BRM Reviews ECW A Matter of Respect II

[Big Red Machine]

ECW A Matter of Respect II (5/16/1998)- Philadelphia, PA

2 OUT OF 3 FALLS MATCH: Jerry Lynn vs. Justin Credible (w/Jason & Chastity)- 7.5/10
Chastity came out wearing a neckbrace. Two nights ago at It Ain’t Seinfeld, she was not wearing this neckbrace. No mention whatsoever was made of this.
Lynn miscalculated on an attempted dive over the guardrail from the apron and landed stomach-first right the guardrail, which looked painful all hell. I had assumed that this would at least knock the wind out of Jerry but he didn’t seem to lose a step. The match was awesome, and had an outstanding finish. The match was signed because Lynn beat Justin two nights ago and Justin claimed it was a fluke. To make sure it wasn’t a fluke, they signed a two out of three falls match. Lynn has the match won, but heel interference gives Justin the win, keeping the feud alive. Simple but effective booking.

JAMIE DUNDEE PROMO- okay
At one point he said that he didn’t have any time to make fun of any of the fans right now... then immediately proceeded to ask Hat Guy “what did it feel like to send your sister a Mother’s Day card?” He also delayed the start of this match twice by grabbing a mic and insulting a fan. It always disappoints me when someone who has good enough mic skills that he or she shouldn’t need to resort to such cheap tactics (and Dundee falls into this category) relies on racism and sexism for cheap heat.

CHRIS CHETTI vs. JAMIE DUNDEE- 5/10
Not sure why Dundee almost kicked out of the finish, but otherwise a decent match.

MIKEY WHIPWRECK vs. MIKE LOZANSKY- 5/10
Very short, but great. Lozansky looked great. I wonder why I’ve never heard of him before. The crowd didn’t give him much of a chance, though, immediately greeting him with chants of “you’re not Jericho!” Lozansky kicked Mikey’s ass for most of the match, then Mikey caught a diving move by Lozansky into in Whipper-Snapper, which looked awesome.

JOHN KRONUS vs. DANNY DORING (w/Lance Wright, Ulf Herman, & The Equalizer)- 1.5/10
Short and dull. Ulf Her and The Equalizer attack Kronus after the match. Jack Victory then randomly made the save, beating up all of the heels on his own. Then New Jack showed up and attacked the heels who Victory had already dispatched, making New Jack just look like a bully. I think New Jack missed his cue or something, because his music started play way before he came out. New Jack went to hit Wright with a guitar but Jack Victory randomly turned on New Jack, helping the heels he had just beaten up thirty seconds ago. This was completely random.

NOVA & THE BLUE MEANIE vs. THE FBI (w/”The Don” Tommy Rich)- no rating. Good segment.
As a tribute to the recently-deceased Frank Sinatra, the FBI came out to “New York, New York” which got great heat here in Philly. They jumped Meanie and Nova before the match, beat them bloody, then dedicated the beating to Frank Sinatra, which was awesome. Then Balls Mahoney and Axl Rotten came out, and we got…

THE HARDCORE CHAIR-SWINGING FREAKS vs. THE FBI (w/”The Don” Tommy Rich)- 4.5/10
Standard tag match, but entertaining nonetheless. It probably wasn’t such a good idea to have the FBI get beat right after they got all of that heat on Nova and Meanie.

AL SNOW vs. BAM BAM BIGELOW- 5/10
Al got tons of “HEAD!” chants during his entrance, but once the music turned off, the crowd started chanting “YOU SOLD OUT!” at him. Either you like him or you don’t. CHOOSE ONE.

JOEY STYLES INTERVIEWS THE TRIPLE THREAT- okay segment.
Shane starts to cut a promo about how tough he is because he successfully defended the ECW World Heavyweight Title against Al Snow at Hardcore Heaven 1997 despite having so many injuries. Taz then comes out and asks to talk to Shane one-on-one, without the rest of the Triple Threat in the ring. The other members of Triple Threat don’t leave the ring, but Taz goes on and talks anyway. He says that everyone knows that Shane is going away for surgery, so he offers his services to watch Shane’s back if Shane promises to give him a title shot when Shane returns from his surgery. If Shane is going to go get surgery, why does he need Taz to watch his back (especially if he already has the Triple Threat)?
Shane agrees, and Taz immediately double-crosses him and locks him in a cross armbreaker until Bam Bam manages to get him off. Taz then started choking out refs and security.

Before the match started, Fonzie came out with crooked referee Jeff Jones, and both emphasized that this match would be called straight down the middle. Everyone knows that Jeff Jones has been taking bribes at this point. Why is he still employed as a referee?

LANCE STORM & ROB VAN DAM (w Bill Alfonso) vs. CHRIS CANDIDO & SABU (also w/Bill Alfonso)- 7.5/10
This match a great dynamic with the wrestlers working opposite their normal partner, whom they didn’t like anyway, but still teaming with a guy they didn’t particularly like. Every little miscommunication between partners felt like it could lead to any number of different possibilities, which made this a great match. RVD and Sabu coming together in the end felt completely natural, and they did a great job of making it seem like Rob and Sabu had a mutual realization in the middle of the match that if they played this right, they could wind up in the tag team title picture, rather than as if this was some kind of Russo-esque plan all along.

STAIRWAY TO HELL BARBED WIRE LADDER MATCH: The Dudleys (w/Sign Guy Dudley & Joel Gertner) vs. Spike Dudley, The Sandman, & Tommy Dreamer (w/Beulah McGillicutty)- 6.25/10
Before the match we got the same failure at an attempt to trade verbal jabs as we got two nights ago at It Ain’t Seinfeld. Devon and Sandman start, but Devon wants Dreamer, so Sandman points to Tommy, as if to ask the crowd “do you guys want to see Tommy Dreamer?!”… and the crowd was silent. FAIL.
They started this out like a normal six man tag team match, complete with tags and ropebreaks and everything. The first ten minutes or so of this match were basically the same as their match from It Ain’t Seinfeld, except without all of the stalling and most of the stupidity that made that match suck so much.
Once they started using the ladder this really started to feel like its own match, and it was pretty good until the finish, which didn’t use the barbed wire or the ladder at all. The barbed wire never even seemed like an important factor in this match, and if the barbed wire isn’t going to be important to the match, why do the gimmick?

Overall, an okay show from ECW. Two great matches, but else that is really worth seeing… and speaking of seeing things, I’m not usually one to comment about video quality, so keep that in mind when I say that the video quality on this show horrendous, especially from the hardcam, which was so bright that looking at the fans in the first few rows, who were dressed in a multitude of different colors, was painful at times. I’ve seen ECW shows from 1996 with much better video quality than this.