Mike Reviews Shows Considered To Be Stinkers: ECW Just Another Night

Happy Stinky Saturday Everyone!

Stinker Reviews are where we look at a show with a bad reputation and see if that bad rap is deserved or not. Today we’ve got Just Another Night from 1996 ECW, an event that sits on a miserable 3 out of 10 rating over on Cage Match.

Have the inmates been unkind, or is Just Another Night as bad as they say? I guess we’ll have to watch it to find out. I know nothing of this card aside from the fact that it features Bam Bam Bigelow taking on Mick Foley, which is a match that had to have happened very rarely, so Just Another Night has that going for it at least.

You can view the card for Just Another Night by clicking below;

Just Another Night Card

Just Another Night is emanating from Glenolden, Pennsylvania on the 23rd of February 1996

Calling the action is Joey Styles

I should point out that Just Another Night is being shot fan cam style, with no hard cam and just one roving camera. It’s strange they decided to get Joey to commentate over that actually, as normally they just released the fan cam footage without commentary at budget prices

Match One
Joel Hartgood and J.T. Smith Vs The Bad Crew (Dog and Rose)

This would be folks from Tod Gordon’s old TWA promotion that Paul Heyman was nice enough to keep around. Smith was in the early stages of doing the faux Italian gimmick, and he gets annoyed at Hartgood’s bad Italian dancing, so Smith attacks Hartgood with a chair before the match even properly starts. Bad Crew swarm Hartgood following that and hit a bunch of poorly executed moves to pick up the win.

WINNERS: THE BAD CREW
RATING: DUD

Thoughts: A pretty turgid opener

The Sandman runs out following the match and beats up both Bad Crew and Hartgood, which does at least fire up the crowd after that horrible match they’ve just had to sit through.

Match Two
Stevie Richards and The Blue Meanie Vs The Pitbulls (#1 and #2) w/ Francine

Stevie and Meanie were lackeys for Raven and their boss had previous with The Pitbulls, hence Stevie and Meanie been recruited to take on The Pitbulls here at Just Another Night. Stevie and Meanie do some strutting prior to the match, which leads to awful dance music getting played over the top. It sounds like something Special K would enter to in ROH actually. This match goes exactly how you’d think it would, with Stevie and Meanie getting flung around by their bigger babyface opponents in the early going. Stevie in particular takes some good bumps for that and The Pitbulls look suitably mean and violent on offence.

Meanie eventually manages to squish Pitbull #2 in the corner and that leads to the Heels working some heat. #2 sells that reasonably well, so it’s a serviceable heat segment, although some of the offence from Stevie and Meanie looks a little light at points, possibly because the camera is zoomed in so much. We actually get a prototypical Stink Face at one stage when Stevie rubs Pitbull #2’s face into Meanie’s arse. Stevie and Meanie were 4 years ahead of the curve there. Meanie of course ends up missing a Meaniesault though, which leads to Pitbull #1 getting the hot tag.

It’s not the best hot tag segment in the world, mainly because #1 kind of chases the Heels around rather than just standing in the middle and letting them come to him to be bumped. #2 gets some payback on Stevie by shoving Stevie’s face into Meanie’s bum, and that leads to Stevie and #1 taking a terrifying tumble over the top rope onto a table. The Super Bomb follows on Meanie back inside the ring, and that’s the three count for The Pitbulls.

WINNERS: THE PITBULLS
RATING: *3/4

Thoughts: This wasn’t too bad for what was essentially a House Show Special. Some of the work could have been a bit crisper, but the match structure was there and they hit the storytelling beats they needed to with it. It was an actual match at least, as opposed to whatever the opener was supposed to be

Stevie revives Meanie post-match with some mouth to mouth, which leads to Styles gagging on commentary. Hey, it’s a perfectly acceptable form of on site care before official medical personnel can arrive Joey.

Match Three
Bill Alfonso w/ Taz Vs Tod Gordon w/ Bam Bam Bigelow

Alfonso drew great Heel heat in ECW due to being a referee that actually dared to enforce the rules. At this point in time he was the manager of Taz and feuding with ECW owner Tod Gordon. Alfonso had defeated Gordon back at November to Remember 1995 thanks to Taz, so Gordon has brought Bammer with him here tonight so that he’s got some backup. Bigelow attacks Taz right at the opening bell, leading to the two brawling around ringside whilst the two non-wrestlers go at it in the ring. The camera operator chooses to focus on Taz and Bigelow for the most part, and that is the more interesting battle here so I get it. Gordon gets the better of Alfonso during their skirmish, with it mostly being punches, stomps and weapon shots. Alfonso’s selling is goofy, but the crowd enjoys it for what it is. Taz eventually manages to allude Bigelow long enough to cheap shot Gordon, leading to Alfonso getting the win.

WINNER: BILL ALFONSO
RATING: N/A

Thoughts: This was more an elongated angle than an actual match, but it worked for what they were going for I guess

Bigelow no sells some chair shots post-match, leading to Taz and Alfonso bailing.

Match Four
ECW World Tag Team Titles
Champs: The Eliminators (Saturn and Kronus) Vs Buh-Buh Ray Dudley and “The Extreme Shah” Hack Myers w/ Big Dick Dudley, Dances With Dudley and Sign Guy Dudley

Paul Heyman put a lot of effort into trying to get The Elims over as the best tag team in the world, and it was one of his better hype jobs, as they weren’t that good of a team really but the way they were presented in ECW made them look better than they were. Dudley and Myers is a random thrown together team, mainly because Big Dick had a knee injury at the time and wasn’t wrestling. The dubbed music for The Dudley Family here actually sounds a lot like the one used in the Hardcore Revolution Video Game. Myers isn’t there to start, as The Elims destroy The Dudley Family, except for Big Dick, who manages to fend them off and even give Saturn a one-legged Choke Slam.

Big Dick is eventually forced to leave due to his injury, which leaves Buh-Buh on his own due to the rest of the family getting killed earlier. Buh-Buh fights bravely, and actually gets some offence in, but eventually the numbers game is too much and the Champs start working Buh-Buh over. Eventually Myers runs down to help, which leads to him officially joining the bout as Buh-Buh’s ad-hoc partner. Myers’ whole thing is that fans yell “Shah” when he hits people, and that’s pretty much about it. Dudley and Myers bump the Heels around a bit, with The Elims actually taking a lot of bumps for them, as this has pretty much been a tornado match for the majority of the contest. Myers eventually takes TOTAL ELIMINATION though, and that’s enough for three for the Champs.

WINNERS AND STILL CHAMPIONS: THE ELIMINATORS
RATING: *1/2

Thoughts: It was all-action at least, but it was still a pretty meh effort in all honesty. The Eliminator’s didn’t fully hit their stride until 1997, at which point Saturn left after Heyman and ECW had spent so much effort in getting them over. Yeah, that’ll happen in wrestling I’m afraid

Match Five
The Sandman Vs Axl Rotten

I’m not sure that there’s much in the way of backstory here. Sandman had either just turned Face or was on his way to doing so, leading to the feud with Raven that saw Raven steal Sandman’s family. I think Rotten was a babyface around this time, although he’d go Heel for a bit later in the year as a partner for D-Von Dudley against the rest of The Dudley Clan. It probably takes something like 6-7 minutes between the entrances and some actual wrestling starting here, although they do then actually lock-up and do a little bit of grappling. That’s more wrestling than I was expecting to be honest. Sandman of course quickly kicks Rotten in the gut so that this can become the expected brawl, with the crowd seemingly happier with that than seeing Sandman and Rotten trying to out grapple one another.

The brawl itself is exactly what you’d expect, as they throw punches and hit one another with whatever they can find whilst tearing the building apart. It’s serviceable brawling, and about the best you could expect from a pairing like this. If brawling isn’t you’re thing then you’ll probably hate this, but if rugged wild men throwing one another into the crowd and trading weapon shots is your bag, then you’ll probably enjoy it. I will give both battlers credit for taking some nice bumps at least, with Rotten in particular getting flung all over the place, including onto the concrete at certain points. Sandman of course tries doing some high spots by diving out of the ring onto Rotten, and it looks about as sloppy and comically awful as you’d think. Some metal railing finds it’s way into the ring, with Sandman taking a couple of tumbles onto it, and Rotten also takes a suplex onto it at one stage as well. Sandman ends up drinking some beer, which works like spinach for him, and some Singapore cane shots follow, with Sandman then coming off the top with the world’s worst leg drop for three.

WINNER: THE SANDMAN
RATING: *1/2

Thoughts: This will definitely turn some people off, as it really was just Sandman and Rotten walking around the building and hitting one another with stuff, with some wacky botched high spots from Sandman thrown in for good measure. If that description sounds like something you’d detest, then that’s probably how you’ll feel about this one. If you enjoy wild sloppy brawls though (and there’s definitely a place for them as part of a balanced overall card) then there’s a chance this one would scratch that itch for you. My main critique outside of the near comical levels of sloppiness at some points, is that the match probably went on for too long. They were approaching something like 15 minutes for the run time here, when 6-8 was about the most they had in the locker

Post-match, Sandman grabs the mic and puts Rotten’s toughness over before offering him a beer, which Rotten chugs half of before passing the can back to Sandman so he can finish it off. Wrestling can be so chuffing weird sometimes.

Match Six
Cactus Jack Vs Bam Bam Bigelow

Cactus was on his way out of ECW at the time and was doing an anti-hardcore Pro-WWF gimmick, which of course the ECW fans were THRILLED about. Cactus is even spoofing the “EC F’N W” shirt by having a “WW F’N F” one on, which was always hilarious. Bammer wasn’t in full-time yet, so he was kind of just passing through until properly joining the roster in 1997. Bigelow had just left the WWF with some time left on his deal, but the WWF let him go providing he didn’t wrestle for WCW, hence why Bammer was working ECW and Japan around this time. Stevie Richards and Blue Meanie join us before the match starts so that the three Heels can strut together as a going away present for Cactus, which the crowd is of course appalled by.

Bigelow puts a stop to that, which leads to Cactus and Bigelow trading barbs on the mic until Bammer starts unloading the heavy artillery (holy mackerel) on Cactus with clotheslines etc. Stevie and Meanie end up helping Cactus work some heat on Bigelow, with Bigelow selling it well. The crowd doesn’t seem that into this one, which is surprising when you consider that these are two of the bigger names on the show. Bigelow catches Cactus with a clothesline OUTTA NOWHERE during the heat segment and that ends up being the three count? Man, that finish was weaker than a thimble of beer in a watered down pint glass.

WINNER: BAM BAM BIGELOW
RATING: 1/2*

Thoughts: This was a huge disappointment, as they barely did anything and the finish had almost zero impact due to the lack of build for it. This is the match that could have potentially made the show worth watching, and it ended up being one of the main reasons to avoid it. Such a shame

Bigelow gets beaten down by the combined forces of Cactus, Stevie, Meanie and Taz following the match whilst the ECW locker room fails to rescue him. They sell Taz choking out Bigelow as a big deal, but he jumped Bammer from behind whilst Bigelow was fighting three other people, so I would kind of hope that Taz would be able to lay out Bigelow in such a scenario!

Match Seven
ECW World Television Title
Champ: Too Cold Scorpio Vs “The Suicidal, Homicidal, Genocidal Madman” Sabu

Sabu had recently returned in November and ECW was building up his feud with Taz. Scorpio almost immediately botches a springboard out of the corner, which seems apropos for Just Another Night thus far. Scorpio does recover from that though and the match becomes what you expect it to be, with the two wrestlers alternating hitting MOVEZ on one another without really much flow or selling going on. It’s an okay example of that genre of wrestling, but there’s nothing here that would convert someone who isn’t already a fan of that kind of stuff. They do a bit of token technical stuff at one stage, with Scorpio working arm bars and the like, which the crowd isn’t really interested in seeing but Scorp is a competent technician, so it looks fine and Sabu actually does do a bit of selling at that point.

There is a funny spot at one stage where Scorpio tries to arm drag Jim Mollineaux, but big Jimmy manages to counter it with one of his own, and that leads to Sabu fighting back and getting a TOPE SUICIDA out onto Scorp when he’s leaned up against a table on the railings. The table doesn’t break of course, because it’s a Sabu match and Maffew has to eat, so Sabu instead props the table between the ring and the railings for something, but Scorp fights that off and then bulldogs Sabu face first onto a chair back inside the ring. Scorp then nearly breaks Sabu’s neck for the second time in the Sabster’s career with a borked piledriver, but Sabu survives so Scorp instead follows up with a Moonsault. Scorpio decides he doesn’t want to get a cover from that, and ends up getting put through the aforementioned table via a Sabu cross body.

Styles of course uses the table bump to talk about how this match is better than anything we’ll see in the WWF or WCW this year, which is just patently untrue. ECW definitely had some great matches in 1996, no doubt, so Styles just be choosing to do the hard sell during one of those ones rather than acting like Scorpio and Sabu having a sloppy, if entertaining, match on a House Show is somehow comparable to any of Shawn Michaels’ best efforts from 1996. Scorpio soon shrugs off the table bump and we get more MOVEZ, as the sloppiness levels continue to increase. Scorpio isn’t going for covers, and that’s because we’re clearly going to a draw here, with the fans not caring about the time announcements. And indeed, shock of all shocks, the time limit runs out just when it looks like Sabu might be in the ascendancy.

TIME LIMIT DRAW
RATING: **

Thoughts: They couldn’t decide if they wanted to do a technical master class, a hardcore brawl or a high octane spot fest, so they just tried to do all three at once and it didn’t really work and the crowd got a bit restless at points as a result. It wasn’t awful, but it was a bit botchy and it might have benefited from them picking a style and sticking with it. By the standards of this show thus far though, this was a decent effort. Styles doing the big sell job for the bout felt forced and hampered his credibility somewhat, as he was treating this like some kind of MOTYC, when both Scorp and Sabu had better matches in 1996, including with one another

Scorp and Sab make nice following the match, but then Scorpio cheap shots Sabu and gets laid out as a result. Okay, I liked that, as it gave Sabu and excuse to beat up Scorp without looking like a sore loser as Scorp attacked him first

Main Event
ECW World Title
Champ: Raven w/ Kimona Wanalaya, Stevie Richards and The Blue Meanie Vs “The Franchise” Shane Douglas

Raven was the top Heel in the promotion at the time, whilst Douglas was kind of a tweener since jumping back from the WWF. I’m hoping this will be good as I enjoyed their match together at Hostile City Showdown. Douglas’ dubbed theme is one of the best ones you’ll find on WWE Network/Peacock. Douglas looks to be working as a complete Face tonight, as he cuts a promo slagging off the WWF and he’s facing unfair odds due to Raven having all of his lackeys with him. Wanalaya looks almost as good here as she did during that fateful night atop the ECW Arena, and she actually has some good chemistry as a valet for Raven here, having a great Heel sneer and doing things like playing with Raven’s hair etc whilst he just sits around the corner in his traditional slacker pose.

Douglas bumps Raven around to start, with Raven taking nice bumps for it all and then heading out to the floor for some classic Larry Z styled stalling. Douglas eventually gets lured out to the floor, which leads to some brawling out there and Raven taking a suplex onto the uncovered concrete, because ECW. The ECW fans show their trademark compassion to that, with one yelling “don’t be a p—y” at Raven whilst he sells. Brian Pillman eventually joins us, complete with camera and press place, as I suddenly realise why this one made it to tape. Pillman distracts Douglas with a camera flash, which helps give Raven a breather and allows him to catch Douglas with a DDT OUTTA NOWHERE for two.

Douglas manages to drive Raven into the corner in order to block another DDT, but the ref takes a bump in the process and that allows Stevie and Meanie to get involved. Douglas manages to fight both of them off though and runs wild with Belly to Belly Suplexes on everyone before giving the ECW fans what they want by spanking Wanalaya. Douglas dropkicks a chair into Raven’s face following that, and then wears Raven out with the chair like he’s Austin taking on Rock at Mania X-Seven. This leads to Cactus Jack running down, and Douglas deals with him but that allows Stevie to get a Stevie Kick so that Raven can follow up with yet another DDT to finally get the three.

WINNER AND STILL CHAMPION: RAVEN
RATING: **3/4

Thoughts: This was the standard Raven Dog and Pony Show, and it worked well enough, although I’ve seen better examples of it

Raven and Friends try to beat up Douglas following the bout, but The Sandman runs down with his Singapore cane in order to make the save and send the fans home happy as the babyfaces have a Beer Bash together.

Is It Really A Stinker?

It took me a long time to watch this, as I just couldn’t get into it at all and the matches did very little for me for the most part. I’m sure it was fun to be at the venue live for Just Another Night, but it didn’t translate to the living room for me due to the way it was shot and because it was clearly just a House Show that they’d decided to throw on home video because Brian Pillman showed up. ECW was hardly known for it’s great production values, but you could at least normally expect both a hard cam and a roving cam. This was essentially handheld footage of a House Show with Joey Styles commentary dubbed over it, and I really don’t think it needed to be a full release. It’s kind of like the Mayhem in Manchester show I reviewed back in that regard.

They could have easily just stuck a video package together of the action on the show rather than releasing it wholesale. As far as it being a Stinker; it certainly wasn’t any good, but if you looked at it purely as a House Show that they happened to film, then it wasn’t a complete disaster or anything. It was dull and a definite slog to get through, but when a show is essentially a throwaway one like this, then you have slightly lowered standards as a result. Thus I’ll go as low as Stinky and leave it there I think.

Final Rating– Stinky
(Scores done on a scale of Stinker/Stinky/Odourless/Pleasant/Fragrant)