(Originally written 7/16/10)
Throwing in another Fancam this morning. Let's see what was going on at a regular ECW house show in 2000. We're in Indy, and as it turns out, I have randomly picked the show where Mike Awesome dropped the ECW title to Taz before going to WCW.
Match One: Johnny Swinger vs Chilly Willy:
Chilly Willy is "everybody's homeboy" and one of many guys Paul brought in to the new ECW undercard. Swinger was coming off his WCW job guy run and would eventually form a pretty good team with Simon Diamond.
Johnny's tights say "Swing Zone" on them. Chilly Willy does a Michinoku Driver as part of his first burst of offense. Was he a house of hardcore guy? Rude Awakening by Swinger gets him the advantage. Chilly Willy comes back with a flying hip attack and a huge baaaack body drop! Willy has facial expressions like D'lo Brown, really, he has the same kinda head shape. Suplex is blocked into a small package. Swinger argues with the ref, gets cradled and loses.
1 for 1. Not bad, basic, but enjoyable, so it gets a pass. And Chilly Willy has lots of charisma
Match Two: The Baldies (DeVito and Angel) vs Danny Doring/Roadkill
Always fun to see The Baldies NOT fighting New Jack! Doring and Roadkill are on their long march to the title, which they'd get in December. D and R are a house of fire early, hit moves and beat up the Baldies. Doring already hits one of his moves that has a special name, the Bareback I think. DeVito hits a spin kick to get the heat. I assume he does that in street fights. Then a dropkick. Who is this Tony DeVito? He then does a Nightmare on Helms street and its bizarre thug offense. Angel comes in and does a butterfly suplex. Awesome! Doring fires back once and a while, which is great to see and keeps me watching. Tony drills Danny with a sit out Rock Bottom for two. I think that was his finisher. Angel misses a dropkick running to the corner, but Doring moves, and he lands on the top rope. Roadkill in and he starts laying waste to the Baldies. Heart Attack by Doring and Roadkill. Roadkill goes up top for a splash, but DeVito pushes him off and he falls through the ringside table. Things break down a bit and Tony gets a chair, but misses and hits Angel. Doring clotheslines Angel out and Roadkill flies back with a clothesline off the center of the top rope. Pancake/Top Rope legdrop combo, and Doring gets the pin
2 for 2. Super fun, I always enjoy these kind of ECW tag matches. Doring and Roadkill were two of my favorite 2000 ECW guys.
Match Three: Simon Diamond vs Mikey Whipwreck
Simon has his amazing group with him: The Prodigy, The Prodigette, The Muskateer. What a group. Did the Musketeer ever wrestle? Simone berates his cast of misfits one by one, wondering why he had them around even. Mikey them comes out and gets double teamed by Prodigy and Diamond. They brawl around ringside and Mikey takes control, but eventually the lackeys outside help Simon gain control. Mikey hits a nice Superkick and I realize he has two sets of knee pads: regular white ones and his old pink ones around his ankles. Oh, James Mitchel is outside as well, and soon he's in the ring fencing the Musketeer: sword vs walking cane. Awesome! Prodigy comes in and lays Mikey out, but Prodigette misses and moonsault. Diamond tries to take advantage, but gets a whippersnapper and pinned.
2 for 3. Not much here, entertaining for the outside stuff and fencing, but a bit short.
One thing I have a problem with in late era ECW is the amount of heels that had big entourages. Justin Credible had it at one point (Jason, Nicole Bass, Chasity), Simon had it for most of his early run. It just seems like they were trying to reuse a concept that they had already done a lot with Raven, just with lower card heels. I worked great for Raven when he had 3 or 4 guys outside the ring to help him, but the other ones just look like copycats or in Simon's case, just make him really hard to take seriously.
Match Four: Kid Kash vs Rhino
Rhino hurts him early. Jack Victory is out with Rhino. Victory had a long run in the company for reasons I'm not sure of honestly. Kash's flying stuff is pretty great when he hits it. Rhino catches him trying a moonsault and drives him down with a powerslam. Crowd chants for tables. Took them long enough. Rhino gets right up after a flying hurricanrana, connects with a Gore, piledriver, and its over!
3 for 4. A bit on the short side, but really energenic and fun, i like the combo of these two, good stuff in 2000 ECW.
Match Five: Billy Wiles/CW Anderson vs Chris Chetti/Nova
The Dangerous Alliance, Lou E's version, is another in what seemed like a lot of lower mid card ECW gimmicks that I never took too seriously, this one because it's based on a parody. CW is a great worker and could be great in a tag environment, but I dont remember him and Billy ever doing anything serious. Nova and Chetti were a decent tag team, but seemed thrown together at the start of their run. It was a good use of both. Electra is with the D.A. and she had no real purpose except to be their "Medusa".
The Alliance does have matching gear, which is always a plus. Nova is in his Green Lantern tribute outfit, which is cool, he always had fun gear that played off the original version of his chracter (he was like the Hurricane in an indy way). He also invented most moves used today, so it's great to see where today's wrestling came from...um...yeah. Chetti and Anderson do some stuff and I remember that Chris is mostly kicks and baggy, baggy pants. Really its like High Energy with him. Wiles hits a spinning wheel kick, which is shocking, and he a decent punch. Anderson does a hammerlock Michinoku Driver to Nova, which is pretty cool. He works the arm just like the family taught him. He also had a good spinebuster. Nova gets a Downward Spiral on Billy and gets the tag. Chetti is all kicks! Electra breaks up a pin and Jazz comes out to give us our catfight for the night. Lou E. tries to attack her, Jazz tries to give him an X-Factor, but CW gets a superkick to save his boss. Rude Awakening by Wiles, which Nova breaks up. Kinda messy right now, everyone just kinda doing stuff, and the interference doesn't come off so great. They do a super duper convoluted chair spot: Nova is down so Lou E. put a chair on his face, Wiles goes to slingshot Nova up into what I think was going to be a superkick. Was their plan for nova to hold the chair to his face the whole time? Anyway, Nova blocks that, throws the chair and Anderson and Chetti nails a bit kick off the top to give him a pseudo Van Damintaor for the win. It didn't look great and wasn't a good idea anyway.
3 for 5. I wanted a longer heat section as I like the Dangerous Alliances tag work, and less Chris Chetti practicing all his kicks.. Too much interference in what could have been a good basic tag match.
After the match, the Alliance beat down the babyfaces. And, like Jim Gordon and the bat signal, ECW plays "natural born killers" alerting New Jack that there is trouble in the Land of Extreme that only he can handle. He answers the call as always.
Match Six: Little Gudio vs Super Crazy:
This should be fun, as most of the matches in the Super Crazy/Guido/Tajiri/Lynn group in 99. There's some fun stuff here. I like the opening chain sequence that ends with Guido somersaulting over a monkey flip attempt and doing an elbow to the abs and seated dropkick. On the outside, Crazy avoids a big Sal splash and uses him as a platform to dive into the crowd. Sal is allowed to interfere as he pleases, but at least ECW had a history of allowing this. Crazy fights back and eventually uses a brainbuster to get the win.
4 for 6. A shortish but good back and forth match, your normal match between these two but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable.
Match Seven: Lance Storm vs Raven
Storm has Dawn Marie and Raven has Francine with him, but I'm sure they will not do anything except lend advice to their men during this battle. This is an odd match. Storm is one half of the tag team champions (w/ Justin Credible). This is not one my favorite periods for Raven; his character seemed undefined and the angles around him so loose, total cruise control until he left for the WWF. A lot of stalling, and the guys do a short exchange before the girls start to argue.
Raven stops Storm from attacking Francine and it's a brawl outside.
Storms offensive section is decent, and Raven makes sure to show life every now and then, but it never loses the feel of a feud advancement TV taping match. Raven has a face doesn't quite work and he lacks most of the tricks he did as a heel. I do love the powder attempt by Dawn, blinding Storm and giving Raven a good near fall. Evenflow DDT draws in the interference, and we get the catfight. Raven pulls Dawn off Francine, and eats a superkick for his trouble, and pinned. I'm surprised!
4 for 7. I'm not a huge fan of Raven during his second ECW run. Storm's always crisp no matter who he's in against, but you can skip this.
Match Eight: Tajiri vs Tommy Dreamer
Both Steve Corino and Jack Victory are out with the Buzzsaw, and Dreamer gets an early jump on Corino before the proper match starts. Tajiri beats on Dreamer, until the handspring elbow is countered into a Russian Leg sweet and Dreamer decides to do a Tarantula. The move outside for the normal chair swing based action. We begin the crowd brawling and the camera does a good job of following them. They head back to the ring, and Tajiri kicks a chair into Dreamer stomach, then uses it to make his kicks even more deadly. Tree of woe dropkick misses, and Dreamer decides to counteract with a Tree of Woe nut stomp and then a chair sliding dropkick. Corino comes in at that point, but Dreamer puts him and Victory down and receives a table. Tajiri mists him and sets him up on the table, giving Tajiri a perfect chance to do a double stomp through it. Dreamer kicks out at two, then DDTs Corino and the Buzzsaw. Victory comes in next to break up that pin. Corino uses the bullrope on Dreamer (this was during his Dusty Rhodes feud).
All this 3 on 1 brutality leads to the Sandman making his long entrance. If I was one of the heels, I'd run out of the ring as quickly as possible. Sandman canes everyone quite hard. Rhino runs in and Gores Sandman to the outside, leading to more heel control of the ring. Mikey and Super Crazy run out for the save, which brings out the Baldies. In the background, I notice Rhino gives Sandman a piledriver off the apron through a table. Geez, I would have liked to see that closer. This is just a messy brawl, bringing out the whole roster.
4 for 8. I really liked the Tajiri/Dreamer match, but there's not enough. The ending chaos works sometimes, but ECW did a lot of that, and it doesn't lead to much except Danny Doring punching Tony DeVito a lot.
Match Nine: Mike Awesome vs Taz
Awesome arrives from the crowd, being outside the arena the whole show. The crowd dislikes him to a great extent. Mike was, of course, already signed to WCW and left ECW without dropping the belt. Taz answers a challenge and the crowd goes crazy. He's using his WWF music and gear, but no one cares about that small bit. And while it's weird to have a WCW guy fighting a WWF guy for the ECW title, I have to ask: why did ECW need to bring Taz in. Could they have not had any number of guys on the roster take the belt. Dreamer taking the belt from the traitor seems like as nice a moment as any. They brawl around the ring and back inside. There's a ref bump (like we need it) and Dreamer comes out to DDT Awesome. Taz applies the Tazmission and wins the belt. This was two minutes long. Dreamer hands the belt to Taz, and this would lead to their ECW arena match, that just a few months FINALLY got shown in full on WWEClassics.com
Not going to rate this one. It's a historical couple of minutes and a crazy fan reaction.
Final Thoughts: An alright show that's overshawdowed by the ending. The good matches are just good, but there's nothing blow away and no odd matches or hidden gems. Check out the title change if you're curious, you can skip the rest
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