BRM Reviews ECW Hardcore Heaven 1995 (bad)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews ECW Hardcore Heaven 1995 (bad)

Post by Big Red Machine » Sep 14th, '14, 16:36

ECW Hardcore Heaven 1995 (7/1/1995)- Philadelphia, PA

THE PIT BULLS (w/Raven, Beulah McGillicutty, & Stevie Richards) vs. THE DUDLEY BROTHERS (Dudley Dudley & Little Snot Dudley) (w/Big Dick Dudley)- 4.25/10
Sign Guy (the fan, not Sign Guy Dudley) had a sign urging the Pit Bulls to “don’t trust your master and manager.” This might well be the most markish sign I have ever seen… and from a grown man in the underground smart-fans promotion. If that’s all you could come up with, then you’ve passed the point where it doesn’t even pay to bring the sign. I guess there is a reason he was called “Sign Guy” and not “Clever Sign Guy.”
Joey Styles described Dudley Dudley as “a man whose parents had a keen imagination… or a cruel sense of humor.”
They did stuff. The Pit Bulls dominated Snot, but Dudley Dudley actually got to get in a fair amount of offense. Stevie decided to make out with his girlfriend, the yet-to-be-named Francine. For some reason, this caused Beulah to get into a fight with Francine. Raven grabbed both Richards and Beulah by the hair and dragged them to the back. Not having their “master” at ringside caused the Pit Bulls to lose focus, and they were defeated

PIT BULLS PROMO- they threaten to turn babyface on Raven and Richards.

THE BROAD STREET BULLY & CHAD AUSTIN vs. DON E. ALLEN & DINO SENDOFF- no rating. Eh segment.
So… what do you think the over-under is on how quickly 911 will come out and chokeslam everyone?
Chad Austin looked like crap. The Bully did his hockey fighting offense. Allen looked competent. Sendoff never even got the chance to come in.
WOW! They actually through more than two minutes of this before 911 came out. Of course, it was two minutes of Joey burying the match and taking a shot at WCW, but still… TWO WHOLE MINUTES!
Anyway, the dumb sh*ts all try to take on 911 one at a time, instead of all at once (or even better… JUST RUN AWAY!) Bill Alfonzo watched on from the curtain in fear.

BIG MALLEY vs. HACK MYERS- DUD!
Malley is REALLY fat, and the fans let him hear it. Joey kept alternating between calling him “Big Malley” and “Big Val Puccio.” The fans were into the match for the small amount of offense that Shah got, but when Malley/Puccio was on offense, it was boring as hell and painful to watch.


2 COLD SCORPIO vs. TAZ (w/Paul E. Dangerously)- 6/10 for the wrestling, but also a great segment in the middle of it.
Scorpio wore Taz’s colors and threw some suplexes to try and get into Taz’s head. Scorpio took most of the match, but as was often the case, his cockiness led to his undoing (although the way Taz fired up after Scorpio still refused to go for the pin even after hitting the Tumbleweed definitely planted some doubt in my mind that Scorpio would have gotten him even if he had hooked the leg and gone for a pin right away).
Taz eventually hit the Taz-plex for the win, but the ref didn’t see Scorpio’s foot on the rope. Bill Alfonzo did, though, and he came out and ordered the match restarted. Both Joey Styles and the fans didn’t like this for some reason (you’d think they’d want to see a definite winner and loser). Taz threatened Fonzie, but Fonzie reminded everyone that if any wrestler laid a hand on him, he would have ECW shut down. Heyman and Fonzie had a short back-and-forth where it was made clear that no wrestler was allowed to touch Fonzie, at which point Heyman assured Fonzie that no wrestler would ever lay a hand on him “because I’m not a f*cking wrestler, and I’m gonna kick your ass!”
The crowd went wild, but before the beating could commence, Scorpio attacked Taz from behind with a chair. When Paul E. turned around to find out what had happened, Fonzie clocked him from behind as well. Scorpio then hit a diving leg drop onto the chair onto Taz and Fonzie counted the pin. Joey Styles was appalled because Fonzie still counted the pin despite the fact that he had seen Scorpio using a chair. Yes. In ECW. Ironically, the very next segment was Joey doing the intro for TV, talking about how the “Hardcore wrestlers of ECW” were going to “take it to the extreme.”

JOEY STYLES & SHANE DOUGLAS SEGMENT- bad
Joey plugged the “hardcore hotline,” which you could call to find out about Shane Douglas’ negotiations with the WWF. Shane came out and said that ECW “couldn’t fill two rows” before he came to the promotion. The fans tried to get under Shane’s skin by chanting “WE WANT FLAIR!” These would be the same fans who cheered every single time Shane buried Flair in his promos.
Shane spent WAY too long burying the journalism credentials of Joey Styles, Bob Artiz, and a third person, especially as relates to both Shane’s negotiations with the WWF and his friendship with Cactus Jack. He also dumped on the fans for being assholes. It took him twelve minutes to finally get around to announcing that he was leaving for the WWF.
Woman came out and tried to seduce Shane (just two and a months after turning on him and costing him the ECW World Heavyweight Title- that takes some ladyballs). Shane put her over as being hot, but also called her something that ended in “bag” but the first half of the word was bleeped. Woman slapped him. He suckered her into trying to do it again so that he could block the slap and try to either hurt her or kiss her- by the time Sandman made the heel-on-heel save, it wasn’t clear which one he was going for. Then Cactus Jack came out to make the save for Shane, but vowed to teach the Sandman a lesson tonight.

ECW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Raven & Stevie Richards(c) (w/Beulah McGillicutty) vs. Tommy Dreamer & Luna Vachon- 5.5/10
Standard ECW brawl. Stevie and Luna actually carried most of the in-ring stuff while Dreamer and Raven spent most of the match brawling around. The finish had Luna about to pick up the win after a superplex, but Beulah threw power in her eyes which apparently caused Luna to become knocked out, because she didn’t even move after that. Stevie just pinned her. He didn’t hit any moves first. He just rolled her over and pinned her. What a terrible finish.

TOD GORDON & BILL ALFONZO SEGMENT- Gordon says that if Fonzie wants to stick his nose in the referees’ business so much, then he can referee a match himself. He orders Fonzie to officiate the Taipei Deathmatch. Joey sarcastically asks “wouldn’t it be a shame” if a stray punch hit Fonzie in the face… at which point I shouted “Yes! Yes it would, Joey! Did you not hear Fonzie earlier when he vowed that if any wrestler touched him, he would shut ECW down?!” Come to think of it, that makes this whole thing a very poor idea on Tod’s part.

TAIPEI DEATHMATCH: Ian Rotten vs. Axel Rotten- DUD!
Joey Styles tells us that this is the first time that this match has happened anywhere in the world. If that is true then why is it called a “Taiepei” Deathmatch? Shouldn’t it be a “Philadelphia” Deathmatch? Or maybe a “Newcastle” Deathmatch, because that’s where they’re both billed from. Where does Taipei enter into anything?
After one point which opened up a small cut over Ian’s eye (well… the punch was actually to the top of the head and Ian pretty clearly went down and cut himself), Fonzie reminds us that while there are no rules in this match, he is the official, and he has decided to stop the match due to a the blood obscuring Ian’s vision.
Both Ian and Axel were unhappy about this, but before either could really do anything, the Gangstas and the Public Enemy brawled out from the back. Fonzie ordered the brawling teams removed from the building, and Fonzie, security, and the cops all went to help. The best part of this was a single cop completely subduing New Jack with an arm lock… which means that this cop has used more wrestling holds in his ECW career than New Jack did in his.
With Fonzie now out of the building, Tod Gordon comes out and orders the Taipei Deathmatch restarted… and I really wished it hadn’t. Someone forgot to tell these dumbf*cks that it’s not supposed to be real. This was just two guys slicing each other up with no skill or psychology at all. It was almost disturbing to watch. Taped fists dipped in glue and broken glass apparently weren’t enough for these guys, so the finish of this match involved thumbtacks. So not only was the gimmick disturbing, but they didn’t even use it for the finish. Thank G-d this was the blowoff for this feud.

IMPORTANT STORYLINE STUFF HAPPENS- We join a brawl in progress between Dreamer/Luna and Raven/Stevie. The heels laid the babyfaces out. Then the Pit Bulls came out and wanted to Superbomb Dreamer, but Richards orders them to Superbomb Luna instead. The Pit Bulls have apparently decided to be chivalrous, so Raven attacks Pit Bull #2 with a steel chair. The Pit Bulls immediately fight back, though, give Raven a double vertical suplex, and are about to give Stevie a Superbomb when Dudley Dudley and Snot Dudley make the save. Joey tells us that the Pit Bulls want revenge on the Dudleys for stealing a win earlier because of Raven and Richards, but the only people the Pit Bulls really have to blame for their loss tonight are themselves because of their horrendous attention spans. The Dudleys and Pit Bulls brawls away, while Dreamer and Luna get back up and take it to Raven and Stevie. Everyone brawls some more, and we wind up with the four babyfaces standing tall and the crowd chanting “ECW!”

ECW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: The Sandman(c) (w/Woman) vs. Cactus Jack- 6.25/10
They started off very well, making great use of the weapons, especially the barbed wire Cactus had wrapped around his taped fist. Sandman got some extremely impressive air on a dive, clearing the ropes without any sort of slingshot at all. He then made up for it with a horrendous-looking diving splash.
The match was going very well until the overbooking started. We got a ref bump that looked so bad that Shane Douglas felt the need to drop an elbow on the ref on the way to doing his run-in. I guess he wanted to make sure that his interference didn’t get Cactus disqualified… in this match which has already featured heavy use of both a Singapore Cane and barbed wire, and which had a spot where someone blatantly interfered in the match (while using a weapon, too) less than thirty seconds ago. To make things even more absurd, he hit Sandman with a piledriver… then turned on Cactus. If he was going to turn on Cactus anyway, why would he even care if his interference somehow caused a DQ? Sandman then crawled onto Cactus and pinned him.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- eh.
After the match, Tod Gordon was furious, and ordered that the referee restart the match. Why doesn’t Tod do this every time something screwy happens?
Oh. Because apparently the commissioner does not have the power to restart matches or reverse decisions. You’d think that Tod would know that, seeing as how he has been the commissioner of ECW for quite a while at this point. Shane tells Tod that he will stay in ECW if Gordon gets down on his knees and begs him. Tod tells Shane that he is “f*cking fired.” Shane sucker-punches Gordon and beats up the refs that try to help him. Don E. Allen and Dino Sendoff also tried to make the save, but got their asses kicked just as easily as the referees did. Finally, 911 came out and gave Shane a huge chokeslam.

THE PUBLIC ENEMY vs. THE GANGSTAS- 6.5/10
They have a wild brawl in which they hit each other with stuff.
Sign Guy had a sign that said “we want a lynching.” That’s some pretty poor taste right there.

A bad show from ECW. It was barely over two hours, but aside from Taz vs. Scorpio and Cactus vs. Sandman, it dragged along painfully. Most of the matches weren’t good, and there was some silly booking. There was some important storyline stuff, so if you want to check it out for that you can, but I still wouldn’t recommend buying this show.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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