads!

Rhyno says he’s just begun.

ECW World Title: Steve Corino vs. Sandman vs. Justin Credible

So the main event is starting an hour and forty minutes into the show? THESE guys are going to go an hour? Why do I not think this is possible in the slightest? This is a ladder match but it’s billed as ladders, tables, chairs and canes. Where does that sound familiar from? Sandman’s entrance is three minutes so far as Joey actually talks about psychology regarding the entrance. That actually makes sense. Apparently it’s like icing a kicker. Makes sense.

The match starts after we spend five minutes on his intro. We start with brawling as Cyrus says Justin will unload on them like he did on Missy. So this is going to be porn? I wonder which position Sandman would like. It’s a spotfest and not a particularly good one. Sandman goes for the belt a few times to no avail. He goes through a table and I guess the fans are impressed.

Sandman beats up everyone and goes up the ladder. Justin is ready to make the save but the ladder breaks. Well what else did you expect? Sandman goes through a table again in a spot that made me think I had rewound the tape by mistake. Tombstone to Corino and Francine hits a rana on Sandman for no apparent reason. BIG ladder is brought in by Sandman.

Cornio and Justin go up and just like KOTR 99 the belt goes up. Just like KOTR 99, it was never explained as far as I know. Corino and Justin go through a table and Sandman goes up to win the belt. Yeah that’s it as the main event is over at three minutes past ten.

Rating: D+. Spotfest, but not a very good one. Sandman going through table after table was rather annoying and repetitive. This wasn’t horrible but it feels completely anti-climactic. Sandman is champion again and is a more believable choice than either of them but at the same time he’s the old guy that hasn’t meant anything in forever. I’m not wild on this at all.

Corino shakes Justin’s hand and here come….Da Baldies? They fight Justin and Corino to the back which has Joey shocked, as the two singles guys are fighting together.

And here’s Rhyno who gores Sandman. He wants to know why he’s the TV Champion when there is no TV in this company. He wants the world title and wants his shot RIGHT NOW. The announcers say he’s not very brave. Yeah he’s so brave to jump a guy he’s destroyed every time they’ve fought. Rhyno threatens to kill his family if he doesn’t get a match. Sandman says ring the bell.

ECW World Title: Sandman vs. Rhyno

Gore gets two, the fans chant RVD, Sandman gets pile driven through a table, Sandman kicks out, piledriver on a broken table, Rhyno is champion after like a minute.

Cyrus comes out and says Rhyno is the unified champion, meaning the TV Title is officially dead. He issues the open challenge and NOW RVD comes out to answer. Joey is shocked that RVD wants the world title. Good thing Rob was in his gear and stretched just in case there was an open challenge.

ECW World Title: Rob Van Dam vs. Rhyno

And never mind as here’s Jerry Lynn for a Dusty Finish and the fans aren’t exactly thrilled.

Jerry Lynn vs. Rob Van Dam

So here’s your last 20 minutes or so of the show. The fans are glad to see Van Dam as I guess this was supposed to set up RVD vs. Rhyno. Lynn is in shorts which is a weird sight. The PISSED OFF RVD has time to talk to the fans of course. We stall a lot as Joey gives us the pride crap. No contact is made for about two minutes as we have to kill some time since it couldn’t be spent wrestling.

They fight on the floor and RVD’s mouth is busted a bit. WAY too much stalling here. Van Dam does his normal stuff on the floor as it’s very clear they’re just trying to fill time at this point. This is really just a match and not a great one. The psychology in the third one made it far more interesting but here it’s just you take over then I take over. Some fans yell something about a bald guy or other and are cheered when he gets thrown out.

I know I’m not saying much here but there isn’t much to say. Since there’s no angle here or title on the line there’s no feeling to this match at all and it’s really hurting it. Also it doesn’t help at all that Lynn is a horrible heel. He had his most successful few months of his career so he wants to change all that. Sure why not.

Lynn gets a DDT on a chair for two as this is just dragging. Five Star doesn’t hit and Lynn gets two. And here’s Joel Gertner to beat up Cyrus for general purposes I guess. Van Daminator gets no cover as I wonder why you would EVER hold up a chair in an RVD match. It’s just damn stupid. Gertner helps set up the Van Terminator to kill Lynn dead and end it. And that’s the final ECW match in the history of the original PPV era.

Rating: C-. Just not interesting at all. It’s an ok match as most of them were, but I still find this to be a completely overrated series. This is by far and away the weakest they’ve ever done and just never became interesting. It’s not a bad match, but it’s way too long and had no real point other than being the wrestling match on the last half hour of the show. I just couldn’t get into it at all.

Credible and Lynn are the New Impact Players. That’s how the show ends. Oh and with Francine blowing her line.

Overall Rating: D. I’m going through the card here and without looking at the ratings, the best I can give a match is the I Quit match which was just ok. There just was nothing at all here to warrant paying a dime, or in this case $21.95, to see. This just wasn’t an interesting show at all. Sandman, the one guy of the three the fans accept as a main event player, wins the title and then Rhyno, a guy that had trouble with Spike last month is here to steal it? I thought the point of a monster was to be a MONSTER and not have to steal a title. RVD vs. Rhyno should have been at least six months earlier but I guess it was supposed to be the Living Dangerously match. This show just didn’t have anything good going for it and it showed badly. Bad way to go out, but the one silver lining was that they had some new stuff planned it seemed, including RVD going for the world title. Shame that’s only two years too late to give the company another breath of air. Oh and the show ended at 10:35, yet the Simon/Swinger match clocked in at 48 seconds.

So now we come to the hard part and probably the feature attraction here: the final thoughts on ECW. Now it’s no secret that I was never a fan of the original ECW. I thought the company was way overhyped and just straight up not very good. ECW was in fact one of the most influential companies in the world with some very innovative stuff. Then it stopped being innovative. Everyone was cursing, everyone had hot women, everyone used weapons, everyone had the more adult angles. They also got talent from ECW and Heyman just never came back.

If you look back at the ECW PPV guys and the reactions they were getting, it became increasingly clear that the midcard was the most popular section of the show. This is where one of the big ECW talking points comes into play: the TV Title and the World Title were sometimes on equal footing. That does not work. Even in a company today like WWE where there is enough talent to have two full rosters and they’re still crowded, people don’t like more than one champion. The other thing to consider is that to the masses, the TV Title was known as the belt worn by guys like Ultimo Dragon, Yuji Nagata, Alex Wright and Prince Iaukea.

You can make the case all you want that the titles were equal and that the matches for the TV Title were better. That very well may be true, but it doesn’t matter what reality is. What matters is how your audience perceives it. Take for example John Cena. Anyone with eyes can see that Cena is a talented wrestler and has far more than 5 moves. However, the people think he’s overrated and that’s all that matters. RVD vs. Lynn for the TV Title might be the best match on the card, but it’s not for the World Title. Fans are familiar with the idea of the World Champion being the important guy.

This transitions into my next point: Rob Van Dam and the Heavyweight Title. Now I’ve long since argued that the company was in trouble the day Shane Douglas got hurt. Shane was world champion and him dropping the belt to Taz was about as much of a given as you could ask for. The problem is that when Shane got hurt, Taz was the hottest thing in the company. Shane gets hurt for like 3 months and doesn’t drop the title until January, six months after his injury. The problem was that Taz had to just sit around for six months waiting on the shoulder to heal and people didn’t care when he won the belt.

This sets off a domino effect as Taz now has an 8 month reign and no one cares by this point and he has no one to fight. Van Dam is getting more and more popular so the belt goes on Mike Awesome for about seven months and then after a few short reigns (as in two in less than ten days) it goes to Justin Credible. Wait….what? Credible had a career win total of nothing important and yet he’s the world champion? This was the problem for the rest of the company’s run of nearly two years: the champions had never done shit.

The final three champions for all intents and purposes were Credible, Lynn and Corino. The problem is these three had a combined one important win: Lynn beat RVD when he had a bunch of ring rust and there was no title on the line. The problem was the Andre the Giant syndrome: as long as RVD was around and they didn’t beat him, the fans didn’t accept these guys as the world champion. This is what I’m getting at with the RVD issues the whole time. He had well received matches with Jerry Lynn for the TV Title. Why couldn’t they be for the world title? To the average and casual fans, he’s the midcard champion. That doesn’t sell a lot of new PPVs.

This is one of my final (I think) points: the impromptu matches and insane PPVs. These are fine once in awhile, but the thought that pops into my head is something I read in the Death of WCW book, so please note this is not my original idea but it fits ECW perfectly. Imagine if say McDonalds sold one thing: the mystery meal. You don’t know what’s in it but just that it’s edible food. It could be fish, chicken, hamburger etc. You know it’s one, but not specifically. How many people do you think would eat there? ECW PPVs were the same (to a degree): you were going to get wrestling, but you didn’t know what it was going to be.

Having random matches is fine once in awhile, but eventually you have to stand by what you’re offering and live or die by it. Having RVD vs. Lynn on this show doesn’t mean anything because even if it’s the second coming of Steamboat vs. Flair it doesn’t add a single buy because the only people that would see it have already bought the show. Now if you advertise that RVD, the most popular guy in the company, is going to be there then you might sell some more shows and make more money. See what I’m getting at here? It’s ok once in awhile but not all the time.

All that being said, there were some good things about ECW. Their tag wrestling was solid and their midcard would have made even WCW drool at times. Super Crazy vs. Tajiri was great for instance. Some of the tag matches were awesome and the women were very hot. There was some solid in ring work too and the brawls were decent at times. It would have been nice to mix things up a bit with more wrestling and less brawling, but I get the idea I guess.

Overall the company was never going to be a giant. It simply wasn’t in the cards and that’s all there is to it. However, if they hadn’t stretched things way too far and tried to be the third national company, there’s a chance they could be around today. As a regional company with lower salaries, they definitely could have been around at least to a certain degree. ECW was a company that tried very hard, but at the end of the day it just didn’t have enough to survive. It most certainly meant something to wrestling though and paved the way for the indy companies like CHIKARA and ROH today. It was a good idea and successful to a degree, but without changing, it was doomed to die, which it did.
 
You, KB, are insane. That, or you're too used to the WWE brand of wrestling that you can't appreciate something that isn't in the same vein as it. As soon as I saw your rating of a "C+" to the six man tag match, I stopped reading, because I completely and totally disagree with you. A C FUCKING PLUS?! Are you KIDDING me?! That match is better than anything the WWE has produced in months now. Your biggest complaint about the match is the commentating...which has what to do with the match itself? Nothing. Why does every single damn team and match have to have a feud or history behind it KB? People can't just WRESTLE anymore?

Sorry to call you out, but that's bullshit man, that was a B+ match atleast, probably match of the night. It may be a "spotfest" (so isn't every fucking wrestling match ever, the definition of a wrestling match is a transition from spot-to-spot, a headlock can be a spot), but everything about it made perfect sense. It was an international six man tag showcasing some of the best talent from Japan, and it did so wonderfully.

The rest of the PPV is solid as well. Taz-Sabu is a good match, and the main event holds a special place in my heart obviously because of my love for Funk. Seeing him with a World Title again was a dream come true for me. Of course the WWE couldn't have any of that and decided to throw a fucking pantyhose on his head and call him "Chainsaw Charlie" six months later instead of acknowledge one of the greatest pro wrestlers of all time...but I digress.

You were way, way too harsh on this show as a whole KB. I've seen you give much better ratings than that to shit like the last few Survivor Series. Barely Legal was a solid show all around, it featured everything the fans wanted, brawling, hardcore wrestling, a bit of technical wrestling, and the Japanese strong style. It was a perfect sampler of different styles of wrestling and all the things that ECW incorporated into their product, which is the entire point of the show; to give the fans a little taste of all the different things that ECW offered. Seriously man, a C-? Could not possibly disagree with you more. At the very least that show was a solid B.

There is nothing else for me to say about this poor review that this post hasn't already said.

I agree 100%

After reading the first reveiw, you have lost all credibility with me as a reviewer of wrestling events.
 
Yeah I agree. He was definitely harsh on ecw events. I don't feel like going back to it, but I believe he had something bad to say about the one ecw ppv that was almost perfect. That being heatwave 98.
 
After taking a second look at some of these reviews, they are well written, and an interesting perspective. I've read reviews from the same writer for WWE, and WCW shows, and he does do a pretty good job.

The interesting thing about this perspective is the avatar of the reviewer(Gamecube/Zelda).

It just made me realize that different people have grown up in different ways, and have developed different tastes according to however they were raised. In layman terms: "Different strokes for different folks", or in other words, not everyone is the same, and not everything is for everybody.

If you grew up in a good clean family that sat down to eat dinner every night together at the table, and played Nintendo, and listened to pop punk rock(Blink 182/Green Day/Good Charlotte, or whoever the kids are jamming these days, just stay off of my lawn!), and were sheltered away from exessive violence/nudity in the television/movies that you watched by responsible parents, then the ECW is probobly not going to be something you get any enjoyment out of.

There is nothing wrong with growing up that way, It doesn't make you stronger, or weaker, or better, or worse than anybody. I have good friends that grew up that way, and I am not saying any of that applys to the writer of these reviews(except for the Nintendo part).

But...

If you grew up on the other side of the fence.

If you grew up in a trailer park, played Sega, listened to Pantera, and smoked herb while watching Friday the 13th part V: A New Beginning while your parents are at work, than you will probobly think the ECW was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

At the end of the day these reviews are interesting to me because it is a look at the ECW from a completely different perspective. I really wouldn't expect it to be favorable coming from someone with a Nintendo avatar. Everyone knows ECW was for Sega people.

I do have some serious issues with some of the statements he made about the booking that was going on, and his opinion of what "Killed the ECW", and the fact that he calls this thread the History of the ECW. Anyone who really knows anything about the ECW knows that their best shows were not on PPV, and their best year was 1996. How can you make a thread titled The History Of The ECW, and leave out their best years(1995-1996)? In my opinion, the ECW started to go downhill when they went to PPV. I know they needed it to survive, and it was a landmark, and everything, but PPV kind of took away from the ECW's style.

I would like to start another thread, and go through and review the complete history of the ECW(starting in 94) with the completely different perspective, and behind the scenes knowlege of the ECW that I have, and it will be interesting how differently I feel about some of the same stuff as this reviewer.
 
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