BRM Reviews ECW Mountain Top Madness (worst ECW show ever?)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews ECW Mountain Top Madness (worst ECW show ever?)

Post by Big Red Machine » Feb 25th, '17, 17:18

ECW Mountain Top Madness (6/30/1995)- Jim Thorpe, PA

THE PIT BULLS (w/Stevie Richards) vs. DINO SENDOFF & DON E. ALLEN- no rating, meh segment.
The match was a squash that had to go on for way too long because they needed to do a segment in the middle of it. That segment involved Stevie going over to flirt with his #1 fan, who we will eventually get to know as Francine, sitting in the front row. Beulah came out to put a stop to this for no real reason. She and Franny did get into an argument at Barbed Wire, Hoodies, and Chokeslams two weeks ago, so maybe she just doesn’t like Francine and wants her to be miserable. When you consider the way that Stevie and Francine’s relationship ended, it’s also possible that she is out here on Raven’s orders. Beulah wound up slapping Francine. Raven then came out and dragged both Beulah and Stevie to the back by their long luscious manes of hair.
Then the finish of the match happened. Then we went back to Francine, who was mouthing something to the camera along the lines of “I want a piece of that bitch.”

HACK MYERS vs. TOO COLD SCORPIO- 5/10
We start off with Scorpio going for aggressive, vicious strikes while Hack Myers relies on traditional professional wrestling maneuvers like the arm drag and hammerlock. What manner of parallel universe have I stumbled into?
They hit each other with some big moves, including a bunch of powerbombs by Hack. Scorpio won with the 450 Splash, then proceeded to talk some trash and slap his fallen opponent in the face before leaving.

MIKEY WHIPWRECK vs. TAZ (w/Paul E. Dangerously)- no rating, pretty good segment.
You might think this looks bad for Mikey on paper, but it’s even worse than you think because his arm is in a giant sling. How the hell is the commission allowing this?
Oh. They’re not. Bill Alfonso comes out and says that Mikey can’t wrestle with a separated shoulder. Thank G-d someone around here has seen reason. Then Chad Austin comes out and says that he wants to wrestle “The Tazmaniac.” Paul E. keeps grabbing the mic to correct Austin, telling him that “his name is ‘Taz.” This happens a few times in order to drive the change of nom de guerre home to the crowd. It looked like we were going to get Taz vs. Chad Austin and the bell even rang for it after Austin sucker-punched Taz. Taz no-sold it, though, as well as Chad’s next punch, then hit him with a suplex but Alfonso said some stuff I couldn’t hear and the match seems to have been called off (the internet has told me that Taz was, for some reason, disqualified). Paul E. argued with Fonzie, then Taz started to bear down on Fonzie but Too Cold Scorpio came out and assaulted Taz. He hit Taz with a Tombstone Pilerdriver and an Arabian Skullcrusher to injure Taz going into their match tomorrow night at Hardcore Heaven 1995. They did a great job milking this as an injury for a while and yet also allowing Taz to look tough as hell by being back on his feet by the end of it. Taz was especially great here, managing to sell a big neck injury while at the same time still being the tough as nails Taz character. Paul E. cut a promo saying that Taz would kick Scorpio’s ass tomorrow night.

BARBED WIRE BASEBALL BAT MATCH: Axl Rotten vs. Ian Rotten- 1.25/10
This “Barbed Wire Baseball Bat Match” started off with Ian holding an eponymous barbed wire [covered] baseball bat while Axl had… a steel chair. That was kind of weird. You’d think they’d both get to come out with the bats, or maybe there would only be one bat but it would be placed somewhere where they would have to race to get it before being able to use it or something like that. Even worse… the steel chair easily won their first exchange.
We were then “treated” to the special brand of “wrestling” that this feud is famous for. This was all made even worse by the fact that we also had some of the standard Fan-Cam problems of flailing about and making you dizzy and completely missing huge chunks of the action, being out of focus, etc., so even if you like two dudes slicing each other up, you didn’t even get to see a good chunk of it.

SHANE DOUGLAS & CACTUS JACK SEGMENT- Shane cut a REALLY long heel promo talking about how great he has been and ECW and saying that he was going to be leaving ECW for the WWF soon. Cactus came out and Shane said more things, this time burying ECW (I think. It was kind of hard to hear). Mick started his response with the line “Shane, you ignorant slut” which got the utterly fantastic reaction that such a brilliant line should have.
Cactus said that Shane’s world-view was distorted but he wanted them to still be friends (they’d been having some issues over the past few weeks), so he asked Shane to shake his hand and he did. Then he started to cut this promo about match they were supposed to have against each other a decade ago in Clarksburg, WV, when a small child loudly shouted “SHUT UP!” at Mick Foley. ECW, everybody! (Mick, by the way, responded by daring the kid to “get in the ring and tell me that.”)
The point of Cactus’ story is that Shane wasn’t happy being booked in the opener and so Shane demanded that instead of wrestle the match they go to a bowling alley across the street instead, and they did. Foley managed to turn this into an interesting psychoanalysis of Shane. More promos were exchanged. It was good for a while, but felt like it went on forever, which is a becoming a common theme on this show. They finally got around to teasing a match and spent a good minute or so circling each other before Shane walked, so we didn’t even get that. The fans called Shane a “chiken-shit.” Foley held up a sign he got from a fan that said “Shane is dead” so the fans chanted that, too. Mikey then cut a promo saying he would kick Shane’s ass but nothing came of that, either. This went on for ALMOST TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES. Over a fifth of this show’s run-time was devoted to this one segment that was just two guys talking in circles at each other.

ECW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Public Enemy(c) vs. Raven & Stevie Richards- 4.75/10
And after that whole long segment we’ve now got Stevie Richards starting this match out by immediately stalling and teasing walking out (in a freakin’ tag title match!). By the time someone actually tried to do something (Stevie threw a kick to the gut) we had had literally a half hour elapse between the previous time we had seen someone try to hurt someone else on this wrestling show.
They got WAY too much shine in this match, especially in the beginning. They hit Stevie in the head so hard and with so much stuff that they had me rooting for Stevie. Eventually Raven decides that he is going to walk out of the match (again… in a title match), and for some reason the referee follows Raven rather than watching the action in the ring, where The Public Enemy are pinning Stevie. This was done so that The Gangstas could show up and attack Public Enemy, because in this match where we’ve been hitting people with chairs and guitars, we apparently needed to distract the referee so that he wouldn’t disqualify someone due to outside interference. Stevie crawls into the cover and gets the pin to win the titles for him and Raven. Hooray for our new, completely toothless champions, who won the match due to outside interference in a match where they spent all but about three minutes of it getting their asses kicked.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- terrible.
Another referee came out and somehow reversed the decision even though nothing illegal happened because IT’S ECW AND THERE ARE NO RULES. This, of course, caused the fans to boo because the title change they just thought they’d seen rendered null and void. Thankfully Bill Alfonso was here to set things right. Of course the fans booed this, too, because the babyfaces just had the belts taken away from them.

POST-POST-MATCH SEGMENT- even worse and more nonsensical.
Heel Stevie cuts a babyface promo saying that he and Raven will defend the belts anywhere, anytime, against anyone. In fact, Stevie wants some challengers to come out to face him and Raven right now. So out comes… 911 and Paul E. Dangerously. 911 no-sells their shots with the belts, then gives them both some chokeslams. Then Fonzie comes out and Heyman hits him in the back of the head and 911 chokeslams him. Then Paul asks the ring announcer to come in the ring and they do the same thing to him for no reason. Then Fonzie, Stevie and Stevie both eat yet another chokeslam. The fans want 911 to drag Francine out of the crowd and chokeslam her, too. Franny, who at this point is just supposed to be a Stevie Richards ring rat, shows absolutely no fear of this. Fonzie gets up and says something, then runs off. Throughout this whole thing, Heyman has been blabbering on and on and yelling and dropping enough F bombs that you could have mistaken him for a better-dressed, undernourished Zandig.

ECW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: The Sandman(c) (w/Woman) vs. Tommy Dreamer- 0.5/10
Stevie and Raven were just sitting there in the ring during Sandman’s entrance. They had a stare-down with him before leaving. I’m not even sure why, as this was a good couple of months before they would even begin to feud with each other. Raven and Stevie hid and jumped Tommy when he came down the aisle. They beat Tommy up a bit. The fans chanted for Luna Vachon to come out and save Tommy but I guess she wasn’t here tonight because she didn’t come out.
The pre-match attack didn’t matter to the match until the very last spot. In fact, Tommy was firmly in command about forty seconds in. He pulled Sandman’s shirt over his head and then started to hit him in the head with some weapons that fans tossed him. Between two of these weapon shots he decided it would be fun to pull down Sandman’s pants. Sandman took over and stuff happened back and forth and it wasn’t very good. It ended when Woman distracted Dreamer, allowing Sandman to cane him in the hand, which was where Raven and Stevie had targeted in their attack. Then Sandman rolled Tommy up with a small package for pin. Yes, after a Singapore Cant shot to the HAND. This was terrible. I’m not even quite sure why I’m not giving it a DUD, and I wouldn’t fault anyone else for doing so.

This has absolutely got to be one of the worst shows in ECW history. Most of the matches were bad, the promo segments were bad and dragged on forever, and some of the little booking decisions they made here were baffling. Add to that that this is a Fan-Cam show with the issues that come along with that (no commentary, the wrestlers can often be hard to hear, and the camera-work is pretty bad… and downright unwatchable whenever they’re not in the ring) and you get an absolutely dreadful hour and fifty-five minutes of wrestling that feels more like it’s twice as long as it really is.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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