ECW on TNN – October 8, 1999: I’ve Seen Nuns That Reveal More Than Sunny’s Expose
ECW on TNN
Date: October 8, 1999
Location: Civic Center, Houma, Louisiana
Attendance: 2,000
Commentators: Joey Styles, Joel Gertner
We’re a step closer to November 2 Remember which I think is the flagship show but they only treat it like that once in awhile. The main story at the moment is the battling tag champions which was intensified after Raven cost Dreamer a match last week. Other than that we’re still waiting on most of our upcoming matches. Let’s get to it.
We open with a video on the women of ECW. Tonight the performer formerly known as Sunny is going to blow the lid off of women in wrestling. It’s amazing how much more fun the girls were to look at when they could do more than awkwardly smile if they were good or frown if they were bad.
Theme song.
After Joey and Joel intro the show, we get a clip from late August in the ECW Arena and a Sunny (called Tammy Lynn Sytch here) vs. Francine catfight which is cut off pretty quickly.
Time for another match from Anarchy Rulz. It’s clipped on the TNN broadcast but here’s the match review in full.
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 tar out of him. They set for it again and Tajiri kicks the tar 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.
Nice to see them use ¼ of their show on an old match.
We talk about Sunny being introduced to the world in SMW in 1994, which would be when she was 21. The shots here are of her in a swimsuit, and based on how she looked in WWF, imagine how good she looks here. We get a bio of her and how the pressure got to her. She talks about how she started abusing prescription drugs, namely Soma. She talks about how Louis Spicolli died from overdosing on it and alcohol.
Here’s another match from Anarchy Rulz, this time the opener.
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 chick is just amusing. 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 something from Dawn. 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 VERY impressive and literally gets a standing ovation from the crowd. They go wide to show it and they 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 DANG that was random.
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.
House show ads.
They air the November 2 Remember ad twice in a row.
Sunny talks about being the Kliq Chick and how she didn’t like being looked at as someone that should get pushed because of who she was hanging out with/sleeping with. She says her first drink was after she left the WWF. For some reason I have a few issues believing that. Sunny talks about her niece dying and Paul pushes her to talk more. She blasts some of the other girls in the business and says she’ll set the standard and she’s still alive. End of show.
Overall Rating: I. As in Incomplete. This was Sunny babbling about nothing of note in what was supposed to be an expose. The “expose” wound up being her saying she hung out with the Kliq and that the other girls aren’t as good as her. On top of that they can’t even film new matches for anything so it’s back to Anarchy Rulz again. We’ve seen almost half of that show here on TNN. They had like four nights a week of house shows and they couldn’t film 45 minutes worth of stuff? The wrestling we got was fine but when it was all old stuff, what’s the point?
Remember to like this on Facebook and follow me on Twitter @kbreviews
Things that make a cradle piledriver make kayfabe sense:
1) Harder to reverse. How many times have we seen people escape piledrivers by moving their legs and affecting the balance of the attacker. The cradle makes that harder.
2) The cradle makes the move more effective. Think about it, the arm between the legs is pushing down thereby adding pressure to the move.
3) Overcoming recoil. When delivering a piledriver, some of the force of the impact is lost because the recipient can move (most noticeably when RVD takes a piledriver). The cradle keeps them in position and thereby increases the force of impact.
4) The move is more dangerous. The cradle reduces support of the opponent to make the move more effective (you’re keeping them from moving from side to side with one arm, after all)/dangerous. The attacker therefore doesn’t care that he’s at greater rick of greatly harming his opponent and is therefore a terrible person for doing this variation instead of the traditional variation
5) It looks different to a regular piledriver. Think about it. What difference does applying a double underhook make to a piledriver, facebuster, DDT or brainbuster make other than aesthetics? What difference does jumping forwards (i.e. Shooting Star Press instead of backwards (i.e. moonsault) make to a backflip splash except for one looking cooler? Why does spinning make ANYTHING better (see: R-Truth’s finishers, Starship Pain and a whole lot of other moves)