Mike Reviews ECW Crossing The Line 1999

Happy Extreme Friday Everyone!

We’ve got some more ECW today with Crossing The Line 1999, a show that I’ve reviewed parts of in past Hardcore TV reviews, but today we’ll do the full show, especially as it contains a Rob Van Dam Vs Jerry Lynn match that was for home video consumption only.

Thanks to F+C for uploading the full show complete with real music

You can view the full card for Crossing The Line 1999 by clicking the link below;

ECW Crossing The Line 1999 Card

Crossing The Line 1999 is emanating from the Elk’s Lodge in Queens, New York on the 12th February 1999. As always with one of these Queens shows; we have the awesome Fire Pro Wrestling styled hard cam setup here

Calling the action is Joey Styles

Opening Match
Little Guido w/ Big Sal E. Graziano Vs “The Extreme Rookie” Chris Chetti

Guido and Sal were part of The Full Blooded Italians with Tommy Rich and Tracy Smothers at the time, although the group was in the process of disintegrating, with the real Italians finally ousting the faux ones. Chetti is related to Taz and had the bland as all heck “Rookie” gimmick at the time, although he’d end the year as a Ricky Martin styled Casanova instead, which would at least give him some flavour. Joey Styles pushes on commentary that each of these competitors have strong amateur wrestling credentials, meaning that this could be one for the purists. So of course Chetti starts out the match throwing kicks, like you regularly see at the wrestling during the Olympics.

We do eventually get some grappling on the mat, and its decent, with it having a bit of a UWFi feel to it, which makes sense seeing as Guido used to work that sort of style when he was over in Japan. Sadly some of the folks in Queens think the amateur styled grappling is boring, even though it certainly isn’t. Chetti manages to evade both Guido and Sal during his shine, but Guido manages to stop Chetti coming off the top with a Moonsault and powerbombs him back into the ring for the cut off, with Sal squishing Chetti against the ring post for good measure. Chetti recovers quickly from that (arguably too quickly, as getting splattered like that by Sal should lead to you being down for quite a while, especially when you’re cruiserweight size like Chetti is). They do some near falls following that, with Chetti dropkicking Guido into Sal and following up with a springboard Moonsault for three after about 6 Minutes

WINNER: CHRIS CHETTI
RATING: *3/4

Thoughts: This was really rushed, with Chetti essentially shrugging off the heat segment in record time because they had to make sure they got all their stuff in. It was watchable, but somewhat lacking in psychology. It’d be fine as a quick TV match, which is ultimately what it ended up being with a bit of editing

Match Two
“Muffin Ass” Danny Doring and Roadkill Vs The Hardcore Chair Swinging Freaks (Axl Rotten and Balls Mahoney)

Doring is a preening cocky youngster and Roadkill is a big Amishman who talks about chickens, whilst the Axl and Balls combo like to swing chairs and bleed all over the place, making this one an interesting clash of personalities if nothing else. Doring notes to a nearby cameraman that Balls and Axl brought chairs with them for this, whilst Doring brought a box of candy, seeing as Valentine’s Day was on the horizon. Doring cuts a Heel promo before the match saying he brought his candy to give to a woman in the crowd, but there doesn’t appear to be any for him to give the candy to, so he hands them to Roadkill instead in a fun payoff. Doring adds that he doesn’t need to use a chair, because he’s a wrestler, and that the crowd in Queens doesn’t want to see Balls and Axl flatten him with a chair, which they seem to disagree with. That was decent enough mic work from Doring in fairness. Nothing earth shattering, but he covered the beats he needed to and riled up the crowd well enough. If we now get the payoff of Doring getting brained with a chair then I’ll consider it some C/C+ promotional interviewing.

And yes, Danny Doring does have “Muffin Ass” on the back of his tights. It does raise the question of what sort of muffin he’s referring to though. Is it the chocolate chip kind or the breakfast kind? Which one would even be preferable in such a situation? If it’s the latter; does it mean that Doring likes putting bacon and sausage between his butt cheeks in the morning? Hey, we don’t kink shame here on the Blog of DOOM. What you and your consensual breakfast do in the mornings in the privacy of your own kitchen is totally up to you, so long as the assorted meat products are within the required use by dates. Anyway, Doring and Roadkill stooge around a bit to start until they manage to connect with the Lancaster Lariat of Lust (their version of the Hart Attack) on Balls, leading to a brief heat segment.

Balls sells well enough in the heat, with Roadkill getting to show off his freaky big man agility by doing a rope walk knee drop that ends up missing, leading to Axl getting the hot tag. The chair gets involved following that, with Roadkill getting summarily chaired in the head so that the gruff hardcore dudes can get the three count after 7 Minutes. The fans of course join in with “Big Balls” following that, which I believe was still the AC/DC version at the time before they had Boner record a newer version of the track for Balls in 2000.

WINNERS: THCSF
RATING: *1/2

Thoughts: Had Doring taken the teased chairing then I might have gone up to **. This was fine for a lower card comedy tag match, with the Heels being buffoons and eventually getting battered

ECW World Champ Taz joins Joey Styles in the ring for some promo time so that he can hype up the Living Dangerously pay per view in March 1999, doing a thing where he’d even threaten to beat up people in WCW and the WWF if they faced him. Taz mostly just delivers the catchphrase and leaves, without any real angle advancement for now, although it does establish that he’s in the building and loves New York. Pfft, always going on about loving New York, who does he think he is, Courtney Miller?

Shane Douglas and Francine join us in the ring, so that Douglas can tease a possible retirement. Douglas and Francine do an excellent job selling it all in fairness to them, with both of them fighting off tears and getting the emotion across really well. The more of Francine I watch the more I can appreciate that she was really good at this and an underrated performer when it came to acting both in angles like this and whilst at ringside when managing. I feel she gets due credit for being a physical valet/manager who could mix it up and take bumps, but she was more than just a bump taker.

Douglas cuts a good emotional promo, talking about how injuries have taken their toll and how he can hold his head up high following his recent series with Taz. Douglas has his boots with him to hand to his replacement, with the crowd actually chanting that they don’t want him to go. Seeing an ECW crowd not wanting to see Shane Douglas, one of the most hated men the company had at differing points, leave after all these years is actually kind of wild and highlights how they’d done a good job in the recent months of turning him back babyface. Before Douglas can confirm who his handpicked successor as the Franchise will be, Justin Credible heads out with Jason Knight and Jazz under the assumption that the new Franchise will be Credible.

However, Lance Storm then enters saying that it is in fact he who should be the next Franchise in ECW. Credible and Storm get into a brief argument, but Douglas cuts them off and says that he’s passing the torch to Tommy Dreamer. This leads to Credible and Storm putting a beatdown on Douglas, establishing them as a new unit. Tommy Dreamer tries to rescue Douglas, but he gets beaten down as well, with Credible stomping Francine right in the FACE at one stage, with Francine taking a characteristic great bump from it. This was a very effective Heel heat angle, but it was undercut somewhat by the fact that the new Credible and Storm unit spent about six months losing all the time but then attacking the babyfaces after the match to try and get their non-existent heat back. If they’d gone on a winning streak where they defeated all the top guys in the promotion following this angle then they would have probably gotten over as a Main Event act, but Paul Heyman was reticent to pull the trigger that way. As an angle though; this was done really well, with them somehow managing to make Shane Douglas come across as a sympathetic figure.

Match Three
Super Crazy Vs Yoshihiro Tajiri

These two would go on to have roughly 200+ matches together (I might not even be exaggerating there) but the match was still fresh at this stage, with them only having the one pay per view match together back at Guilty As Charged 1999. They work this one at a quick clip from the off, with Tajiri sending Crazy into the front row and following with an Asai Moonsault. The Tarantula follows inside the ring, but Crazy just fires back with an immediate Powerbomb, which should let any newer viewers know what they’re in for with this one. The action here gets us our first “EC-Dub” chant of the night, as well as a “Lucha Libre” chant.

Crazy of course does his own Moonsault into the crowd at one stage, because that’s Super Crazy’s version of cupping his hand to his ear. The Moonsault’s keep coming back inside the ring, but Crazy takes too long getting up and that leads to Tajiri unleashing MANY KICKS to poor Crazy’s face, as the crowd is going radio rental for all of this. You listen to crowds react like this and you can see why ECW kept running this match. There’s a great bit where Tajiri gets a TOPE CON HILO out onto Crazy, and Crazy sells it with a mixture of pain, frustration and annoyance that Tajiri hit a nicer looking move than him, which just sums this feud up in many ways. Crazy eventually fires off a series of dropkicks and follows up with a springboard Frogsplash, which is enough for the three count after a breathless 7 Minutes.

WINNER: SUPER CRAZY
RATING: ***1/4

Thoughts: I’ve seen this combo so many times that I’m pretty much sick of it, but even I really enjoyed this. What these two were doing was really ahead of their time, as you could put this match on AEW Dynamite today and it wouldn’t look remotely out of place. What I loved about ECW as well is that they brought in these two guys who didn’t wrestle the established style of the promotion and didn’t even really speak the language, but they got really over just from having exciting matches together, so ECW pushed them and treated them as stars from that point onwards. They wouldn’t have got that kind of consideration in either the WWF or WCW due to the multiple glass ceilings you could find in both of those of promotions, but ECW essentially just went “Oh, they’ve gotten themselves over, best push them then” and I basically love that

Match Four
FTW Title
Champion: “The Suicidal, Homicidal, Genocidal Madman” Sabu w/ Bill Alfonso Vs Skull von Crush

Sabu had ended up winning the FTW Title prior to Taz winning the ECW World Title, with them doing a confusing storyline where Taz injured Sabu’s neck so that he could take Sabu’s Title shot against Shane Douglas, but then draped Sabu over him so that he could lose the FTW Title. Sabu was now defending the FTW belt though, and this made Taz annoyed for some reason, even though he’d voluntarily given the belt up in the first place. This was all building to Sabu and Taz having a bleurgh match at Living Dangerously 1999. Skull would end up jumping to WCW and becoming Big Vito, but here he’s playing some kind of nationalist/white supremacist character based on the commentary. Sabu was also currently one half of the ECW Tag Champs with Rob Van Dam.

Sabu runs wild with his usual offence to start, as it feels like these two don’t have a lot of chemistry as opponents, with Skull eventually countering a Sabu running attack in the corner with a clothesline that looked like it had some significant air on it. Skull works some heat on Sabu following that, with Skull’s offence looking solid enough whilst Sabu bumps and sells for it all well enough. I’m surprised they didn’t just make Skull a tough battling Italian here, especially as the show was in New York and the fans would already be predisposed not to like Sabu since he was feuding with Taz. Instead Skull is working as Heel here and the atmosphere is a bit flat as a result.

Skull eventually misses an attack off the ropes and that allows Sabu to send Skull to the floor and set up a table between the metal railings and the ring before putting Skull on it. Skull rolls off the table though, so Sabu leaps into the crowd to attack both Skull and a fan in the front row who happens to have a “Sabu Fears Taz” sign. Sabu ends up stabbing that fan, and the fact we actually get to see him do it and the camera doesn’t immediately cut away tells me that the lad in question is a plant, because there’s no way someone as legally aware as Paul Heyman would let something like that air on home video/television if it didn’t involve an agreed participant. Alfonso then holds Skull down on the table so that Sabu can give Skull an elbow drop through it. At this point Sabu actually grabs a mic and calls out Taz, leading to a brawl between Sabu and the champ, and the match getting thrown out after 6 Minutes.

NO CONTEST
RATING: *1/2

Thoughts: A bit better than the shortened version that made it onto Hardcore TV, but the non-finish felt very out of place in ECW, where you could normally be assured of a finish

The locker room empties to try and stop the brawl between Sabu and Taz, and that leads to Sabu diving out onto a bunch of them for a wild anarchic ECW moment, with Taz then laying down the challenge for Living Dangerously. It’s a shame the eventual match was so underwhelming as this was a good angle to set it up

The Dudley Boyz (Buh-Buh Ray, D-Von, Big Dick and Sign Guy) and Joel Gertner head down to the ring to address The Dudleyz running The Public Enemy out of ECW, with the idea being that someone paid them off to do it. In addition to that, someone has also paid The Dudleyz to take out New Jack. After burying TPE on the mic for going to the WWF, as well as recapping all the people they’ve injured, Buh-Buh adds that no one can dispute how bad they are, which is New Jack’s cue to come out.

New Jack comes out with an assortment of weapons and says he hasn’t come alone, at which point Mustafa returns to ECW to help him clear the ring. The reunited Gangstas stand tall in the ring, only for Mustafa to grab a guitar and lay New Jack out. Joey Styles speculates that the mysterious benefactor has paid Mustafa off as well, but Mustafa reveals that it was actually he who was the mysterious benefactor and pulls out a wad of money to give to his new pals The Dudley Boyz (Sadly he didn’t cut a promo declaring that “It was me New Jack, it was me all along!”)

Spike Dudley and Kronus try to rescue New Jack, but they get beaten down as well as the Heels celebrate in the ring with their money. I have no idea why Mustafa decided to turn on New Jack like this, but I’m pretty certain he came up with this scheme outside the hours of 4:20, if you catch my drift. It was funny hearing Buh-Buh talk about how they’ve stayed loyal to ECW during his promo, when they essentially did all the stuff they were knocking TPE for later in the year by jumping to the WWF. This was an effective angle, but we’d already had a heavy Heel heat beatdown earlier in the night, so this one was always going to have a slightly lesser impact as a result. The eventual Mustafa Vs New Jack match was one of ECW’s worst ever pay per view bouts as well.

Lance Storm heads down to the ring for some promo time. Don Callis is shown watching from the balcony, which I believe was his ECW debut. Storm introduces a name change for his valet Dawn Marie, as she will now be going by the name of Beulah as a way to antagonise Tommy Dreamer. Speaking of whom; Tommy Dreamer joins us and attacks Storm, with Justin Credible and Jason Knight running down to help Storm beatdown Dreamer. Even by Dreamer’s low standards, taking TWO Heel beatdowns in one night feels a tad excessive. Thankfully for Dreamer, Shane Douglas and Francine run down to make the save, leading to an unlikely alliance between the three. Francine’s face looks to be all bruised up from getting kicked earlier in the night, which earns her some cheers from the crowd who appreciate her toughness.

Match Five
Steve Corino Vs John Kronus

Corino had only just debuted and was basically doing a diet version of Chris Jericho’s whiny WCW character at the time, which was entertaining but wasn’t going to move him up the card in a place like ECW. Kronus would soon be on his way out of the promotion. To be honest, without Perry Saturn to tag with, Kronus didn’t really have much to offer outside of being an enhancement guy at this stage and he probably wasn’t too reliable due to his extra curricular activities. Anyway, this match serves the purpose of just filling time until a big violent nutter can run down and destroy everyone in it. Back in the day that would have been 911, but at Crossing The Line it’s Sid, as he walks down and kills both wrestlers when Corino has the temerity to use a Powerbomb, causing the match to be a no contest after 3 Minutes.

NO CONTEST
RATING: DUD

Thoughts: The match was quite literally filler, just there to set up a Sid run-in. Despite supposedly being too cool for school, the ECW fans in Queens of course went nuts for Sid, despite him essentially representing everything ECW was supposed to be against

Main Event
ECW World Television Title
Champion: “The Whole F’N Show” Rob Van Dam w/ Bill Alfonso Vs “Dynamic” Jerry Lynn

These two hadn’t taken this match to pay per view yet, but they’d been killing it in situations like this and would eventually battle for the belt at Living Dangerously 1999, kicking off one of the defining feuds of ECW’s history. This one starts out like many of the other RVD Vs Lynn matches, where the two men go back and forth working at a quick pace with a lot of counters, as neither wrestler is able to get the better of the other. Lynn being the guy who could both match RVD and arguably be one step ahead of him sometimes made him a really interesting prospect, as normally RVD would be quicker and slicker than most of his opponents and they’d have to try something different to combat RVD’s strengths. Lynn didn’t need to do that though and could not only wrestle an RVD match but could also do it just as well as RVD himself could, which meant that RVD’s Title was arguably never in more jeopardy when he had to defend it against Lynn.

The opening exchanges are wrestling focused, but the match eventually spills out to the floor, where RVD puts Lynn into the front row and dives out onto him for the cut off, leading to RVD controlling things for a bit back inside the ring. Lynn takes his trademark good bumps in order to make RVD look good, selling well throughout the beating. Lynn eventually manages to fight back, giving us some near falls as Lynn manages to catch RVD with a top rope Powerbomb and a German Suplex at different points, each netting him a two count. Sadly the crowd seems to get distracted by something at one stage, just as the match is feeling like it’s kicking into its highest gear, leaving them a bit muted for some of the closing stretch. Lynn continues to catch RVD out with big moves and counters in ways some RVD opponents just wouldn’t, including Lynn slipping out of an RVD Northern Lights Suplex at one stage and turning it into a slick Reverse DDT.

We get one of the first instances of Lynn dodging the Van Daminator and a leg sweep from RVD, before then giving RVD a leg drop onto the chair RVD was trying to use for the Van Daminator. That was a spot they’d eventually get down to being one of the smoothest counter sequences in wrestling, and even in its prototypical form it still looks impressive. Lynn makes the mistake of heading up top with the chair though, and that allows RVD to leap up with a Van Daminator to send Lynn tumbling back into the ring. RVD follows up with the Five Star Frogsplash following the Van Daminator, and that leads to RVD picking up the win after 18 Minutes. Joey Styles notes that they will rematch at Living Dangerously 1999, and by that point they’d ironed some of the kinks out and would deliver a better match overall than this one, although this one was pretty good.

WINNER AND STILL CHAMPION: ROB VAN DAM
RATING: ***1/4

Thoughts: These two hadn’t quite tapped into the formula and chemistry that would lead them to have a collection of classics together during the next couple of years, but this was still a good match and you could see the blueprint for what they would eventually go on to achieve. The Queens crowd didn’t help really here, as they’d clearly been burned out after an eventful TV taping and were a bit muted, which took away from the bout somewhat

In Conclusion:

Crossing The Line 1999 isn’t a terrible show, but it definitely feels like a TV taping that they essentially stuck a bonus dark match Main Event on so that they could justify selling it as a standalone release.

The major angles involving Shane Douglas and New Jack were all aired on Hardcore TV, as was the match between Tajiri and Super Crazy, so really the only reason to go and watch Crossing The Line was the RVD Vs Lynn match, and the two had better matches than the one here, so it’s not like this one was a must-watch that justified picking up the tape.

It was interesting to see what the prototypical version of RVD Vs Lynn was like, as you could see that they didn’t have the fully formed package yet, but they did have the initial foundations in place upon which to build, which they’d do over the remainder of their ECW careers.

Crossing The Line 1999 is an interesting tape for those that care about RVD Vs Lynn lore, but it’s ultimately one for completists only and not one you really have to track down if you’re more of a casual ECW fan or one just starting to get into the promotion. If you want a show from 1999 that’s a good jumping on point then I suggest Anarchy Rulz, as it gives you a good idea as to the flavour of the promotion at the time and it has some good matches on it too.