The SmarK Rant for ECW Wrestling on TNN – 01.21.00

The SmarK Rant for ECW Wrestling on TNN – 01.21.00

Taped from the Bingo Hall. I know TNN wanted them to bounce around to different places for the sake of keeping it fresh, but it feels like they completed wasted their Center Stage tapings from last week. You could easily have taped 3 or 4 weeks of stuff and stretched it out a bit.

Your hosts are Joey Styles & Joel Gertner, who doesn’t even get a funny middle name this week because Cyrus interrupts, and WE’VE ALL GOT A LOT OF HEAT WITH THE OFFICE. So Cyrus runs down all the disciplinary action taken with Gertner to date, but none of it seems to be working. Even calling him out in front of the boys, and you know that Gertner has a lot of heat with the boys! So the next time Gertner does his dirty middle name gimmick, which isn’t even over, Cyrus is gonna have to “kick his fat ass”. And Gertner dives after him while Joey holds him back, and man if they could have found a way to transfer ANY of the heat from this angle to something in the ring, they could have had something.

The Impact Players join us to start, and Justin doesn’t want to say he told us so, but he did. Anyway, the “establishment” wants them to defend the titles tonight, but they don’t want to do that. This brings out Danny Doring & Roadkill, who insist that they’re going to be the first challengers tonight after all. Storm declares that they’re just opening match dorks and the only thing “main event” about them are “their chick’s breasts”. So Storm tells them that they can have a title shot if they can get past the midcard, by beating “newly demoted midcard team” Dreamer & Raven.

Danny Doring & Roadkill v. Tommy Dreamer & Raven

We take a break as the former champs charge the ring, and return with Roadkill slamming Dreamer and going up to the top, where Dreamer cuts him off and brings him down with a superplex. Over to Raven, who throws knees and hits Roadkill with the DROP TOEHOLD OF DOOM. DDT on Doring gets two, but Roadkill saves and then brawls outside with Tommy. So then Tommy puts him through a table and we get the catfight tease from the ladies, but Francine gets knocked out and Raven takes her back to the dressing room, leaving Dreamer alone. He hits Doring with the death valley driver and Roadkill saves and powerslams him for two. Dreamer fights back on both at the same time, but Steve Corino and his crew of doofuses run in and lay out Dreamer, allowing Doring to get the pin at 4:55. This was just a bunch of stuff happening with no rhyme or reason. * Corino and friends proceed with the beatdown, but Dusty Rhodes makes the save before getting destroyed by Rhino again. And then Sandman makes the save for THAT. Well it wasn’t boring, I guess.

Mexican Death Match: Super Crazy v. Tajiri

Joel wonders if the loser has to drink the water and then does his little celebration dance. We take a break and return with Tajiri throwing chairs in the ring while Joey notes that these two have had a running feud for over a year now. YOU DON’T SAY? This is totally new information! Tajiri dropkicks a chair in Crazy’s face in the corner and busts him open, and then retrieves a table and tries to slide chairs at Crazy’s face like it’s a bar in an old Western. Tajiri goes up with a double stomp onto Crazy’s gut to put him through the table, as Joey notes that a Mexican death match can only end on a pinfall or submission. As opposed to all the matches in ECW that end in DQ or countout? Crazy makes a comeback after Tajiri mocks his selling, and they fight into the crowd, where Crazy puts Tajiri onto a table and moonsaults him off the balcony in a crazy spot. Back in the ring, Crazy slugs away in the corner for the count gimmick, and the crowd chants “Uno mas”, so he does it again. Tajiri comes back with the handspring elbow, but Crazy puts him down with a clothesline and then crotches him on the top rope and hits him with a leg lariat to put him down again for two. Crazy with chops on the ropes, but Tajiri wraps him up with the Tarantula to counter and hits him with a german suplex for two. Tajiri dropkicks the knee and puts Crazy on the floor off that, then follows with a quebrada into the crowd. Back in, Tajiri finds another table, but Crazy hits a missile dropkick out of nowhere and gets his own table. So Tajiri grabs the wrench for the ring and jams that in Crazy’s face, then spews green mist, but he tries a rana and Crazy powerbombs him through a table for the pin at 12:55. I thought it was gonna be a 4 minute special but they kept going this time and it was awesome. ****1/4.

Mike Awesome joins us and declares himself all out of challengers after beating Spike Dudley at the PPV, and apparently he’s now the Whole F’N Show, which of course brings out Rob Van Dam to issue the challenge that should have carried ECW for the next year. So Awesome throws down the ECW belt and tells Rob to come and take it, but then the lights go out and Sabu returns. Awesome is fine with taking on both guys at the same time, but then Sabu turns on Rob and hits him with a chair, allowing Awesome to powerbomb Rob on the chair. Fonzie tries to stop him and Sabu turns on him as well and puts him through a table, and then Spike tries to save and Awesome just murders him as well. And they put RVD on a table and hit him with stereo splashes to destroy him, leaving Awesome and Sabu standing tall to end the show. That was an incredibly hot angle to cap things off this week.

Man, only four segments this week, but three of them were absolute bangers and the ECW Arena crowd was molten hot as usual. Excellent show this week, although sadly this was the exception rather than the rule for TNN.