The SmarK Rant for ECW Living Dangerously 2000 – 03.12.00

The SmarK Rant for ECW Living Dangerously 2000 – 03.12.00

Well the buildup for this one has certainly been…a choice on Heyman’s part. This show, along with most ECW PPVs, has been so completely flushed from my brain that I couldn’t even tell you the main event anymore, so let’s give it another look. Also I would have originally watched and reviewed it in a shitty bar in Edmonton and probably wouldn’t have been paying much attention in the first place.

Also for some reason it’s only 2 hours long on the Network.

The Sinister Minister welcomes us to the show, running down the Seven Deadly Sins of ECW. “Wrath…been done there that, let’s move on.” He finishes by noting that any company that dares to compete with an ECW PPV is going to be “living dangerously”. Tell that to the WWF, in the midst of one of their greatest ever runs of PPV shows.

Live from Danbury, CT, drawing 4000 with a 0.24 buyrate. The production on this one looks very dark and the sound seems like it’s mixed terribly, so this might be rough to get through.

Your hosts are Joey Styles & Joel “This girl I know wanted to see the show here in Connecticut, so I told her to bend over and I’d show her where I’d stick it, but when was all was said and done I made her buy a ticket” Gertner. And of course Cyrus quickly interrupts and kicks Gertner off the show to take over on color, after making jokes about the “18-34 gay male demographic” and telling Joel to go hit the drive-thru again. So Joel pulls off the neck brace and challenges Cyrus to a fight to settle things, but Cyrus hates violence and decides to leave. So Joel does his celebration dance, and Cyrus turns on him with a superkick and all the announcers scrap. I know what the answer is already, but IS THIS EVER GOING TO LEAD ANYWHERE?!?

Not sure why we need the full TNN intro sequence on a PPV but whatevs.

Steve Corino joins us and we get an audio screwup with Paul Heyman doing an intro to the show over top of his promo before they fix it. Corino calls the crowd a bunch of “drunken sexual deviant douchebags”, which leads him to picking Lori Fullington out of the audience. Apparently she’s had more wrestlers in the locker room than Dusty Rhodes has had matches. Huge if true. And then Corino calls Tyler a “little bastard” and tells Lori to “put him over live on PPV, you whore” before dragging her into the ring. Oh nice an implied rape angle to start the show, charming. Luckily Sandman makes the save before Corino can undo his jeans, but Rhino hits the ring and puts Lori through a table, and officials pull Corino’s crew off.

Back with Corino after everything is cleaned up, who demands to kick Dusty’s ass.

Bullrope match: Steve Corino v. Dusty Rhodes

Yeah so finally we get a match TWENTY MINUTES into the PPV. Corino tries to run away and Dusty hauls him back in and gives him MORE COWBELL. Cyrus describing the bell as a “15 or 20 pound piece of steel” is completely ludicrous, of course. Like Paul could afford steel. Dusty hauls Corino to the entrance and continues beating on him, and shockingly Steve is busted open. But then Jack Victory assists and Corino uses the bell to bust Dusty open. So after 5 minutes of wandering around the arena, they head back into the ring and Dusty runs Corino into a chair and then we get a stupid spot where Dusty tries to use the edge of the bell to cut Corino’s arm. Even the super easy ECW crowd is like “Wut?” to that one. Dusty hits him with elbows as the crowd is dead for this after the initial brawl, but Corino puts a chair in the corner and Dusty rams him into it. Oh the irony. Corino fights back again but Dusty cuts him off with more elbows and then the ref helps Dusty tape the cowbell to Corino’s head. So Dusty hits Corino with a chairshot onto the cowbell in a ridiculous spot, and the bionic elbow finishes at 10:20. This was an all-time bad opener, just blood and nothing else at all with a completely dead crowd once they got into the ring. Dusty didn’t even take a bump. DUD.

CW Anderson & Beautiful Billy Wiles v. Danny Doring & Roadkill

At least the “Dangerous Alliance” have matching gear now, but I don’t get how Wiles is doing any kind of a Bobby Eaton riff. Roadkill slams CW and hits a pump splash, and Wiles comes in and trades with Doring. The DA goes for a double team, but Roadkill hits them with a double clothesline and Doring gives CW the Bareback. CW bumps to the floor and Doring dives onto him, but gets powerslammed by Wiles for two. CW with a hammerlock slam for two. They beat on Doring in the corner with some dull double-team offense, but Danny gets a Stroke on CW and it’s hot tag Roadkill. Sideslam on Wiles and CW manages a superkick on Doring for two, but Doring gets the DDT for two. Hart Attack on Billy, but Elektra turns on her team and CW hits Doring with the spinebuster and gets the upset pin at 7:30. Really? THOSE guys? This was a sub-TV level match that had a pointless turn to make it PPV-worthy, I guess. *

ECW World title: Mike Awesome v. Kid Kash

Kash was doing a promo with Simon Diamond and Awesome came out to do a promo of his own and told him to get lost, so the match is on. Kash gets hurled around and Awesome splashes him for two. Awesome drags Kash to the floor and beats on him out there, but Kash comes back with a dive into the front row to delay his excecution by a few minutes. Back in the ring, Judge Jeff goes after Kash, but takes a piledriver as a result. So Awesome goes back to kicking Kash’s ass and clobbers him with a lariat before hitting him with a powerbomb. Awesome gets the table and they fight to the top, and of course Kash goes through via powerbomb and gets pinned at 4:40. Fine for what it was. **

Nova & Chris Chetti v. Jado & Gedo

So this an impromptu match based off the last impromptu match, as Jazz came out to check on Kash and got attacked by Jado and Gedo for whatever reason. Nova gets sent to the floor and Gedo moonsaults him. Back in, Nova with a powerbomb on Gedo and it’s over to Chetti, who does some sloppy offense on Gedo and gets an axe kick. Double-team facebuster on Gedo gets two. Over to Jado, who slugs it out with Chetti on the floor and dumps him into the crowd. Back in the ring, they double-team Nova and Jado gets a dragon sleeper, but Chetti breaks it up. Nova goes up and Jado cuts him off with a back suplex for two. Gedo goes up and lands in a powerbomb from Nova, and it’s hot (?) tag Chetti. He suplexes them and backslides Jado for two. But then Nova takes a superbomb and that gets two as the match completely falls apart. Everyone is down and Nova goes up with a swanton for two. They’re just stumbling all over the place and Nova & Chetti goes up with the double splash to finish Gedo at 7:22. Whatever magic that Gedo & Jado had on ECW TV against the Impact Players was NOT on display here. This was atrocious for a PPV match. 1/2*.

Meanwhile, Lou E. Dangerously does a promo and talks about Paul Heyman’s issues with women, and Elektra dumps Doring and does a brutal promo.

ECW TV title tournament semi-final: Little Guido v. Super Crazy

Guido takes him down and drops an elbow for two, and they fight to the floor, where Crazy moonsaults Guido into the front row. That would have been effective if Kash hadn’t already done the same thing two matches previous. Back in the ring, Cyrus jokes about putting Crazy in a remake of “Chico and the Man” on TNN, and I had to actually check and see if that was one of the numerous remakes we’ve gotten since then. Luckily, no. Guido works on the arm but Crazy comes back and slugs away in the corner on both Guido and Big Sal. Guido boots Crazy down for two, however, and whips Crazy with Sal’s belt for two. Crazy with a tornado DDT for two. Guido brings a table into the ring and climbs onto Sal’s shoulders, but he misses an elbow and puts himself through the table. Crazy gets two off that. Guido tries the Unprettier, but Crazy hits him in the meatballs and moonsaults him for the pin at 7:40. And then he hits a brainbuster for the second pin because I guess they messed up the first finish? Anyway I’m beyond tired of this matchup and this was nothing we haven’t seen on TNN a million times in a row. **1/2

Meanwhile, we get some footage of Joey Styles v. Cyrus in the video game.

Ballz Mahoney v. WING Kanemura

Kanemura gets a slingshot splash for two and goes up with a senton for two. Ballz catches him with a spinebuster and goes up with a frog splash for two. Ballz goes up again and Kanemura brings him down with a superplex and beats on him with a chair, but Mahoney no-sells it and finishes with the Nutcracker Suite at 1:57. DUD This brings out the Baldies to attack Ballz and they put him on a conveniently located table in the aisle, and Grimes puts Ballz through the table with a splash. So then New Jack saves and we get another impromptu match, I guess.

New Jack v. Da Baldies

Jack brings his bucket of plunder and destroys Angel and Devito with various stuff, but Grimes makes the save. Grimes uses a pizza cutter on Jack, so hopefully Domino’s isn’t watching or they might pre-emptively drop their sponsorship. This leads me to wonder if the generic “Natural Born Killaz” ripoff song was a real piece of music that they bought the license to for these Network shows, or if someone made the song in-house. I mean, it’s not too bad as generic ripoff songs go. So I asked Siri to listen to the song, and apparently it’s called “In The Ghetto” by Patrick David Wilson. So there you go. Anyway, Grimes and New Jack fight to the back of the arena and climb up a scaffolding that seems like a bad idea. Grimes tries a powerbomb from up there and Jack escapes and hauls them both down with an absolutely terrifying bump through a table, spiking Jack onto his head and leaving him unconscious in a literal pool of his own blood. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Who even approved that spot? Jack ended up blind in one eye and is probably lucky he lived as long as he did after that. Luckily they cut away fast and move onto a recap of the tag title storyline.

Apparently at this point, Heyman was freaking out in the back and basically wanted to go to the end of the show ASAP, which is why it only runs two hours.

ECW World tag team titles: Raven & Mike Awesome v. The Impact Players v. Tommy Dreamer & Masato Tanaka

Everyone quickly brawls and rushes through spots to start, desperately trying to cut time off the show. Raven puts a table in the corner and runs Tommy into it as they repeat the spot from TNN with the edge of the table breaking off. Awesome tries to powerbomb Tanaka through the table, but Tanaka suplexes him through it and hits the roaring elbow to pin Awesome at 4:20. So with the champs eliminated, the Impact Players beat on Tommy in the corner, and Storm puts the boots to him. Justin with a DDT for two. Storm with a dropkick for two. Justin powerbombs Dreamer for two. Justin superkicks Storm by mistake and Dreamer fights back and makes the hot tag to Tanaka, and Cyrus actually calls it a “hot tag”. Don’t K-5 the boys, Don. Tanaka with a double-team bulldog on Justin for two and you can practically hear Heyman screaming in the ref’s earpiece to HURRY UP AND GO HOME ALREADY. So they go even faster and everyone hits big moves it’s piledrivers for everyone and Tommy gets pinned at 8:55, so it’s back to the Impact Players as champs again as we reset everything back to where we started. **. What a waste of a month this whole storyline was.

ECW TV title tournament finals: Rhino v. Super Crazy

Apparently the Sandman angle at the beginning was supposed to be a semi-final match that got switched to giving Rhino a bye instead. Because reasons. So Cyrus comes out to put Rhino over as the next champion, but Paul Heyman interrupts and he’s swearing up a storm about TNN. For reference, this show was apparently where Heyman found out about the deal between the WWF and TNN that was made behind his back, and he was understandably upset about it. Crazy attacks Rhino but gets laid out by Rhino, then comes back with a dropkick to the floor and dives onto Rhino while the crowd chants “We want Sandman” after getting screwed out of the advertised opener. Back in the ring, Rhino with a suplex for two. He presses Crazy out of the ring and through a table, and if you think that they’re toning things down a bit because someone just about died live on PPV, you don’t know ECW. Back in the ring, that gets two. Another table gets involved and Rhino spears that by mistake, and Crazy goes up with a bodypress for two. The crowd is completely dead for this. Crazy with a DDT and the three moonsaults, but the ref somehow gets bumped on that. So Tajiri runs in and mists Crazy with the ref out and all the heels beat Crazy down, but then RVD and his good friend Scotty Riggs hit the ring to save. Rob breaks the crutch on Rhino and manages to flapjack Rhino onto a talbe with one leg, and Crazy moonsaults Rhino to win the TV title at 7:50. A messy throwaway main event that didn’t particularly make Super Crazy look like a star, after fluking into a win over the guy who was the obvious true champion. *. And Sandman makes the save, which again raises the question of why he couldn’t do a 30 second job to Rhino at the very least.

And we go off the air 2:06 into the PPV while they hopefully clean up New Jack’s bloodstain from the floor.

Wow, aside from the actual death of the company, this has to qualify as rock bottom for ECW. Putting on a hastily-booked PPV with their top star injured, and then learning that TNN actually had been negotiating with the WWF all along and would shortly be kicking them off their network TV slot. No wonder Heyman lost what was left of his hair around this time. Suffice it to say, I do NOT recommend sitting through this one, even at a brisk two hours. This is an all-time terrible show.