Mike Reviews ECW Hardcore Heaven 1995 – 01.7.1995

Happy Extreme Friday Everyone!

I decided to review ECW Hardcore Heaven 1995 as I’ve never reviewed it before and someone requested it over on F&C, so this felt like as good a time as any to give it a look. We’ve got more of the Raven Vs Tommy Dreamer feud, whilst Sandman battles Cactus Jack and The Public Enemy go to war with Da Gangsta’s.

You can view the full card for Hardcore Heaven by clicking below;

ECW Hardcore Heaven 1995 Card

Logan has reviewed this show as well so check his review HERE if you’d like to read what he made of it all

Hardcore Heaven is emanating from the 2300 Arena in Philly, PA on the 1st of July 1995

Calling the action is Joey Styles

Opening Match
The Pitbulls (Pitbull #1 & Pitbull #2) w/ Beulah McGillicutty, Raven & Stevie Richards Vs The Dudley Brothers (Dudley Dudley & Snot Dudley) w/ Big Dick Dudley

This is the ECW debut of the Dudley gimmick, with the idea being that Daddy Dudley was a travelling salesman who had a bunch of illegitimate children, with the exception of Dudley Dudley who is the only “pure” Dudley. The Dudley’s are announced as being from The Hills of Charleston, Pennsylvania here and not yet from Dudleyville. Snot Dudley mostly gets clobbered when he’s in the ring, whilst Dudley Dudley actually manages to mix it up with the opponents somewhat and hold his own a bit. Francine is at ringside and plants a kiss on Stevie, as the idea at the time was that she was an admirer of Stevie. Beulah doesn’t like that, so her and Francine have a quick scuffle leading to Raven dragging Stevie and Beulah to the back. However, this distracts The Pitbull’s and that allows The Dudley’s to steal one.

6 Minutes

WINNERS: THE DUDLEY BROTHERS
RATING: *1/2

Thoughts: More of an angle than a match, but I felt that the idea that Dudley Dudley was competent due to his pure Dudley lineage whilst Snot was a bit of a loser had some potential. The Pitbulls lost here but they were protected somewhat in defeat and the match mostly existed as a backdrop to explain why they would soon imminently break away from Raven

The Pitbulls are angry following the result of the match and rant to Joey Styles about it all. The gist of the promo is that they’re sick of Raven and Richards leaving them high and dry all the time and seemingly break away from Raven’s control.

Second Match
Broad Street Bully & Chad Austin Vs Dino Sandoff & Don E. Allen

These are lads who used to work for Todd Gordon’s TWA promotion that ran in Philly before ECW came to prominence, with Heyman keeping them around essentially as enhancement talent once he got the book in September 1993. They have a pretty meh match here, with even Joey Styles tearing it apart on commentary. This eventually brings out 911, who destroys everyone in the ring with Choke Slams in order to pop the crowd.

2 Minutes

NO CONTEST
RATING: N/A

Thoughts: This was a great use of 911, as he couldn’t really wrestle worth a lick but he could come into the ring and destroy people with Choke Slam’s, so they just had him do that and thus he got over with the crowd. People overcomplicate this Pro Wrestling thing sometimes

Third Match
“The Extreme Shah” Hack Myers Vs Big Malley

Myers’ whole thing is that fans chant “shah” when he hits people, and “s###” when they hit him back. Malley also wrestled under the name Big Val Puccio and he has a physique that mirrors the one that Rufus has in Street Fighter IV. Malley goads Myers into trying a bodyslam to start, and seeing as Myers doesn’t have a crane of some kind of help him, it doesn’t end up happening. Malley uses his size to squish Myers in the corner a few times, as this bout is being fought at a pretty glacial pace. The crowd doesn’t really care for the match, although I will give Myers credit for selling well and Malley credit for having some good Heel mannerisms. Malley ends up missing an elbow drop and Myers drapes an arm for the three count, although Malley kicked out at 3.1 and continues beating Myers up after the match.

8 Minutes

WINNER: HACK MYERS
RATING: *

Thoughts: This wasn’t very good, as Malley made a cement truck look nippy and Myers didn’t really do anything except lie around on the mat whilst Malley very slowly worked him over

Fourth Match
Taz w/ Paul E. Dangerously Vs Too Cold Scorpio

Taz had gone from being a hairy caveman to being a more serious character, which had led to a feud starting up with Scorpio, who is wearing orange and black tonight in an effort to wind Taz up. The story of the match sees Taz trying to fling Scorpio around with some trademark Taz-Plexes whilst Scorpio does everything he can to try and avoid that happening. The crowd gets into the match and the two wrestlers are putting the effort in, but the work is a bit sloppy and it looks like they don’t gel very well as opponents.

Scorpio does manage to heave Taz up into a powerbomb at one stage, which looks impressive, and the match settles down a bit when he takes control, with Taz doing a decent job bumping and selling for Scorpio’s offence. Most of the sloppiness seemed to come from them doing running spots, but once they’ve slowed it down a bit and focused more on dishing out punishment to one another, the match has improved somewhat. Scorpio makes sure to do dirty things like eye gouges etc to show himself to be the more Heelish of the two.

Scorpio puts Taz down with a Tombstone Piledriver and heads up with Tumbleweed, but Taz pops right back up and gives Scorpio a Taz-Plex to seemingly pick up the win. However, Scorpio got his foot on the bottom rope, so corrupt official Bill Alfonso heads down to restart the bout, which is actually kind of fair, but he’s also a jerk about it so it still draws heat from the crowd. Paul E and Fonzie get into an argument, which allows Scorpio to clock Taz from behind in order to get the three count as the fans boo loudly.

9 Minutes

WINNER: SCORPIO
RATING: **1/2

Thoughts: This one had a bit of a rough start but it ended up being decent the longer it went on and the finish helped protect Taz in defeat whilst also putting more heat on Alfonso, as not only does he enforce rules in an extreme promotion but now he does it selectively, just to make him even more of a corrupt douche

Joey Styles is in the ring doing the Hardcore TV intro, where he mentions that Shane Douglas has been negotiating with the WWF. This brings Shane Douglas out in a WWF shirt to rile up the crowd about his leaving ECW. The fans start chanting “Shane is Dead”, which was a call back to them chanting “Flair is Dead” as way to support Douglas whenever he’d go on bitter rants about Flair and challenge him to matches that Flair was never going to be able to answer because he worked for WCW. It must be stifling in that building by the way because all Douglas has done is cut a promo out there and he’s DRENCHED in sweat. Douglas’ promo is all over the place here, but it has good energy at least and the crowd are loud for it, even though it’s mostly because the fans are being anti-social and trying to drown Douglas out. The eventual payoff to the promo is that Douglas confirms that he is off to the WWF. Woman heads out to try and get Douglas to stay in ECW and be managed by her, but he insults her instead and takes slap, leading to Sandman and Cactus Jack heading to the ring, causing Douglas to clear out. That segment went on for quite a while and started to overstay its welcome after a certain point, but it at least confirmed an important point in that we now know that Douglas is definitely leaving ECW

Fifth Match
ECW World Tag Team Titles
Champions: Raven and Stevie Richards w/ Beulah McGillicutty Vs Luna Vachon and Tommy Dreamer

Raven and Dreamer’s feud supposedly started because Dreamer took Beulah from Raven back at summer camp, only to the break her heart because she wasn’t very attractive. Beulah has since shown up in ECW as a smoking hot babe, and has aligned herself with Raven so that they can both get their revenge on Dreamer. Dreamer has since brought in Luna for some backup, leading to this match being booked. Dreamer is wrestling with some broken fingers here following one of Raven’s many attacks.

They don’t even bother doing tags to start, with Raven and Dreamer fighting out on the floor whilst Luna applies the Testicular Claw to Stevie inside the ring. The ECW fans actually do something quite clever following that by chanting “Stevie” in a high-pitched voice. Fair play to them, that was quite funny. Raven is soon bleeding courtesy of a Dreamer DDT out on the concrete floor, leading to Dreamer clobbering Raven with all kinds of weaponry, including a TV antenna that he finds somewhere, whilst Luna continues to work Stevie over inside the ring.

Raven and Stevie eventually rally, with Stevie hitting Luna with a chair out on the floor whilst Raven starts targeting Dreamer’s injured fingers. Raven and Stevie work Luna over in the ring, but they are unable to put her away, leading to Luna managing to give Stevie a Superplex. Beulah throws some powder in Luna’s eyes following that though, which leads to Stevie stealing the pin on Luna, whilst Styles is disgusted on commentary.

8 Minutes

WINNERS AND STILL CHAMPIONS: RAVEN & STEVIE
RATING: **3/4

Thoughts: This was the usual Raven Vs Dreamer anarchy, and as usual it was violent, bloody, sloppy and just generally quite entertaining. Once again Raven gets away with a victory, but Dreamer loses nothing as it took Beulah interfering in order to swing things and Dreamer worked the whole match with broken fingers and still managed to bust Raven open at one stage

Sixth Match
Taipei Death Match
Ian Rotten Vs Axl Rotten

These two used to team but broke up, and have been having bloody grudge matches ever since. The stipulation for this one is that they’re going to tape their fists, dip the fists in glue and then stick broken glass to it, not unlike the climactic battle in the first Kickboxer movie. ECW Owner Todd Gordon decides to bring Bill Alfonso down to the ring before the match to get him to referee this contest, which seems like a strange plan on his part seeing that Alfonso is always against all of the extreme violence on these shows. Each Rotten is wearing a white shirt here, so you can tell exactly what they’re going for with this one.

Alfonso tries to stop the match early on because Ian Rotten is bleeding from a punch, but he gets distracted by Da Gangsta’s and The Public Enemy brawling, which leads to him following them out of the building and leaving the two Rotten’s free to bludgeon one another with their glass covered taped fists. What follows is the advertised bloodfest, which the crowd is of course happy to see. The problem is they just go straight to each wrestler bleeding a gusher rather than building up to it, so they essentially blow their load early doors and don’t really have a higher level to take it to after that.

I’m never sure how to feel about these Rotten matches, because essentially every match they have is the same. They hit each other with whatever weapon the match stipulation necessitates, they both end up caked in blood, and then one of them wins. It never feels like anything is settled or that the story is really advanced in any particular manner. They just come out, bleed, and then do it all again the next month. I imagine that if you really like matches where folks just bleed a lot, then this will be something you’ll enjoy, but there just isn’t enough drama or storytelling in these things for me to get invested in them.

It really just feels like blood for the sake of the blood, which takes away from the point of using blood in wrestling to begin with, which is to increase the drama and add a storytelling element to a match. Ian eventually brings in some thumbtacks and pours them onto the ring mat, as I ponder if this was where Mick Foley got the idea for his Hell in a Cell match with Undertaker. However, Ian is the one who ends up taking a spill onto the tacks, and Axl follows up with a splash to pick up the three count and hopefully bring this long running feud to an end.

7 Minutes

WINNER: AXL ROTTEN
RATING: *

Thoughts: I mentioned in a different ECW review a couple of weeks ago that I’d seen Super Crazy wrestle Tajiri so many times that I was almost sick of the thought of seeing those two going at it anymore. But at least when they went in there you were getting an exciting athletic contest with some flashy moves that actually required skill to perform. This was just two chubby blokes with bad haircuts making one another bleed, with no real sense of drama or storytelling involved in it. It wasn’t aesthetically pleasing to look at, it wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t dramatic, it didn’t advance an interesting storyline, and it didn’t really add anything to the show other than a lot of blood. We can see blood in plenty of ECW matches, and in most of those cases the matches actually have a storyline attached to them that you can care about, so why did we need these matches every month?

Raven and Stevie Richards start brawling with Tommy Dreamer and Luna Vachon again, with Raven and Richards seemingly getting the better of it. This leads to The Pitbulls running down to the ring to seemingly help their boss, Raven. However, The Pitbulls decide to turn babyface and defy Raven, although they do end up suplexing Raven onto Luna at one stage by not having any spatial awareness. This brings The Dudley Brothers back out and they attack The Pitbulls, signifying them joining up with Raven’s crew. Dreamer gives Raven a DDT and the whole thing turns into a wild brawl in the arena with everyone just going at it in an example of classic ECW wildness. The wall of the venue even gets a hole knocked into it at one stage! The babyfaces end up standing tall, giving Dreamer the moral victory tonight even if he couldn’t get an in-ring win over Raven yet again

Seventh Match
ECW World Heavyweight Title
Champion: The Sandman w/ Woman Vs Cactus Jack

These two had quite a few violent matches in 1995, with Cactus trying his best to chase down the belt but always just coming up short. Cactus has his right fist wrapped in barbed wire here, whilst Sandman has brought two Singapore cane’s, one for Woman and one for him. Woman distracts Cactus by throwing something in his eyes to start, leading to Sandman attacking Cactus from behind and working him over with the cane. Sandman actually manages to leap over the top rope down to the floor at one stage in order to clobber Cactus with the cane. Cactus manages to get hold of the cane at one stage and throws in some cane shots of his own, although smartly they don’t just go straight to Cactus using the wire wrapped around his arm and instead build up to it by having Sandman find ways to avoid getting gouged by it.

I suppose stuff like that just highlights why Mick Foley was a better wrestler than The Rotten’s, as in this match they are actually building up to the wire being used so it feels special and “earned” when we finally get to see it, whereas in the Taipei Death Match earlier they just went straight to punching each other with glass and it meant they’d essentially shot their load before even getting to the two minute mark. In fact, the first person to use wire is actually Sandman, as Woman finds a spare strand backstage and brings it down so that Sandman can wrap his body in it and then give Cactus a Stinger Splash in the corner and another splash from the top rope.

Cactus manages to pull Sandman’s barbed wire wrapped shirt over Sandman’s head and then finally manages to get some unanswered punches to Sandman’s face with his wire wrapped hand, which leads to Sandman bleeding and Woman needing to come into the ring to help her client. Cactus shoves Woman down, and that leads to Cactus, Sandman and referee John Finnegan all colliding for our ref bump. Shane Douglas runs down to give Sandman a Piledriver and then clocks Cactus with the remnants of one of the canes, which leads to Sandman draping an arm for the three count.

13 Minutes

WINNER AND STILL CHAMPION: THE SANDMAN
RATING: ***

Thoughts: A decent brawl between the two, although they would have better ones in 1995. I liked how they built to the wire being used and didn’t just have them use it right away

Todd Gordon heads down to the ring and gets into an argument with Douglas, with Douglas saying that he’ll remain in ECW if Gordon gets on his knees and begs him. Gordon instead fires Douglas, leading to Douglas attacking Gordon until 911 shows up to give Douglas a Choke Slam and send him to the WWF, with his heat now being transferred to Bill Alfonso going forwards.

Main Event
Da Gangstas (Mustafa & New Jack) Vs The Public Enemy (Johnny Grunge & Rocco Rock)

Da Gangstas had jumped from Smokey Mountain to ECW and had started up a feud with TPE, who were the resident hardcase tag team in ECW at the time. Sadly this was before they started playing “Natural Born Killaz” whilst the match was going on, so it stops playing once the actual brawl starts up. The problem with having a show with so much violence, blood and brawling on it is that by the time you get to the Main Event you’ve already seen basically everything. Thus, when you get brawling in the Main as well it just feels like more of the same. That being said, this delivers all you’d want from a wild brawl between two teams like this, as they clobber one another with weapons, people bleed, tables get broken, and just general anarchy takes place.

New Jack and Grunge stick to the ring for their fight, whilst Mustafa and Rocco head into the crowd and up to the Eagle’s Nest for their brawl, where Rock gets flung into an operating indoor fan at one stage, although the fan guard is in place which minimises the potential damage caused by it at least. Eventually all four wrestlers end up back down at ringside, where Grunge ends up hitting Mustafa with a computer keyboard that has “RSPW” written on it, which was a popular Usenet page from back in the day where folks like Scott Keith first started establishing their internet wrestling writing careers. Rocco ends up clocking Mustafa with a croquet mallet, whilst New Jack is too preoccupied beating up Grunge, and that leads to the three count to give TPE the first win in this feud.

12 Minutes

WINNERS: THE PUBLIC ENEMY
RATING: ***

Thoughts: If you enjoy your bloody wild brawls then this should scratch that itch for you, as it gave you all the violence you could want with an invested crowd enjoying the heck out of it

The fight starts up again after the bout, but eventually Da Gangsta’s leave and that allows TPE to have a house party in the ring with the fans as Hardcore Heaven comes to an end. The fans look to be having a great time and you can see why this sort of stuff fostered such fanaticism in the ECW fan base as they got to be directly involved in the product in ways they couldn’t at WWF or WCW shows.

In Conclusion

There wasn’t a lot of good wrestling on Hardcore Heaven, which was unfortunate as sometimes you could be assured of that on a 1995 ECW show because there was usually an Eddy Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Chris Benoit, Rey Mysterio Jr or Psicosis in there, normally against one another. With no talent like that available, Hardcore Heaven instead leaned more into the violence and storytelling aspect of ECW, and in that regard it hit the brief. Raven Vs Dreamer continues to be engaging stuff and the heavy hitters delivered the expected blood and anarchy, so if that sounds like fun to you then Hardcore Heaven will be worth your time. If you want some good aesthetically pleasing technical wrestling though, then this is a show you can skip.