ECW Fancam: Revere, MA 3/22/97

ECW 3/22/97 Full Show

 

1. Tracy Smothers/Little Guido vs. Spike Dudley/Chris Chetti 

There isn't enough match here to talk about. Joined in progress and the camera glitches throughout the two existing minutes. Spike's huracanrana looks good and reminds me of Kidman's. Did we ever get a Spike vs. Kidman singles? I associate their run with the era of endless WWF Cruiserweight 3 Ways. I looked it up. They had several dozen multimans and one singles match the literal first time they wrestled. I'm watching that Heat match later. The screen goes black when Chetti tags in and almost immediately everyone is chanting YOU FUCKED UP. That sounds about right. When the picture comes back Chetti hits the worst spinning heel kick I've ever seen. Tracy tries to get several people to swing on him after the win. 

2. Axl Rotten vs. Corporal Punishment (6:33)

They take the camera around a tour of the ring before this match. Not a lot of women out at the greyhound track pro wrestling show tonight. I love a low ceiling dog track as a pro wrestling venue but I imagine it would be hard to coax a woman there on a Saturday night. I wanted this to be a violent teacher vs. student match and the crowd wants the same, and instead it's kind of worked as 2000s Dusty Rhodes vs. Black Reign Dustin Rhodes, if they were teacher-student instead of father-son. Corporal can take chair shots, and his elbowdrop and kick to the ear are as good as the best eras of Dustin. His punches looked good too, he took a nice bump from the top buckle onto the ropes, and if he had a better clothesline I'd start seeking out more Maryland indies. 

3. Stevie Richards vs. Louie Spicolli (10:44)

I can't tell if Stevie's offense hits poorly or if Spicolli keeps bumping too early but it's much better when they're trading strikes. Spicolli has more than one kind of nice punch and good kicks to the stomach, and while I think he took Nova and Meanie's punches really well on the floor it also looked like Nova and Meanie somehow had great babyface punches!? Spicolli has a great gutbuster and works a rope assisted abdominal stretch spot and a killer bearhug for an ECW dog track crowd and I love that. His bearhug was shockingly great. He caught Stevie in what could have been turned into a spinebuster or atomic drop and instead dropped to his knees while squeezing the bearhug, then dragged him to the ground and held it there, even bridging into it. Goddamn that's cool. Match starts to go too long and Spicolli is working dominant heel with a knee injury. Stevie has no good way to take over a match, just no credible offense. He does a rocker dropper that looks much worse than the one Spike Dudley did to Tracy Smothers in the opener. Guy who already has problems with credible offense now doing worse looking versions of offense done by someone who is expressly working a Most Undersized of All Undersized Wrestlers gimmick. Spicolli keeps using that spinebuster to set up bearhug attempts so that when he finally uses it for a spinebuster it plays as an excellent spinebuster. The Stevie Kick actually looks like a finisher but Stevie did not wrestle like a guy who should be winning matches. 

4. The Sandman vs. Balls Mahoney (7:19)

I don't know if even Andre the Giant had the kind of aura Sandman has on shows like this. I hate that pro wrestling isn't a place where I can go and see anyone like The Sandman anymore, but I can go to an arena to see Adam Cole. We fucked up bad. Sandman has one of the most threatening glares but also looks like a guy who could not give a shit about a single thing you say so long as you don't interrupt his beer drinking. Downing beers while your lit cig is still in your mouth is something Andre probably could have done but I sure haven't seen him do it. Facially he looks like the most fucked up Gary Sinise character. Sandman was bleeding from breaking cans over his head and Balls bleeds from four hard canings. Sandman takes two full unprotected shots to the head and then sells the rest of the match exactly like a guy who shotgunned several beers and took chair shots should be selling. He takes two different perfect guardrail bumps and lets Balls legdrop a chair on his face. Balls misses a guillotine legdrop and Sandman wins with a schoolboy that looked like a drunk losing a fight, dragging the man down who was only trying to help him out. This ugly guy was trying to get him to walk away from a fight and got swarmed by drunk instinct zombie weight. As it should be.   

5. Dudley Boyz vs. The Eliminators (9:36)

This had a real good backyarder feel to it. Eliminators are a real pair of yarders and they're out here doing a bunch of mostly missed moonsault variations and flying kick combos that it looks like a bunch of high school friends wrestling in a swimming pool. Kronus is just throwing endless spinning heel kicks into the deep end. None of Saturn's moonsaults come anywhere close to his target, he's just a guy doing flips off his buddy's diving board and everyone screams every time his head comes close to grazing part of Bubba Ray's body. The Eliminators are not nearly as polished as 1997 High Voltage, but that's who they are. When Saturn hits a springboard missile dropkick right after losing his place (worse than Kenny Kaos ever did), I knew who they were. It's three minutes of the Dudleys being walked into position for moves that sometimes hit, and when the Dudleys took over their control was a lot more intelligible, but it was more fun when everyone was taking backdrop bumps and yarding. Saturn and both Dudleys take really great backdrop bumps. D-Von is tasked with the most difficult bumps, as he's the one taking most of the Eliminators' tandem kicks where they're out of sync but you still have to know how to bump for two kicks hitting you at different times. Dudleys do a powder in the eyes finish which I think is a great bit to run on an ECW show. These people hated that shit! 

After the match Joel Gertner gets in the ring to celebrate the win and of course take a Total Elimination, but Sign Guy hilariously saves him and screams NO NO NO NO when he realizes he now has to take it instead. Sign Guy sells that shit like the biggest martinete in Mexico too. The fancam camera runs out of battery because Sign Guy takes so long being helped from the ring by two referees and a woman EMT who got catcalled during the entire affair. What did I say earlier about how tough it would be to coax a woman into being in this building? 

6. Rob Van Dam vs. Taz 

I have no idea how much of this we missed. After running out of battery while Sign Guy was slowly helped to the back, our tape went dead. When it came back there was some incredible fancam tape dubbing interference that felt like something made for a modern movie about a haunted VHS tape. There's a split second of Kenta Kobashi footage in between blue screens and tracking lines, our camera returning for a very long shot of a man's sneakers as he stands behind a curtain, next to a trash can. A haunting film about a man hiding in his own skin, afraid to face the people who he's surrounded by, the people he's pretending to be like. Anyway, there's only a couple minutes of this. RVD takes a German that lands him on his stomach, and an exploder through a table after that. I was surprised at how much better RVD's punches were in '97. The matwork that was ending when the match was JIP looked really interesting, but this match ended when Sabu slid in the ring to attack Taz, Candido followed to attack Sabu, and RVD/Taz just disappeared to the back. 

7. Sabu vs. Chris Candido (14:10)

It's crazy how much damage these two took. I kept waiting for the match to gel into something bigger, beyond the surface your move-my move stuff, to move past this feeling of them constantly just getting to the next thing, and while it never did that - nothing really soaked in, nothing felt more impactful than any other thing - the longer they did it the more insane the match felt. The punishment they racked up was impressive, especially for a show that was only being taped by fancam cameras that had already missed two of the six matches. For all Sabu and Candido knew, this was only going to be seen by the trash populating this dog track, and man they went hard. Candido did his best to facilitate and set up spots for Sabu's craziness, and Sabu kept pushing through to do crazier things. All match long Sabu kept going for springboard offense, and regardless of it hitting or missing the landings had to have added up. Sabu took over a dozen falls to the mat springing off the ropes or leaping off the top, and that was just from his own offense, not even counting offense he was taking from Candido. 

The whole story of the match seemed to be Sabu just crashing over and over, sometimes onto a man, sometimes onto his tailbone, and Candido getting more and more flustered by this man who cannot be stopped from self destruction. There was a fun thread running through where Sabu would hit all of his springboard offense but kept missing everything where he vaulted off a chair. Something bad would happen every time he introduced one of those ass killing hotel conference room chairs. He gets spinebustered by Brian Lee, flies into a guardrail as hard as Sabu flies into guardrails, and the biggest was a triple jump plancha to the floor that ended with him taking a thrown conference ballroom chair to the face as he was landing. The thread changed when Candido introduced a chair for the first time and it went terribly for him, and then Sabu started hitting all of his chair jump insanity. 

A man with the most nauseating Boston accent starts really lacing into Chris out of nowhere. Real dirty, mean stuff. "Hey Chris! Ya wife sucks dick! Sunny's a whore! Your wife's blowing Sid right now! She's in Chicago, WITHOUT YOU. Chris! You know where Sunny is?" Good lord. Candido was good at tying all of Sabu's insanity together, punching him into position, knowing when Sabu's offense should hit and when it should miss, giving the man a PILEDRIVER off the middle buckle (that barely slowed Sabu down). There were no real sections of Candido control, they more just seemed like Candido trying desperately to slow things down while getting vile things screamed at him about his wife. But he was there to glue this broken vase together over and over again while Sabu took an absurd amount of bad landings for a house show.  

After he wins, Sabu acts like he's going to dive through a table for the fans and the crowd goes nuts thinking they're seeing something he hasn't done in several years. They actually crowd surf a table over their heads from the back up to ringside while Sabu calls for it, and the second it gets to ringside he jumps out of the ring, tears some teen's nicely drawn orange Taz poster in half and tells everyone to Fuck Off, swinging on a guy on his way to the back. The teen, no doubt a few years away from a date rape accusation that he weathered with no penalization of any kind, is furious. It was a really nicely drawn poster and Sabu managed to rip it right through Taz's neck, decapitating him. As the camera films the teen, he goes off, his voice breaking: "Motherfucker ripped it. That fucking piece of shit! I hope Taz eats that motherfucker alive! He's gonna fucking kill him! Katahajime!!" 

8. Terry Funk/Pitbull #2 vs. Raven/Shane Douglas (7:20)

This is a mess that doesn't stay in the ring long, and is clipped somewhere in the middle. Raven and Funk punch each other around ringside and I would have been fine if that was just the match. But Pitbull #2 is better than you remember and takes a couple of big bumps to the floor and is forced to take offense from Shane Douglas and make it look good. That's not always easy, unless The Franchise is just accidentally hurting him. Raven puts Funk through a ringside table with a pescado and we never see Funk again, and then Raven and Douglas powerbomb Pitbull on the floor and it goes terribly. Douglas couldn't get him up so it turned into a tandem Dominator (which I guess is better than a broken neck) and then Douglas punishes him further by actually powerbombing him through two chairs. Francine had set the chairs up. So...Francine was actually pretty great, huh? I don't think any of us can properly understand the amount of verbal abuse she received while drawing heat from so many mongrels. I didn't see any explicit directions for her to set up two unfolded chairs against each other either, but she's running around ringside the whole match setting things up and looking incredible while doing so. In the discussion for best ECW manager.  

The whole thing ends with everyone flooding the ring. Tommy Dreamer runs in and throws a dozen of the worst punches you've ever seen, then Brian Lee and Candido run to attack Dreamer, then Louie Spicolli runs in, Mikey Whipwreck in jeans and a normal man's t-shirt that doesn't have all over print dragons or some shit gets chokeslammed by Lee, Beulah is out to attack Francine and hike her cocktail dress up over her ass, Rick Rude under a mask is out to protect Francine, and Pitbull schoolboys Douglas for the win.

Best Matches

1. Sabu vs. Chris Candido

2. Sandman vs. Balls Mahoney

3. Dudley Boyz vs. the Eliminators

Read more!

ECW Cyberslam 2/22/97

I've been casually watching 1997 ECW as a tonal break while writing and reviewing every 1997 WCW match for my book, so you may start seeing more reviews of 1997 ECW.  

1. The Eliminators vs. RVD/Sabu 

ER: This match happened a lot over 96/97 because, as two teams with too much offense but relatively fast pacing, they felt like a natural pairing. In reality, they had no chemistry, and the matches were a night more of odd selling and clunky set up times. Their matches were long, emotionless, clumsy, and athletically stupid, but fun in in the way that some walked through but slightly ambitious too long local indy matches can be. "Hey you remember that match we saw at the Vet's Building, where they thought they could do a grueling spotfest but just fell and hurt themselves?" The Eliminators have no actual idea how to put together a match, and I can't think of another team who looked anywhere near as facially stupid as Saturn and Kronus. They walk around with the cadence and expressions of mental patients. Mental patients who can do flips. They're fucking awful and every single last one of us had a dogshit 4 hours Eliminators comp that we thought was great. That was then and this is now and these matches are just bad. They're all 20 minutes, they have as many minutes as a Ric Blade match, and they never have good vibe that Ric Blade matches had. They don't capture that same He's Trying, Alright energy. 

This is billed as a Tables & Ladders match and it winds up using tables, ladders, and chairs less often than in their awful match three weeks earlier at Crossing the Line Again. This long match even starts with matwork, and I'm good on seeing more RVD/Saturn matwork. Everybody just walks around getting into place for everything, they kick ladders into each other and always half miss the ladder, and there is never any kind of flow. There is some of that yard tard Jeff Hardy charm when they run through overly complicated spots that always seem to come off somewhat wrong but hurt in the way that Jeff Hardy's falls would hurt. You'd expect better from two 16 year olds using a park picnic table as an offensive jumping off point, and if you're going to work an inspired backyard match then you need to make sure your work is ready for the backyard. RVD takes two Total Eliminations at the finish. John Kronus performs that move every time like it's the first time he's ever done it, and it always leads to three guys all trying to get on the same page in real time. 

2. Little Guido vs. Chris Chetti

Tommy Rich in a

Hard Rock Cafe jean jacket

Where did he get it

It's the same color

As his non-boot cut blue jeans

light wash all day long

ponytail pulled tight

face bloated red and purple

We need more Wildfire

Wait you're telling me

Hard Rock Cafe Tokyo shirt? 

Under a fringe vest? 

Who took this man out? 

Who gave him money for this? 

Not to be trusted

I don't remember Guido having such a nice kneedrop. Everything Guido did here looked tight. Chetti was really new, 20 matches in, and had this weird mix of early David Flair lurching stiffness with a rookie willingness to try offense he would cut later. Five-months-in Chetti has a much better standing rana than you would have guessed. You know what's better? Guido's gutbuster. Guido misses a top rope kneedrop, landing on his shins. They try to do a Mikey Whipwreck moment for Chetti, which feels like a waste this early. They shoulda had this boy out there teaming with Rich and Guido, eating pasta fazool, and his whole thing coulda been that he's the good boy from Long Island who always ate too much Sunday sauce with his family.  

3. Stevie Richards vs. Balls Mahoney 

I never think about these two ever wrestling. This wasn't a match ECW would run. This is the only time they wrestled in ECW, then one more match a decade later in WWEC, which is weird. Two Men in Cut-Up Jeans. You can't put your Jeans Guys in the same ring too often. Balls had at least two different good punches in 1997. Stevie does a lot of long really boring arm work that I don't think is going anywhere interesting. Yet? No, this match is at its best when Stevie lets go of the arm and Mahoney unloads fists. Every slightly different punch Balls throws is better than I expect. I always think of Balls as getting really good in 2000s Jersey All Pro but he's been a great Stupid Bluto in 1997. Stevie Richards has some real dogshit offense and has nothing anywhere near as great as Balls' short arm clothesline, which he lays out flat for. His elbowdrop off the middle turnbuckle is closer to Macho Man than CM Punk, his spinning heel kick that sends himself to the floor feels like a more agile Mick Foley spot, and all of his strikes are good.  When he commits all the way to a missed guillotine legdrop, he also sells his balls. I think Balls, selling his balls, and the potential danger of a legdrop - even properly executed - potentially landing you on your balls, is a Rick Rude-level dedication to both nuance and character that I don't think any of us were giving him credit for in 1997. On the other hand, Stevie Richards works like an uninspired Rhett Titus. Hail Balls.  

4. Axl Rotten vs. Spike Dudley 

Spike Dudley takes a full speed head and body first bump into a guardrail and leans into every boot and left hand that Axl Rotten throws at the center of his face. Axl Rotten's left hand is approaching 0.8 Terry Funk and he looks like he has fun throwing it, and those kind of emotions are an important part of great punches. Spike takes such admirable beatings which both makes sense because of his small size, but also must be sheer hell because of his small size. His large bumps have no body to absorb them. He is landing on hip bone points on all of his big, heavy landing crossbodies. Spike Dudley probably had the hardest landing offense of any 150 pounder in wrestling history. His flying forearm hits, his crossbodies land like a full bodybag, and his cannonball off the apron hits Rotten like a bowling ball whipped at a nihilist. His body is heavy because his skeleton is calcified. This had the stiffness and fast pace of a Wildside TV match with the energy of a 1997 ECW match. Bubba and D-Von mess up Spike after the match including a huge thrown into the air powerbomb and Joey Styles is too busy calling the long names of moves to place the beating within context. 

5. Dudley Boyz vs. The Gangstas 

Gangstas matches are known for their weapons shots but New Jack would have clearly been better if he had just dropped all the weapons and shoot punched people in the head and face like this. I'm not sure which New Jack punch is my favorite, but it might be his 1-to-7 punch, where he slowly raises his hand to one before bringing it roughly down across his opponent's head toward 7. Every punch he throws looks really good though. He throws a great elbowdrop too. Also, maybe let him keep the guitar as a weapon because doing his little dance while strumming the guitar before using it is essential. Bubba takes a really high backdrop, and it is possible that Mustafa does not know how to bump. The Dudleys in control isn't anywhere near as interesting as Gangstas in control. Dudleys aren't as lively with their punch and kick, although I do like D-Von's reared back punches. Luckily, New Jack is really great at selling punches and he will also let D-Von hit him in the forehead with a VCR. 

This match has one of the truly crazy New Jack spots - yes, I understand what I'm saying - when he lays D-Von on a table that is very far away from the eagle's nest. He has to take a running, arm swimming, Superman leap that lands him short of the table, meaning he does a running flying headbutt into D-Von's stomach from a 10' drop with 12-15' of distance. I have no idea how he didn't break his neck or wrists or knees or anything upon landing, I have no idea why he set D-Von up so far away, but I love that he got up in that eagle's nest and actually shoved a child in sweatpants aside and knew he couldn't back out of the spot. On the Hardcore TV version of this match they show a different camera angle, not showing any part of the landing but instead showing a shot from across the arena that captured how far out he jumped, like a Gangsta swimming through air. Bubba pins New Jack when New Jack climbs to the top rope, bashes Axl Rotten in the head and throws that chair edge-first down onto him, then leaps off the top into a cutter. It's weird that every single wrestling show in 2023 has a Guy Leaps Into A Cutter spot and I now can't picture anybody doing that spot earlier than fucking New Jack. Was New Jack the best wrestler in 1997 ECW? 

6. Taz vs. Tracy Smothers

This is Smothers' first ECW match, still under contract to WWF for another two months, and in the middle of a Northeast February winter, this legend worked a WWF house show in New Haven, CT and then drove at least three hours over to Philadelphia just to get fucked up by Taz. I know there are better examples of making towns in wrestling history, but what was Tracy even thinking about during that three hour commute? Just listening to area radio on his way to getting shoot slapped a couple times and German suplexed by a man he towers over. Smothers' timing looked a little off here, but that could be because it's not easy to work timing spots with a junior. His standing back elbows looked hard and Taz nicely sold his mouth while Tracy went up top for his flying back elbow, which also looked good. Smothers lost a match to the bad Head Banger and then drove 175 miles to work a match that could have accomplished the same goal had Taz just suplexed Chris Chetti. 

7. Terry Funk/Tommy Dreamer vs. Raven/Brian Lee

Straw Hat Guy keeps yelling "Bullshitter" at Bulldozer Brian Lee, but he is a man who has given more money to Paul Heyman that several actual ECW employees so I'm not sure I would trust his bullshitter radar. It's kind of shocking how low quality this tag match is. It's more of a 20 minute angle than an actual match, except it's supposed to be a match, and the match isn't good. It's extremely lethargic, a walk and brawl in slow motion. Dreamer throws punches with his entire hand open, things only get briefly interesting when Raven and Funk start fighting on the floor, but it's crazy how much worse this was than the Gangstas/Dudley Boyz match on the same card. This is the kind of brawl where people weren't really throwing punches, but more grabbing the back of someone's head and then walking and or throwing them forward into something. Dreamer and Lee spent several minutes on the floor walking each other back and forth at ringside and pushing each other by the head into objects. Raven grabbed Funk by the back of the head and threw him down into the mat a half dozen or more times. Everybody wrestles tired. Funk kicks at Raven's leg and locks in the spinning toehold and things probably peak with Lee stopping the spinning toehold with a trash can shot to Funk's head and knocking Dreamer off the apron with a swing to the side of his head. Then he hits about a dozen trash can swings on Funk that look like the softest weapon shots on this show until the match is stopped and Funk is forced to leave on a stretcher while swearing. This was supposed to be all about furthering the Raven/Dreamer/Funk storyline and distancing Funk from ever getting an ECW title shot but they managed to get there in the least interesting way possible. This was so low energy and I do not know why. 

8. Sabu vs. Chris Candido

Candido is sort of growing out his hair and he has it slicked back, but it's not long enough up top to stay slicked so it just sticks up like a toddler after a bath. Under the white hot lights of the Arena, his white blond hair looks like the hair of Mom's dunderhead sons on Futurama. This match never totally feels like it gels into an actual match, but it does have Sabu jumping off a chair at least a dozen times into a series of leg lariats, huracanranas, legdrops, moonsaults and both are game to bump painfully, but the primary thing that hurts it is the crowd never being that into it in any way. I don't know why, as these people like moves, and this match was mostly move after move after move. Even the punch exchanges all looked good. Shit I wish we had more of them punching each other as every punch exchange here looked good, but without counting I think Sabu jumped off a chair or sprang off the ropes more times than he threw a punch, and that's pretty cool too. A lot of this was just throwing shit at the wall so 25% of it wasn't going to work. Sometimes a piledriver off the middle buckle is just going to look like a guy pulling someone on top of himself. I guess the craziest thing about Sabu going so all out with Air Sabu attacks is that he works in even more spots in this 20 minute match than he did earlier in the night in his 20 minute tag match. How the fuck did this guy take this many ugly landings for 20 straight minutes, two times in one night? 

I mean Candido takes a vertical suplex over the top to the floor that that must have been hell on the ankles and a sheer drop bump to the floor when Sabu tosses him on a charge, and also does an incredible crossbody plancha into the crowd that catches Sabu across the face and shoulders. He also grabs a very long chickenwing that makes the crowd Actually Upset, but more in an Impotently Frustrated way instead of a Drawing Heat way. And so, he spittily yells "It's called wrestling you fucking assholes"and then grabs a ringside mic to yell "Are you people bored? Should I put him in another wrestling hold?" It could have drawn real heat if he kept it up maybe, but instead it wound up looking like he got mad at his own joke. Sabu hit so much stuff and I guess at the end of the day I just love that Sabu had the energy to seemingly make up a bunch of shit on the fly. He does a full triple jump bombs away through a table on the floor when Candido sits up, lands chest first on the guardrail doing a tope, crashes on his butt several times...but also vaults off a chair and hits a flat out gorgeous huracanrana. I love this man and his messiness that can surprise with elegance. Sabu keeps falling off ropes and chairs onto Candido, and eventually one of those times pins him, and Candido cuts this weird promo after about how much of a draw Sabu is and how he doesn't care if Sabu or Taz wins at Barely Legal because "the Triple Threat gets paid either way". His crippling credit card debt and 2nd mortgage were not present in the arena for this promo. 

Best Matches: 

1. Spike Dudley vs. Axl Rotten

2. Sabu vs. Chris Candido

3. Gangstas vs. Dudley Boyz

Read more!

ECW Crossing the Line Again 2/1/97

I've spent the last year (and will continue to spend this coming year) watching all of the 1997 WCW for my book. I've been spending other time in 1997, listening to music and watching movies released in the year, as well as watching other pro wrestling from the same period. If it happened in the year I learned to drive, then I am spending some time every day consuming it. I thought this 1997 ECW show was really choice, with an absolute classic first time ever meeting between Terry Funk and Tommy Rich, a killer Dr. Death/Raven match, heel Ricky Morton, a terrible Eliminators match that goes 20, etc. 

1. Lance Storm vs. Balls Mahoney

ER: Balls Mahoney would have made a really great Bluto, and he throws two nice punches (an overhand right and a long uppercut right) and also wastes Storm with a short arm clothesline. His Foley-esque bump over the ropes (where his head almost got wrapped in them but instead he tumbled hard to the floor) looked really great, and he leans into every piece of soft offense that Lance Storm threw at him. Storm never hits hard, ever, but he makes up for it a bit by throwing his whole body into attacks. His spinning heel kick and tope and top rope clothesline at least ended with his whole body crashing into Balls. His leaping back elbow and flying shoulderblock actually hit really well, and it felt like he was making harder contact with those moves the longer it went on, like he was learning to throw harder to knock this guy down. Was Balls Mahoney actually this good in 1997? It feels like he might be. Am I going to go on a Balls Mahoney rewatch? I already am. I wish Storm had sold Mahoney's piledriver longer, but Storm's top rope spinning heel kick helicoptered right into Mahoney's head so whatever. I liked this. 

2. Ricky Morton vs. Big Stevie Cool

ER: Ricky is wearing his red tasseled confederate flag tights with glittered flares and folks he looks incredible. The red tights are the brightest, perfect color of red, the stars and stripes cross perfectly diagonally past his knees. It's so pro wrestling and so trash 

Morton hits a low knee and a snappy headlock punch, and throws a missed clothesline with the best form. I love when Ricky fights like an asshole. Morton punches more when he's an asshole and Morton always uses his punches in cool ways. Here he broke a wristlock with a straight right and then missed a fast follow-up fistdrop. Morton is so much of an asshole here that he soccer dives knee up into Stevie's nuts, and then drives his knee into them on a snug inverted atomic drop. Stevie looked good taking Ricky's offense, and the Stevie Kick is a good finish, but I wish this got a chance to keep going where it was going. Instead it was Ricky looking like a switchblade asshole for 5 minutes and then Stevie quickly going home with a Jackknife and kick. Great look at how good 1997 Ricky Morton was. Who has the Ricky Morton FMW footage? 

3. Dr. Death Steve Williams vs. Axl Rotten

ER: This is a 2 minute match, and when you hear that you probably assume it's going to be Dr. Death killing Rotten with a couple big slams and a neck breaking suplex or two. It got to that, but before that we got to see Dr. Death take a nice bump into the turnbuckles and sells Rotten's decent strikes, and then we get to see Doc punch Rotten right in the face and throw him with a backdrop driver. 

4. Dr. Death Steve Williams vs. Raven

ER: Man they go right at it and it is great. Doc continues throwing stiff jabs and then takes a sicko bump running full speed face first into the top turnbuckle on a missed charge. This man has a well paying All Japan gig and he's in Philadelphia taking unprotected chairshots and hitting a gusher. Dr. Death's sweat soaked shag is one of the great haircuts in wrestling history, and it swings over his face as he rolls off a table, just before Raven crashes through it off the top. Doc cashes in the receipt on those chairshots and Raven hits a far great gusher. Raven was an incredible bleeder and needs to be talked about more as such. He's one of our great bleeders. Dr. Death does get to throw Raven around, hitting a high powerslam and German suplex, and there's a great fight over a top rope suplex that ends in a sick snap Raven superplex. The bWo involvement is used well, as most of them are just crash pads for Doc to press slam Raven through. While Raven writhes around with Hollywood Nova, there's a perfectly done showdown between Dr. Death and Stevie. Dr. Death keeps taking Stevie Kicks and getting up for more, and you kept waiting for it to lead to Stevie getting snapped in two with a backdrop driver. When Doc caught a kick, you knew you were about to see a man die, so I dug that Stevie instead spun out of it and busted him in the chops with a great Stevie Kick. It was a really great sequence and both played up their characters perfectly, Stevie tuning up that band like a maniac and Doc knowing exactly what to sell and not sell. Williams was a really good bumper and good at taking offense, and Raven's DDT looked like it would finish a guy like Dr. Death after those three kicks. 

5. The Sandman vs. D-Von Dudley 

ER: There are too many great shots of Sandman's entrance here to count. His forehead his bleeding when he comes through the curtains, hair slicked back, dangerous eyes. You'd avoid this man in literally any public space you saw him in. And yet, carrying a beer with a cigarette hanging from his lip, he looks like undoubtedly one of the coolest dirtbags in history. D-Von Dudley had great punches in this match, because he just threw several potatoes at Sandman's pre-existing cut, giving every side of the ring a close up look at his knuckles hitting Sandman's crown. Sandman's offense has this artless Drunken Master flow to it. All of it looks like it would hurt, and a lot of it is among the ugliest version of that move you've ever seen. It's beautiful. The whole match jumps up a level when Sandman suplexes a table edge first into D-Von's leg and fucking ends him with the most drunk dead accurate Philadelphia Jam with a chair on D-Von's face. It's 5 minutes and goes out on a high pitch, segueing into a strong post-match. D-Von joins up with Bubba and they mess up Spike with what I assume is the first ever 3D, but New Jack comes out and wreaks havoc. Bubba smooshes him with a perfect blindside avalanche, Bubba takes a Flair Flop face first on an open chair, New Jack drops D-Von mouth first on an open chair and then makes the most charming little smile to the camera. Simple, hot segment that made a ton out of like 8 total minutes. 

6. The Eliminators vs. Rob Van Dam/Sabu 

I'm just going to assume that everybody had the exact same Eliminators experience that I did: we were all in our late teens when we traded for a 4 hour Eliminators comp, and then after watching about an hour of the Eliminators comp we all pretty much realized exactly what the Eliminators were and had no desire to watch any more. This match was 20 minutes long, and felt longer. The Eliminators can do cool things but they are cold in there, and the crowd reacts coldly to them. Nobody makes a real effort to connect with the crowd, but running through flipping moves used to be enough to get some clapping at the Arena. They just do not care, and it takes RVD's energy to finally snap people awake. This was icy cold and disjointed with that silent crowd, but Van Dam came in with the energy of a guy whose party tricks always connect with any room. There's a confidence they respond to when he comes in, a response he gets by getting obliterated by a double spinning heel kick or folded in half when Saturn suddenly knows how to throw a slicing clothesline. Sabu hurls his body at men more and more as we creep to 20, landing that triple jump plancha three rows deep, falling on the back of his head when Saturn sweeps his legs off the top rope, missile dropkicking Saturn off a damn ladder, and it all peaks with some horridly constructed mess with a ladder set up on a table and Sabu whipping his shins into everything/everyone in sight. 

My favorite part was when Kronus sold a big Sabu top rope splash/RVD top rope Jam, by just standing up to his feet at the same time they did and throwing a stomach kick. Kronus has the mental energy of someone wandering their way through a battle royal who doesn't actually know he's in a battle royal. It's like he had no clue that he had just taken any kind of offense, and it's kind of amazing? He'll take a wild backdrop bump to the floor and almost land on his head doing a corkscrew senton, but there's no chance this man every thought for one second about what a quality match layout would look like. I did love them doing Total Elimination to a ladder that was holding both RVD and Sabu, with them hanging in the air before dropping straight to the mat when the ladder is swept away. It's a perfect overly complicated dumb ECW spot. 

7. Terry Funk vs. Tommy Rich

ER:  Tommy Rich everyone. While Terry Funk is being clapped on the back, as Joey Styles was going on and on about Funk's singles run to the World title as if he was a kid with progeria who was graciously going to be allowed to score a soccer goal, here's Tommy Rich looking like such a fat asshole in the ring. The fans call him a fat fuck, he looks like a goon asshole, the perfect heat magnet. Rich starts the match by storming clumsily into the crowd to get RIGHT into some dude's face, letting Terry Funk sneak up on him and start the fight. Getting distracted by some guy in a hockey jersey and letting your opponent find and fight you is so much interesting than two guys meeting in the ring and then walking each other into the crowd, and Funk just started throwing left hands that made Rich bleed more with each shot. Rich is a full on menace in this, just a disgusting looking stuck pig of a man stumbling through the ugliest people you've ever seen. He hits such a perfect messy bladejob, sending streams of red everywhere down his face while the parts of his face that are untouched by blood have a sick purple hue. 

Rich wrecks his body in a few ways that would have looked cool from any man, but look incredible from a big fat slob. A sweaty guy spilling over his tights running knee first into a guardrail just looks better, and it lead to Funk taking apart his knee in ways that would cripple younger, fitter men. It's one thing for Funk to not work his left hands at this point, but there has to be a way to work hitting a guy's knee with a chair. If there is, Terry pretends to not know about it, and just bashes the shit out of Tommy's knee, then kicks his hamstring all around ringside. It's fucking great. The whole time - and the whole match really - Rich is reveling in the You Fat Fuck chants, spitting blood out through a cartoon grin. He shoves some dude off him in the crowd and almost accidentally hits his small girlfriend, presumably the only woman in the entire arena. Rich grins the entire time, except for those times when he would get suddenly unstoppably angry, the way a real asshole would behave. 

The man is thirsty for DDTs and hungry for hate. DDTs for Funk, DDTs for Jim Molyneux; he slowly hitches up the front of his tights while making full eye contact with some creeps. Tommy Rich looks like absolute shit while he spits blood up into the air and bashes at Funk's knee, still grinning and acting like an asshole. They're two of the only guys who have ever made kneeling and fighting ever look good. Nobody makes the sitting-in-chairs-throwing-punches look good, it's tough as hell to make kneeling and punching look good, but this is great. The spinning toehold finish would have worked in most settings, but it felt beneath the rest of the match because everything else was so legitimately violent. But this is one of the greatest ECW matches of all time, hands down.  

8. Shane Douglas/Chris Candido/Brian Lee vs. Tommy Dreamer/The Pitbulls

ER: This starts really great and then eventually goes on too long. Probably didn't need nearly 20 minutes from these guys, turns out. But when Candido starts things by baseball sliding THROUGH Brian Lee's legs just to kick Dreamer in the nuts, that is a fucking hilarious way to start things. The crowd brawl and bullshit in this was really good. The match settling into an actual match was fine, but the bullshit kept it high. Pitbull 2 took a lot of gnarly shots to the head while standing right next to the smelliest fans, then came roaring back into the ring throwing just as hard punches at Douglas. They bring a guardrail into the ring and do a bunch of great stuff with it. Candido gets thrown into it and springs off it straight a back elbow that bounces him over the top rope like a volleyball. Douglas gets tossed through the guardrail and then press slammed onto the busted railing. Holy shit. These guys taking some dumb bumps out here and it rules. 

As his contract states, Dreamer is dropped crotch first on a guardrail, just railing his balls the exact way he demands in every single match. Dreamer takes a lot of abuse in this. Douglas really drops him with vertical suplexes, with a big one through two chairs. Candido gets rocket launched onto Dreamer and does that thing where he bounces right up to his feet on the recoil. Pitbull 2 is bleeding real good and getting hanged with his own chain, and really this whole thing just gets derailed by the Rick Rude involvement. The one good thing - and it is an admittedly pretty big great thing - is that Rude comes out in a mask wearing a patchwork denim on denim pantsuit like something Richard Pryor would have owned. I'm stunned that he didn't also have a big floppy hat adorned with beer cap toppers. Rude looks walks out wearing a ensemble too garish for a Vince McMahon 1991 Prime Time Wrestling segment, and a man wearing this outfit in 1997 is far more shocking than any of the ways ECW tried to be shocking on any given show. I remember what people wore in 1997, and nobody was dressing like a pimp from a Fred Williamson movie. I don't know what Rude's involvement was supposed to be in ECW, but everyone in the ring hitting shitty Rude Awakenings seems like a lame way to peak this. 

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New Footage Friday: TEMPERS! PRIMO! CANDIDO! HASH! TAYLOR!!

Shinya Hashimoto/Col. Brody/Wojtek Polanski vs. Franz Schuhmann/Dave Taylor/"Herkules" Greg Boyd  CWA 7/8/89

MD: This was a lot of fun. It felt looser than a normal tag, like how falls come more easily in a Survivor Series match. I've been veering away a bit from Col. Brody in all of the new footage we've gotten and maybe that's been a mistake. He was pretty engaging and dynamic here. This was a relatively unique setting for Taylor and he was more of an energetic babyface than I'm used to, but he played the role well. I loved the hair-pull/mustache-pull spot at the start especially because I thought the latter would come out of the headlock but they delayed it for just an extra moment. Hashimoto was cartoony in the best way. It's a shame we only had a little bit of him vs Taylor but, for the setting, it was just what you'd expect. The shift in wrestling norms because of how much they were trying to fit into a short period of time was a little jarring, but I'd certainly like to see a few more of these.

PAS: Really fun heel team here, Polanski is a guy I hadn't seen before, but was a big mustachoed bruiser with good clubbing forearms, Brody had good shtick too, and Hashimoto is an all time great. He is hamming it up a bit, but we do get an awesome spin kick to the gut and some big chops. Taylor as a big time babyface tag wrestler was nifty, he was a super versatile wrestler who could do a lot of different things. I loved his double monkey flip, an awesome Tommy Rogerish spot. It felt like they packed a lot in 10 minutes, and could have used some time to stretch out, but I really enjoyed it.

ER: This didn't do much for me. All the quick easy pins made it feel like a joyless version of an All Japan battle royal, where if someone fell onto their back they were automatically pinned. In this match it didn't matter what put them on the mat, if anything at all caused them to fall on their back, they were toast. There were small pleasures to be found, sure. I'm not sure I've ever seen Hashimoto work so silly, hitting a great spinkick under Taylor's chin and then giving us some "Look at my Japanese karate" poses after, including a karate crotch chop? Dave Taylor was a fired up babyface and I really wish we could have devoted this time to a Dave Taylor singles match against any one of the heels. Taylor had an awesome moment in the turnbuckles where he tied up Brody with a body vice, Brody breaks it, and Taylor grabs a headscissors and flings Brody over the top to the floor. Brody is a guy I'd like to see more, as he plays - in size and shape - exactly like Col. DeBeers, but without the stooging bumps. He's got a great big mustache and we get a fun bit of Taylor really gripping those handlebars before being scolded by the ref. Wojtek Polanski looked like a gassed Santa and has the most Polish wrestler name possible. Sadly, we don't have much footage of him, as his helicopter crashed when the Polish pilot got hot and decided to turn the fan off.

Eddie Colon vs. Chris Candido WWC 7/03

MD: This was a really good TV match to further the feud and set up Stacy Colon being in Eddie's corner at a bigger show. Despite that and despite the fact that there was a pretty sparse looking crowd which the audio mixing muted even further, they went really big. We're talking early tope, springboard placha, suplex from the apron to the floor that Candido shouldn't have been taking, missed flipping senton off the top big. Big. Primo was 21 and had been wrestling for a couple of years but not everything looked super smooth, but he had the right idea in general. Candido was great, very giving before his cut offs and perfectly sound in weaving in the bigger 2003 spots and stooging just as much as he should against this particular opponent and not a bit more. I love how he worked in a blatant low blow just because he was wrestling in PR and that was the language down there. My favorite spot in this was probably Colon's big moment at the end where he blocked a powerslam off the ropes (which was the move that gave Candido a fairly early advantage) and hit a standing tornado DDT (which is something he got jammed on in the corner earlier) was a nice little callback/payoff. I thought Tammy was excellent here, both in being completely engaged and supportive on the floor and her reaction to finding out Colon's sister was going to be involved in the rematch, but Candido had the best line when he griped that Colon was ruining his "happy, happy home."

PAS: Candido is really the guy you want in 2003 to lead a green highflyer through a match. We get Chris in his Terry Funk pants and he isn't full Funk but does his share of bumbling and bumping. I especially liked the tailbone bump to the floor off the rana, and I imagine much of Primo's big spots would look much worse if there wasn't a consummate pro there to run interference. I think we would have been better off with a little more brawling and shtick and 20% less moves, but 2003 Primo clearly wanted to do ROH.

ER: I love the YouTube thumbnail for this, which looks like someone interrupted Candido and Sunny while they were at lunch. Watching Candido in his final couple years is a real bummer, as he seems kind of on auto pilot but then seeing him in the ring on auto pilot it was clear he had a lot left. He had all of these sequences down pat and clearly lead this from bell to bell. Eddie was really young but had a nice left hand and some fearless lean into spots, and I would have liked to see him utilize that left hand a lot more. Candido bumbling around from that left could fill an entire match, but Candido opted to fill it with a lot of offense. Candido wastes Eddie on an early powerbomb (kinda surprising he'd go to that so early in a match), drops him with a couple Germans, hits a great tope, and Eddie flies into everything. Eddie had some real big misses, including a corkscrew moonsault to nothing and running headlong into a Candido clothesline. Sunny was the one really on fire here, she had every single ringside move nailed, had a perfectly timed spot where she yanked Eddie's legs, jumped into the ring to break up a pin by rubbing the ref's face in her chest (even though it looked like the ref was just expecting her to grab his arm, funny if she opted for face to boobs as an audible), and shrieks advice to Chris. Candido splats nicely on bumps, peaking with a huge bump over the top that lands him right on his ass on the hard ground. This made me curious about what other dad bod era Candido gold might be out there, as I've really only seen him in IWA and TNA, didn't even realize he was working Puerto Rico. Stick around for the Sunny/Chris promo after the match (where that YouTube thumbnail came from) to watch them work an amusing comic heel promo.

Andrew Alexander vs. Shaun Tempers Empire Wrestling 2/10/14

MD: For the most part, this was the sort of chain match that you hope all chain matches are and only about half ever become. There was no corner touching. It was pinfall or submission. The blood came early as Alexander wasn't about to put up with Tempers' antics. The chain was teased with big whips at the start but then used immediately thereafter and used often. They had some clever spots but nothing that took you out of the idea that they were trying to hurt each other, including a chain assisted running plancha which actually made for one of the most believable dives ever, as Tempers had nowhere to go. There couldn't have possibly been a cleaner heel/face divide with both wrestlers acting appropriately, with Tempers getting advantage through a lucky reversal or distraction. Unexpectedly, I didn't love Alexander's punches. They felt pretty out of place in a match where everyone was using the chain as a weapon. Not a big thing in the grand scheme though. The finish was maybe a bit much too, with a ref bump, a couple of phantom pins, and interference that would have made more sense in context, but the chain assisted neckbreaker and Alexander's spastic selling were both picture perfect for the match.

PAS: These GA Indy feds really know how to run gimmick matches, we have reviewed some great War Games from this area and this is an old school dog collar match done right. Alexander takes it to Tempers early and opens him up, with Tempers able to get some advantages through viciousness and dastardliness. They never got too fancy, with a couple of big spots, Alexander doing this great counter of a posting attempt, and the dive Matt mentioned working great. Mostly this was just old fashioned chain assisted violence, and while I agree they probably didn't need the gaga at the finish, that neckbreaker with the chain was a killer finish. At some point I need to just do a giant deep dive into GA indy wrestling.

ER: This was great, and while watching it dawned on me how entirely absent this type of match is from the current wrestling landscape. There is a major absence of matches involving one man hitting another man with fists and choking him with a big chain. We added a great dog collar match to our 2020 MOTY List, but that was very much a blown out 2020 indy epic masquerading as a dog collar match. That match felt more like the multi stipulation Hacksaw/Sawyer match than "merely" just a dog collar match. At the other end of the spectrum we have death match wrestling making a curious head poke into mainstream acceptability, and yet nobody out there is just running a straight up dog collar match. This cuts out all the bullshit, no touching corners, just touching fist to face and wrapping that chain painfully around your opponent. Alexander really felt like a guy working a dog collar match in 1986, as he had great punches (left AND right hands), an awesome kneelift, took a gigantic fast bump over the top (even crazier when compared to Tempers much more sane bump to the apron later), and hits a bonkers no hands dive over the top as a fantastic late match highspot. There were some unnecessary shenanigans at the end, a ref bump and a ball shot and a stopped ref count when he notices Alexander came out of his collar, but the finish itself was excellent. After the ball kick from Tempers, he wraps the chain tight around Alexander's throat, and the panicked selling from Alexander was so good that it made me question just how anybody would have actually known if that chain was too tight or not. Tempers gives him a vicious Rude Awakening, snapping that chain wrapped throat over his shoulder, and Alexander does a great convulsive sell during the pin. This really captured the feeling of classic dog collar matches, the kind of match that looks even better now than when it happened.


2014 MOTY MASTER LIST

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SHINYA HASHIMOTO

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Dan Severn Has a Good Thing Going Now; Don't Do It

Dan Severn v. Chris Candido SMW 2/24/95 - GREAT

ER: This was really fun, different than the Tajiri/Blaze matches, this is more Candido working a pro style match against a crowbar, and then occasionally breaking down and trying to play his game. Early on Severn plants him with a big suplex and Candido bails to the floor, which is the proper reaction. But Candido is game and he'll play, and sometimes that goes well for him. Candido gets to lock on all sorts of painful stretch Plum variations, just jamming his palm into Severn's jaw and neck while yanking his arm in the other direction. Other times he'll grab a waistlock and Severn will just chuck him and grab his arm on the way down. At one point Severn tosses him across the ring with a belly to belly (and I love how we've now seen Severn use the ropes to set up his belly to belly, backing a guy in and then using the spring of the ropes to add momentum to his throw) and Candido gets up, shakes the cobwebs off, and punches him across the face. Candido was really good at overmatching Severn here, mixing up his attacks, dropping legs, even hitting a rana. A real satisfying match that nicely mixed pro style with some subs and throws.

PAS: I really liked Candido trying to bring the south to Severn. He slaps him in the face, runs out of the ring, and pearl harbours Severn when he comes back in, he pokes him in the eye, stomps him in the head and even hits him low. Candido knows in his heart he can't grapple with Severn so every time he loses a wrestling exchange he goes low. I really enjoyed all of Candido's grounded octopus holds, they looked nasty and I enjoyed how Severn powered out of them. I would have liked a better finish as the armbar kind of came out of nowhere, and Severn has been so good at violent impressive finishes. 

Dan Severn v. Benson Lee Steel City Wrestling 3/19/95 - GREAT

ER: Lee is a black belt karate guy who stuck to Pennsylvania indies, possibly working a son of Bruce Lee gimmick, and I'm really loving Severn as touring shooter bringing legitimacy back to the NWA title. It's a reverse Inoki, instead of bringing in wrestlers and black belts to beat, Severn just tours the nation throwing dudes across rings and choking them out. Lee is in full gi with kickpads and comes at Severn with low kicks. It doesn't last long as Lee throws a kick at Severn's liver, Severn deftly catches it and just HACKS downward on Lee's leg, dropping him with a fast single leg. Severn threw that downward strike like he was the bear in The Revenant, it looked so violent. Lee spent much of the time understandably scrambling towards the ropes when he was taken down. Severn backs him into the ropes and launches him across the ring with a double underhook suplex, really a gorgeous throw. Lee makes a nice comeback as Severn charges and he catches him in the breadbasket with a kick, then throws a few more as Severn gets to his feet, including a running sidekick right to the gut that  buckles Severn. It leads to an awesome moment of Lee expertly aiming to lock in a dragon sleeper, and Severn responds by violently snapmaring his way out of it. And he turns that snapmare into a monster of a gutwrench suplex, getting incredible arc and immediately locking on the armbar. Killer little mid 90s shootstyle in a high school gymnasium. You can picture John Darnielle writing an evocative song about it.

PAS: I am questioning the legitimacy of that Benson Lee black belt, his karate looked very Eric Bischoffish. My god though 2 minute Dan Severn maulings are my new favorite thing in wrestling, it is like watching Youtube clips of Tyson fights. When Severn catches Lee's kick and rips down on it, it looked like it should have shattered Lee's knee cap. If I was Lee I would have rolled out of the ring, walked straight to my Toyota Tercel and driven home. Lee's little Dragon sleeper was cute, but Severn countering that with the worlds most violent snap mare right into a gutwrench suplex was awesome. Call the EMTs.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DAN SEVERN

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IWA Mid-South Top 18 Matches, #8: Chris Candido/Steve Stone/Nigel McGuiness/Claudio Castagnoli v. CM Punk/Ace Steel/Danny Daniels/Matt Sydal 10/22/04

Chris Candido/Steve Stone/Nigel McGuiness/Claudio Castagnoli v. CM Punk/Ace Steel/Danny Daniels/Matt Sydal 10/22/04



ER: IWA-MS advertises this match as "the funniest match in the history of [the promotion]". "Funniest" and "pro wrestling" are typically words I don't care to seek out when they're together, like "saltiest cocktail" or "silliest guitar solo" or "leakiest gas tank" or "most pleated khakis". And it's tough going into a match knowing that it's advertised as "the funniest pro wrestling match", because it's definitely something that is going to work better in a live setting, within the context of the other wrestling you had already seen that night. This match was the THIRTEENTH MATCH of this specific card, some type of "Strong Style Tournament" (whatever that means) that also featured non-tourney matches such as an Abyss singles match and a Chad Collyer 3 way. Fourteen matches on the card, and this match went on thirteenth. So it was probably a long night of wrestling, and we can assume that with a name like "Strong Style Tournament" all of the tourney matches were probably pretty serious business. So live, at the end of a long night of wrestling on a Friday night (Friday night is the night I most often crash early, tired from the end of the work week), the crowd got a comedy match that was probably much needed. For me at home, watching the match in a vacuum, it was merely okay. We get a pre-match pat down where several forks, a dumbbell, and a jumprope are all found on members of Candido's team. Candido gets his trunks pulled down (dangerously low) on a sunset flip, and stumbles around getting bodyslammed by everybody, including ref Bryce Remsburg. There is a chicken fight with Sydal and Claudio fighting on top of Punk and Candido's shoulders (ending with Claudio taking an unexpectedly nasty bump on the back of his head), Nigel had a bulky foreign object stuffed in the bulge of his trunks that eventually backfired when he got atomic dropped, and we got some yuks involving multiple guys assisting an abdominal stretch. Truthfully the only time I actually laughed was seeing Ace Steel dance to "Early in the Morning" before and after the match. But Candido was really on fire throughout, his passion for all the bullshit of wrestling really shining through. He stooges like the best John Tatum you've seen, takes some big bumps while still horsing around, worked the apron and the overall match gimmick better than everyone else, a real showcase. Steve Stone looked much better than I remember Steve Stone looking, CM Punk looked much worse than I remember CM Punk looking, and I wish we got more Ace Steel vs. Candido during the match.

PAS: I could have sworn I did a draft of this, Eric wrote this up and I am in the unenviable position of having to watch this match twice. I enjoyed Candido in this, as he worked this more like a SMW match then a indy winkathon. Outside of Candido I also enjoyed Steve Stone doing World of Sport armwork and forcing Nigel to give himself the finger. Otherwise I found this rather mirthless. Sydal's actual wrestling looked cool, but otherwise this was long and dumb

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