The SmarK Rant for Extreme Championship Wrestling – 01.30.96

The SmarK Rant for Extreme Championship Wrestling – 01.30.96

Last week: Shane Douglas and Tommy Dreamer strike an uneasy alliance so that Shane can get his hands on Cactus Jack!

Taped from Philly, home of cream cheese.

Your host is Joey Styles, who has all kinds of teases that WE WON’T BELIEVE.

Hack Myers gets an upset win over Mr. Hughes!

Stevie and Meanie declare themselves to be the Fabulous Ones and do a Fargo Strut!

2 Cold Scorpio pins a guy!

Cactus Jack tells the mutants that he would rather kiss Vince McMahon’s ass than continue kissing the asses of Paul Heyman and Tod Gordon, and then he tells us that the same idiots in this arena are gonna be chanting his name in the Spectrum when he’s wristlocking Mabel. That ended up being terrifyingly true, actually.

Back to Stevie, as he apologizes to Francine for superkicking her and reminisces about all the weird sex they used to have while watching tapes of themselves. “Oh, by the way, you’re not pregnant, are you?” And this earns Stevie a beating from the Pitbulls, which in turn leads to the Eliminators running in and beating on the Pitbulls while the Gangstas just casually watch for a while and then join in. And then 911 makes the save and chokeslams everyone, which had to be one of his last appearances.

This all leads into Tod Gordon and Fonzie brawling again, and Taz chokes out Gordon, but 911 goes after Taz and Taz reverses him into the choke and puts his lights out while the tag teams continue fighting and this has apparently been a match between the Pitbulls and Gangstas all this time. But 911 still won’t sell for Taz, shrugging off the choke and popping up again to try a chokeslam before the Eliminators take him down, and he won’t sell for THEM either and chokeslams them. That’s ridiculous, I’m glad Heyman fired his ass after that nonsense. So the Pitbulls try to finish New Jack with the superbomb, but Gordon and Fonzie brawl again, and this brings Taz and 911 into the match again, and Stevie superkicks Francine and out of all this chaos Pitbull #2 gets hit with a chair and pinned by Mustafa.

More from the arena show, as Buh Buh Ray Dudley’s spiel is interrupted by JT Smith being Italian, until JT’s own partner Axl Rotten is sick of it and tells him to just let Buh Buh say his name so they can get on with it. So JT turns on his partner but Buh Buh powerbombs him immediately and gets the win.

Next, we get highlights of this Rob Van Dam kid facing Sabu as they seem to be doing some electrifying sports entertaining for the ECW Universe. For instance, Sabu sends him into the audience and smashes a table. Not sure if he made contact with RVD while destroying the table but we’ve probably got a 50/50 shot at getting it right.

ECW World tag team title: Cactus Jack & Mikey Whipwreck v. Tommy Dreamer & Shane Douglas

The idiots in the crowd sing “Hit the Road Jack” at Cactus, which is pretty clever by their standards, although I’m shocked the WWE Network didn’t overdub them with a generic Ray Charles soundalike song. Jack tosses Mikey into the match to start and Dreamer beats on him with clotheslines before Shane comes in and drops an elbow while spitting at Jack. Shane takes Mikey to the floor and threatens him with a chair, but Dreamer calls him off because they want to save the violence for Cactus instead. Mikey decides to use the chair, however, taking out both Douglas and Dreamer, and he throws Shane into the front row and dives onto him. Then we cut to Cactus Jack stopping the match to do a promo about how Shane is a “never will be” who came crawling back to ECW on his hands and knees, too much of a coward to lock up with Jack before he left. Jack, it should be noted, has a “WW F’N F” t-shirt, which had to infuriate the ECW mutants something fierce. So Jack wants to do wrestling with Shane, but quickly gets dropkicked to the floor, where Dreamer beats on him with various foreign objects provided by the crowd. Jack takes a vicious mannequin torso off the head and sells it, and then Jack baseball slides a chair into him and chokes him out until Shane saves with his own chair. We’re clipped to Shane slingshotting Mikey off the top rope and onto a chair with an atomic drop, busting him open, and he follows with a delayed suplex as Joey points out that Tommy and Shane have no personal issue with Mikey and they’re just trying to get to Cactus. An NES system from the crowd gets involved and Dreamer DDTs Mikey onto it, and we’re clipped to Raven interfering and DDTing Tommy to take him out. Douglas drops Cactus on the turnbuckles and beats on him with a chair, but Jack takes him down with a drop toehold on the chair and gets the pin to retain the titles. Seemed pretty decent. 1 for 1. Raven actually lifted that drop toehold move for his WCW run later on.

Meanwhile, Woman is not happy with Sandman and won’t even light his cigarette, which leads to…

ECW World title: The Sandman v. Raven

Raven is now escorted by Kimona Wanalaya and Woman won’t even do Sandman’s entrance routine with him due to their ongoing issues over Woman wanting to jump to WCW and Sandman wanting her to be ECW-exclusive. We’re joined with Sandman beating on Raven with the cane and getting a DDT for two, but he accidentally canes the referee, which allows Stevie and Meanie to run in as Raven gets the cane and beats Sandman down with it. And then Dreamer runs in and beats on Raven with the cane, but then Cactus runs in and DDTs Sandman on a chair before Dreamer and Cactus brawl into the crowd, which allows Raven to get two. Meanwhile Dreamer drags Cactus back to the locker room while they fight and Sandman makes a comeback on Raven and drops a chair on his face before going up and missing the legdrop. Raven DDTs him on the chair and pins him to win the title at 3:22 aired. Nothing to it as a match. 1 for 2.

Joey notes that Sandman probably blamed Woman for “wanting to manage Macho Man Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan”, and we get Woman celebrating Sandman’s loss because NOW HE CAN COME WITH HER TO WCW! Well he eventually would. Woman insists that she made Sandman, and he freaks out and demands his beer back, calling her bad names. So 2 Cold Scorpio runs out and stops Sandman from doing anything stupid, and he’s intrigued by the question of how much money Woman is going to be making in WCW. Rumor at the time was that WCW was trying hard to get him too, but that fell through pretty quick. Sandman demands to know if Scorpio is with him or with Woman, so Scorpio chooses ECW and everyone cheers him until he takes the WWF’s money a few months later and leaves too. And Scorpio tells Woman to get stepping to WCW and carries her out of the arena out the back door. They were always so mean-spirited about this stuff, even as guys left for better paying jobs with workloads that wouldn’t destroy their bodies. It was especially hypocritical because, exactly as Cactus predicted, all the same people who booed him on the way out were cheering him again once he was actually in the WWF.

Well for those who were complaining that WCW and WWF were formulaic and predictable at this point, this is the exact opposite in every way, as it’s a crazy potpourri of ideas and bits of matches edited together into a chaotic hour of wrestling.