It’s Thursday already, but I knew I had to write a re-cap on the first ppv of 2000, the 21st century. ECW showed up with one of the best cards ever. Yes, that’s right…ever. Sandman vs. Rhino, Sabu vs. Rob VanDamme, Dreamer & Raven vs. Impact Players, New Jack vs. Angel, and Spike Dudley vs. Mike Awesome. Sandman had family responsibilities and bowed out, leaving a bad taste in our mouths before the pay per view ever started. It was a good ppv, although not a great one, not as good as it could have been. The match of the night was Sabu and Rob VanDamme, though Little Spike Dudley proved that he’s a natural candidate for hardcore wrestler of January. He got his little ass kicked and kept on coming.
MIKEY WHIPWRECK vs. ‘THE ENFORCER’ C.W. ANDERSON: Yes, ECW has crappy matches on their ppv’s that they don’t promote too, though they don’t end up as bad as Whipwreck/Scotty Riggs (from Spring Stampede…if you don’t remember than you probably did see it). Whipwreck is a great wrestler, he proved this in WCW once when he took on Kidman at Uncensored. Anderson? He’s about as respectable as WCW’s Jerry Flynn. This was a short and sweet matchup and the two did enough cool moves to garner a decent **1/2 affair.
+SIMON DIAMOND, ‘DASTARDLY’ DANNY DORING, & ROADKILL vs.
NOVA, KID KASH, JAZZ, & -eventually- CHRIS CHETTI: This was more made a nine man tag team extravaganza just to get all the jobbers in the locker room a prime time shot. Though realistically, these guys are far from jobbers…except for Jazz and that Kid Rock wannabe. Chetti, Doring, and Diamond are top notch performers, and this was an exciting match nontheless, though these guys are more towards ‘cool moves’ than bloodbaths which the fans support. I’m really curious what Sandman had planned for his matchup. I haven’t seen him in a one-on-one pay per view matchup since June’s match against Knobbs. I guess I have to wait til fucking March. Thanks SM. **1/2
LITTLE GUIDO & JERRY ‘THE NEW FUCKING SHOW’ LYNN vs. SUPER CRAZY & TAJIRI: This was a pretty exciting matchup even though I don’t exactly like anyone in it. Lynn is pretty interesting, and Super Crazy’s audience moonsault was impressive. Same old high flying shiznit. **1/2
ANGEL vs. NEW JACK: I realized that New Jack’s only interesting aspect is jumping from high places. He never even attempts one ‘real’ move inside the ring. He’ll hit you with a guitar, a vaccum, and a Stop sign, but won’t do any damage until he jumps from the rafters onto your sorry ass on a table. New Jack did another impressive jump, but it wasn’t on Angel, it was on one of da Baldies. He also used a cheese grater on Angel and stapled the third baldie’s skull. Decent hardcore stuff, but it was really too short to be anything awesome. **1/2
ROB VAN DAM vs. SABU: Arguably the match of the night, these two warriors fought for twenty minutes beating the living shit out of eachother, though Sabu took a lot more chances than Van Dam. Sabu has been getting his ass kicked all of ’99 and so far all of 2000, will you guys let him win for once!!! ***
+JUSTIN CREDIBLE & LANCE STORM vs. RAVEN & DREAMER: One of the more obvious wins of the night, the so-called ‘Impact Players’ took the tag titles off the unlikely pair of Raven and Tommy Dreamer, the ‘Innovator of Violence’, though he hasn’t been an innovator of violence since about ’97. Raven didn’t do anything exciting, and Lance Storm and Justin aren’t really the two best hotshots, though the crowd was really into this one and it went all over the building and it was sort of interesting. It had a catfight, too. I really missed Sandman. Hopefully they’ll pump up a Raven/Sandman feud for the next ppv because those guys are great when they get in the ring. **1/2
+MIKE AWESOME vs. L’IL SPIKE DUDLEY: A great main event, which is such a change because there hasn’t been a good main event since…King of the Ring? Shit. Dudley showed up and took the mic, which he never does, and he tells Awesome (who recently turned heel) that Awesome’s move his putting his opponent’s through a table, well his whole life he’s been put through tables. He set up a table on each side of the ring before the bout, and stacked two on top of eachother on one side. Five tables were broken, and I believe Spike went through all of them, though he did DDT Awesome through one from the top rope which had to be seen to be believed. You know it’s a great match when you can’t really explain it but it has to be ‘seen…to…be…believed’. Dudley is definitley one of the true hardcore icons out there, and Awesome always entertains and puts it all on the line. What a great main event. ***
It wasn’t the best ECW pay per view, though it was a good one, and a lot better than the marginally lame November to Remember. **1/2 stars it receives, though it is already the number one ppv on my exclusive Bob list. Sabu/Damme and Dudley/Awesome were just plain great fights, and the other highlight included New Jack’s awesome jump. I predicted 3 matches out of 7, which is a record low at 42.86%…an F-. This is the first ECW ppv I’ve reviewed, and it’s downright obvious they blow the big two out of the water, though ECW is special of sorts because the guys don’t really care much about being hurt and losing the spotlight because Pauly is a down to Earth guy who just happens to say “fuck” a lot. In a meager three days is WCW’s Souled Out, and surprisingly it has a great card, though Ferrara and Russo are infamous for pumping the shit out of a ppv and having a special delivery of nothing. Nash vs. Terry Funk in a hardcore commisioner bout is the obvious looking-forward-to matchup, but the others of interest are Sid/Bret Hart for the belt, Smiley-Knobbs-Finlay-Meng for the hardcore strap, Madusa/Oklahoma for the cruiserweight belt, and Benoit/JJ in a triple threat theater which includes a no-rope dungeon match, a cage match, and a bunkhouse brawal. Should be at least marginally interesting. And of course in ten days we’ve got Cactus Jack ‘bang-bang’ taking on HHH for the wwf belt in Madison Square Garden. Until then.
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