ECW on TNN
Date: September 17, 1999
Location: ECW Arena, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Attendance: 1,500
Commentators: Joey Styles, Joel Gertner

Back with another episode, I believe the forth one. The main event tonight is again Lynn vs. RVD which was at least more enjoyable last time. Other than that we’ve got some very short matches which I’m sure will please the fans in Philly but won’t do jack for the rest of the country. These shows at least go by quickly. Let’s get to it.

We open with a clip of Raven and Dreamer pinning Rhyno/Victory to keep the titles, presumably at a PPV or somewhere. Raven only popped up at the end to retain again. Apparently this was the very ending of a match that was happening before the TV taping begin.

Cyrus’ ban has been lifted and he’ll be at the PPV, according to Cyrus. Fonzie says the only person in danger is Justin Credible for having Sabu banned in the first place. Sabu pops up and since this is the REAL ECW, he doesn’t talk.

Theme song.

Spike Dudley vs. PN News

Yes, it’s THAT PN News. Acid Drop, pin in less than thirty seconds.

Someone has been injured and is being taken out in an ambulance but we don’t know who.

Super Crazy vs. Tajiri

This is joined in progress with Tajiri in control. He powerbombs Crazy to the floor and they go into the crowd for a bit which doesn’t get them anywhere. Missile dropkick misses so Crazy hits him diez times in the corner. The handspring elbow misses but Tajiri does that submission where he bends Crazy over his back and spins him around. The Japanese guy hits a German on the Mexican but he walks into a powerbomb for the pin. Too short to rate but it was the usual fast paced goodness from these two.

We go to a playground at night with Raven hanging out by the swings. He talks about the two year war with Dreamer and we get some highlights from it. We get the “It’s Tommy’s” line from Beulah about her baby which is still awesome. Raven talks about how he took Dreamer to school and after two years, it was time for Dreamer to graduate. The pop when Dreamer pins him is still great. Then Dreamer let Beulah get hurt by the Dudleys, so now Raven has to save him again. This didn’t make a lot of sense but it’s Raven so it rarely did.

Here are Storm and Dawn Marie unscheduled.

TV Title: Lance Storm vs. Rob Van Dam

This means that it was Lynn in the ambulance earlier at the hands of the Impact Players. While Van Dam is walking around high fiving fans, Storm dives onto him to take over. Springboard missile dropkick puts Van Dam down and Storm crotches him on the top rope. Chair to the head puts Van Dam….not down at all as he hits a one footed kick to the chair, kind of like a Van Daminator from the top. And here’s Justin for the double beatdown.

Lynn, all taped up makes the save but a British dude named Johnny Smith runs in to make it 3-2 in favor of the Players.

Lynn is being taken out after a break but Rob runs his mouth enough to get Lynn off the stretcher and into the ring for the scheduled title match.

TV Title: Jerry Lynn vs. Rob Van Dam

Rob charges at him and we go straight to their usual “you can’t hit me but I can’t hit you either” sequence, resulting in a double clothesline. Spin kick gets two for Rob. Lynn cross bodies him to the floor but his bad ribs are sent into the barricade. Rob tries a Van Daminator but Lynn has a brain and pelts Rob with the chair. They both get onto the barricade and Lynn hits something like a bulldog to send Van Dam face first into a chair.

He picks up the chair and there’s the Van Daminator. That gets two back in the ring but Rob is still sore from the beating earlier. Lynn sits up to avoid Rolling Thunder but gets kicked down so that the split legged moonsault can get two. Fonzie throws in a chair but Rob lays it down in the corner. Lynn jumps over Rob in the corner but gets kicked in the face then kicked again, this time from the middle rope for two.

Now the chair is put in the middle of the ring. Rob tries the running monkey flip out of the corner but Lynn jumps out of the way and hits a powerbomb out of the corner onto the chair for two. Bridging German gets the same. Van Dam has a small cut above his eye. They go to the corner and the champ hits a BIG clothesline to put Lynn on the floor and through a table.

The match stops for a bit as Lynn is in agony and almost has to leave. Eventually he comes back to a big ovation and gets suplexed back inside. Rob goes for the chair but as he picks it up, Lynn dropkicks it into his face for two. Cradle piledriver is countered as is Van Dam’s northern lights suplex by a DDT from Lynn. That gets two and both guys are spent.

A superplex from Lynn puts both guys down again and gets an eventual two for Lynn. Van Dam grabs a small package for two as well as a rollup for the same. Fonzie pops Lynn with a chair but the Five Star misses. Lynn covers off the miss but THAT gets two. Van Daminator FINALLY gets the pin on Lynn.

Rating: B. This was probably my favorite of the 9000 matches these guys had. The near falls were great and the injury angle helped a lot. Joey seemed to have a conspiracy theory going on about how Lynn wasn’t really jumped or something, but I don’t think anything ever came of it. This was a really fun match and for a TV show, this was excellent.

Lynn gets a big ovation to end the show.

Overall Rating: C. Given that one match was almost half the show, that gives this a pretty positive ending. The rest of it was pretty stupid, but for once they have some clear stories going on. They don’t however use the show to build up the PPV, which is probably the whole point of it. The Van Dam vs. Lynn match is good, but once you see them fight 10 times it loses some of the appeal. Good show, probably the best so far.

Here’s Anarchy Rulz if you’re interested:

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ECW on TNN
Date: September 10, 1999
Location: Lost Battalion Hall, New York City, New York
Attendance: 1000
Commentators: Joey Styles, Joel Gertner

Back with episode three as we keep getting closer to Anarchy Rulz. The Dudleys are officially gone so we move into a new era. Our main event tonight is RVD vs. Jerry Lynn for the TV Title which is considered the holy grail of feuds in ECW. The matches are good but I’ve never found them to be the masterpieces that people claim that they are. Anyway, let’s get to it.

We open with a recap of the ending of last week’s show where the titles changed hands.

Opening sequence.

House show ads during Rhyno’s entrance.

Rhyno vs. Super Crazy

Before the ECWites start complaining, yes I know that’s the WWE spelling of it and that’s how I spell it. Get over it. Speed vs. power here. Crazy moves as fast as he can but his springboard moonsault press is caught in a powerslam for two. Rhyno is brand new here. He misses a charge and Crazy hits a springboard missile dropkick and a leg lariat of the same kind of two.

Gertner keeps trying to order Mexican food. Out to the floor and Rhyno is knocked into the crowd. HUGE Asai moonsault takes Rhyno out. Back in the ring and Rhyno starts up the power offense. Crazy comes back with a tornado DDT for two. Selling and being on offense for an extended period weren’t things commonly done in ECW. A moonsault gets knees and another powerslam gets two. Crazy counters a powerbomb into a rana for the pin.

Rating: C-. Not a bad match here with Crazy moving around quite well. The ECW midcard was usually very solid and this was one of their better periods. That being said, I eventually got tired of Tajiri vs. Crazy which happened for months on end. Decent little match here, although the ending was pretty weak. To be fair, Rhyno was brand new at this point so he didn’t have his whole deal down yet.

Post match Rhyno teases turning on his manager but destroys Crazy instead.

Since Tanaka and Awesome are challenging Taz for the title at the PPV, here’s their match from Heat Wave 98, which I’m copying and pasting. I’m not sure if the full version is shown on the TV show but this is the full review of if.

Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka

These two feuded for the better part of ever and Tanaka usually would win if you can believe that. Awesome was just a freak of nature to say the least. In a little known bit of trivia, Awesome is the step nephew of one Hulk Hogan. Awesome could do just about everything and jumped all over the ring like Rey Mysterio, but he was the size of Test or so. And there he goes with a huge dive over the top rope.

Tanaka gets a running start with a chair to nail Awesome in the freaking head. That looked painful. Basically all Tanaka can do is blast him with a chair. I’m not saying that’s all he’s capable of, but that that’s all he can get to work. A huge splash hits as this is rather physical. It’s not great but it’s far from bad as well. Tanaka takes a bunch of chair shots to the head but he Rises Up as the chair looks diseased.

The Awesome Bomb connects but Awesome wants to use a table instead. I hate those things. A chair shot from the top which should have killed Tanaka connects and still no cover. Tanaka escapes twice despite likely being legally dead and power bombs Awesome through the table.

I’ve officially lost this match now, as there comes a point where disbelief can’t be suspended anymore. The Roaring Elbow connects for the second time but only the first time that it was either noticed or that Awesome sold it. A tornado DDT on a chair ends it with Tanaka getting the pin.

Rating: C+. Well it was a good brawl but not much more. The amount of kickouts was just dumb near the end, as half of those bumps should have killed them. It certainly was exciting if nothing else though. The good thing is that the matches didn’t really get bad but they never really got better either. This was fun.

House show ads.

TV Title: Jerry Lynn vs. Rob Van Dam

Jerry doesn’t even get an entrance. Van Dam is champion and has been for the better part of ever, which is about accurate I believe. They slug it out to start and we get a pretty sweet gymnastics routine until a standoff. They both pose but as Rob does, Lynn kicks him to the floor. Lynn hits a HUGE dive to the floor to take Rob out and we take a break. Back with Lynn being thrown into the barricade but RVD misses the Van Daminator because Lynn comes up with the brilliant idea of throwing the chair back.

Rob hits a moonsault off the barricade to take Lynn out. Joel: “That piece of commentary brought to you by the master of the obvious.” THANK YOU! That’s what gets on my nerves about Styles: he spends so much time saying the moves we’re seeing. This isn’t radio. I know what a moonsault looks like. Back in and Van Dam drops a legdrop onto a chair onto Lynn’s face.

Van Dam comes in with his top rope kick to take Lynn down for a close two. Fonzie throws in a chair and Rob loads up Jerry for a superplex onto said chair but Jerry counters into a sunset bomb onto it for two. They do a pretty nice sequence with the chair with both guys trying to hit the other with it, ending with Van Dam dropkicking it into Lynn’s head. Van Dam’s monkey flip is countered and Jerry hits a Van Daminator of his own for two.

Lynn hits a tornado DDT onto the chair and both guys are down. A delayed cover gets two for Lynn and the chair is thrown to the side. Lynn loads up the cradle piledriver but RVD counters into a pretty good pinfall reversal sequence. That gets a standing ovation and they clothesline each other….and the Impact Players run in for the no contest.

Rating: B-. Good match here but the chair got a little annoying. That’s part of my problem with ECW in general: I get that it’s a hardcore based company, but I’d like to see some more wrestling before we get to something like that. Good match though, and it’s clear why they couldn’t give us an ending here, which is ok.

The Impact Players (Justin Credible/Lance Storm with Jason and the smoking hot Dawn Marie) say they’re more deserving to close the show than these two.

We get a highlight package of the Impact Players’ greatest hits.

Lynn vs. RVD is made again for next week and a winner is guaranteed.

House show ads end the show.

Overall Rating: C+. Another pretty decent show here. The major perk of these shows is that they’re really short, running about 45 minutes and a good deal of that is taken up by house show ads and stuff that goes by really quickly. The show was entertaining enough though so I can see why people were fans of it. Decent show.

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ECW on TNN
Date: September 3, 1999
Location: Lost Battalion Hall, New York City, New York
Attendance: 1000
Commentators: Joey Styles, Joel Gertner

This is the second episode and I honestly have no idea what’s going on at the moment. Apparently we’re coming up on Anarchy Rulz which for some reason had the main event of RVD vs. Balls Mahoney but I don’t think that was advertised before the show. You’ll hear that a lot in these reviews: the matches aren’t really planned. Let’s get to it.

ECW World Title: Taz vs. Yoshihiro Tajiri

Taz is world champion but would be gone very soon. He would be in the WWF in January. Tajiri has Corino and Victory with him in his corner. You can barely understand the announcer. I think this is non-title. Taz pounds on him to start but walks into the handspring elbow.

Tajiri kicks him in the head and this is for the title. Ok then. Tajiri tries the Tarantula but gets countered into what we would call the Alabama Slam. Head and arms Tazplex and Taz spits in Tajiri’s face. They slug it out and Taz hooks a capture Tazplex to kill Tajiri. Taz hits the crossface shots but gets kicked in the head for two. Tajiri tries a big kick but Taz ducks and the Tazmission ends this quick.

Rating: C-. Nothing great here but the crowd LOVED Taz. That being said, he would lose the title at the PPV to Mike Awesome and would say goodbye to ECW. That’s not good because the Dudleys would be leaving really soon also. Tajiri is a guy I’ve been liking more and more lately as those kicks were SWEET.

Theme song after the opening match which is something that was a trend of theirs.

Joey is in the ring to open the show. There’s a TNN chant to start which sounds like they’re saying TNA. Now they chant NYC. Joel Gertner comes out and declares himself the new cohost. His nickname tonight: Joel “I’m like the Rubik’s Cube: the more you play with me, the harder I get” Gertner. Those were always hilarious.

They bring out Jerry Lynn who says that they’re better than Raw and Nitro. Therefore, he should bring them the best match they can. He calls out RVD for a TV Title shot RIGHT NOW. Fonzie, RVD’s manager, comes out and says no. Lynn goes after Fonzie so RVD comes out for the brawl.

Anarchy Rulz ad.

Someone has jumped from WCW to ECW. Find out who it was on the hotline! Or wait another 30 minutes because they show up at the end of the show!

Here are the Dudleyz who are here for their last night in the company. Before they can talk though we go to the announcers and are told next week it’s RVD vs. Lynn.

House show ads.

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

The Dudleys, on their last night in the promotion remember, are challenging here. Why would Heyman give them a shot if he knew they were jumping ship? No wonder they’re not in business anymore. This is joined in progress after a break. The champs take over and clear the ring. Balls throws Spike over the top onto the Dudleys in a cool spot. Back in and Spike walks into a Bubba Bomb to take him down.

Now let’s stop watching the match and see a replay of what we just saw. Spike is dropped over the barricade and is busted open. The Dudleys have threatened to win the titles and give them to the McMahons on Raw. Bubba sets for the back splash off the middle rope but Spike punches him in the balls. Bubba responds by superbombing him off the middle rope as we take a break.

Back with the champions hitting their finishers at the same time for two each. D-Von hits a reverse DDT on Balls while Spike is thrown over the top and through a table. Balls comes back with chair shots for both guys. He brings in a table and covers it in tacks which isn’t going to end well for him. According to the first law of wrestling, Balls goes through the table that he set up. They botch the ending as Spike misses the save he’s supposed to make so the referee counts three but goes to count four. 3D to Spike gives them the titles a second later anyway.

Rating: D+. Match was a mess but the whole point of it is that th company has no idea what to do now because they’ve lost the titles and the Dudleys are headed out the door with them. Spike teamed with a lot of random people to fight his brothers and Balls was just another in the line of them.

More house show ads.

Rob Zombie likes ECW so we get a music video of his with ECW clips in it. This eats up like three minutes.

The Impact Players pose. Ok then. That’s Justin Credible and Lance Storm.

Rollerjam ad. I LOVED that show for some reason.

The Dudleys are here again and after the hotline is plugged again, they say that here, boys become men and men become heroes. In the WWF, heroes become legends. Great line from Bubba: “If God was a heel, he’d be the Dudley Boys.” He calls Stamford, Connecticut the true hot bed of hardcore wrestling. However, before they go there’s one more thing they need to do.

They say they’re going to ruin the company by taking out the heart and soul of the company. The fans chant for Sandman and the Dudleys say they’ll give him 3D if he comes out. Instead they tell Dreamer to come out if he cares about this company at all. Dreamer has a very bad back at this point. Dreamer comes out but Heyman is stopping him from getting into the ring. Francine comes out and Bubba calls her a $2 w****. Joel: “Joey can I borrow $1.87?”

This is all being done over clips of the Dudleys and Dreamer’s highlights. The Dudleys talk about the time they broke Dreamer’s wife’s neck which was the story they used when Beaulah wanted to get out of wrestling. Bubba says the Dudleys used to come into her hospital room and double team her. Dreamer still won’t come to the ring as the Dudleys taunt him. He finally snaps and it’s on. Since it’s ECW, we get a ref and a bell and the titles are on the line.

Tag Titles: Tommy Dreamer vs. Dudley Boys

Dreamer takes them down with a double Russian legsweep for two. Tommy finds some salad tongs and grabs D-Von’s balls. Francine throws in a ladder which Tommy tettertotters into the Dudley’s faces. Francine hits Sign Guy in the head with something to take him down. Bubba gets thrown into the ladder and D-Von gets thrown into Bubba, resulting in the falling headbutt ball shot to D-Von.

Bubba gets up and sends Dreamer into the ladder which kills him because of his back. The Dudleys destroy Tommy with belt shots and loads up 3D but Dreamer counters with a DDT. Cue the returning RAVEN who kills Bubba with the Even Flow and pins him to win the titles with Dreamer, his mortal enemy.

Rating: C. This is a really hard one to grade because all that mattered were the last 10 seconds of the match. A lot of it was Dreamer out cold while the Dudleys beat on him so it barely qualifies as a match. Anyway, this was the big return mentioned earlier and Raven got an eruption after finally returning from WCW. At WCW, there had been a meeting where Bischoff told the roster that if anyone wanted out to get up and leave now. Raven was the only one that walked out and he was in ECW in a week.

Raven celebrates in the crowd while Dreamer is stunned to end the show.

Overall Rating: C+. This show has a VERY different grading scale than the rest of the shows I do. For one thing, they had no idea what they were doing yet and their top champions were leaving in the span of two weeks. What exactly were they supposed to do in that situation? Anyway, this was about getting the Dudleys out with a bang and they certainly did that. Fun show, but they had a lot to learn, and to be fair the show got a lot better structured soon.

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