This week takes us back to the land of extreme and the birthplace of hardcore; the ECW Arena in South Philadelphia. Before ECW made it to pay-per-view, their major shows were monthly supercards at the corner of Swanson and Rittner. Those matches would would usually end up airing over the following several weeks of Hardcore TV, which is what happened here. On this February night in 1995, and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything here, the Funker returned. Terry Funk made his first appearance in nearly a year, hence, you know, the name. Outside of that, all I know for sure is what’s written in the background section of the shows Wikipedia page.
Tonight’s opening contest features the powerhouse tag team of The Pitbulls against…Chad Austin and Joel Hartgood. Um, good luck, God bless. This match is exactly what you’d think it is: a Road Warrior-esqe squash. Philly loves them some Pitbulls though. They pick up the win via a superbomb.
We get a promo segment to continue the ever-boiling rivalry between Raven and Tommy Dreamer. At this point, as Joey Styles points out, we don’t even know why these two hate each other so much so it’s pretty early on. Stevie Richards brings back former ECW Tag Team Champions Johnny Hotbody and Tony Stetson to help in their quest to take out Dreamer, which ends up in an pull apart brawl.
Back to in-ring action next as Mikey Whipwreck and Hack Meyers take on Jason and Paul Lauria. I’ve honestly never heard of Lauria and Jason was done with in-ring competition by the time I started watching ECW originally so this is all new to me. Lauria is well put together but might actually be smaller than Mikey. Lauria actually takes a good kicking from the faces for the opening few minutes before Mikey finds himself in the familiar spot of taking the heels beatdown. My early impression of Lauria is that he’s okay but green. He and Jason try some unique double team moves but they don’t go well and get booed. One sees Lauria drop an assisted leg right across Mikey’s stomach. There are some technical issues in the middle of this match and I’m not gonna lie, I got a little nostalgic watching something that was having tracking issues. The heels win when the random masked man who just showed up at ringside in the middle of the match slides in and KO’s Meyers then puts Lauria on top. Decent tag match with the crowd solidly behind Meyers and Whipwreck.
In a match to counter the image of blood and guts that the promotion gets in a lot of people’s minds, 2 Cold Scorpio takes on Hector Guerrero. They open with some nice chain wrestling work. I will add in that Scorpio gets oh so high on his sunset flips that it’s impressive he can complete the move. Guerrero working a lot of old school heel moves into his match like picking up Scorpio by the nose and giving it a kind of Stooges bop and even giving the ref an eye poke, which he kinda just shook right off. Scorpio wins a nice technical bout with a 450 splash, a nice contrast to the carnage we’re about to see.
That carnage is the next chapter in the brutal dissolution of the Bad Breed, Axl and Ian Rotten. This time around they square off in a barbed wire baseball bat match. Ian rushes his entrance to stop the ring attendant from hanging the bat on a pole in the corner to arm himself with it. He eventually tastes the wire first and there is quickly evidence that they did not gimmick the barbed wire in ECW. Ian is an absolute mess. Axl rakes the bat across the back of his head, opening him up. Then Ian blatantly blades his forehead right in front of the camera and he is easily at 0.8 Muta. This match must have been Ian’s turn to get the worst of it because he is an absolute mess. This was an utterly messy brawl in and out of the ring that got a little hard to watch at times. Worse thing is that it was not their worst match, the Taipei Death Match was still to come. This is only one to catch for those with a stronger constitution and for no one with an aversion to blood. Oh and Axl won with a Neutralizer-like move onto the bat.
For complete wrestling whiplash, the ECW World title is on the line next as The Franchise Shane Douglas defends against Marty Jannetty. Douglas gets on the mic before the bell to tell Marty that he doesn’t want to fight him, he wants to give him a wrestling lesson. And that’s precisely what we got: an old school wrestling match (for the most part, this is ECW after all so we had to fight in the crowd) centered around the heel champion avoiding the good guy’s big move that could win him the title. After thinking about this one some more, I’m gonna finish my thoughts below.
The Public Eneny come to ringside, with Rocco Rock in a wheelchair, to cut a promo on Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko before a tag team title match breaks out when the champs Sabu and Taz hit the ring. This was less a tag match and more of an elaborate handicap squash. The champs got plenty of their stuff in early in the match, but then it was a series of double teams because we don’t need no stinking tags. Malenko torched Taz’s knee which prompted manager Paul E Dangerously to have 911 drag Taz to the back, leaving Sabu to defend the belts himself. He got a decent run off and hit some impressive doves but eventually fell to a top rope powerbomb and we have new champions. I guess the match achieved what it needed to do and put over the Shooter and the Crippler over as wrestling machines to be feared but it did no favors for their homegrown stars in the process.
I guess our main event is next as The Sandman and Woman introduce Cactus Jack to his opponent: D.C. Drake. Drake popped out of a box at ringside and the crowd was completely unimpressed. As was the match, it was a rather average brawl and the only reason it happened was so we could get to the post-match brawl where Sandman jumped Jack as soon as the pinfall went down. The story coming full circle that the reason Sandman didn’t wrestle Jack was because he had a concussion. The cane shots were plentiful before Jack took over and dumped Sandman in the still at ringside. Jack pulls a dude in the ring covered by the cloth that covered the box, rips it off and it’s Terry Funk in the ECW Arena. Woman has brought back The Funker to help in their war against Cactus Jack. They beat the dog out of Jack before Tommy Dreamer eventually tries to make the save. He has a moment with Funk before Sandman ejects him via cane shot. Shane Douglas is the next to enter and was seemingly convinced to join Funk, Sandman and Woman before attacking the both of them with his title belt. And that’s how we fade to black.
MUST-SEE MATCH:
ECW Heavyweight Championship: “The Franchise” Shane Douglas (c) vs. Marty Jannetty
I was surprised how good this one turned out to be. It was classic formula of a heel champion making us all believe that they were about to be beat. Douglas and Jannetty got a good amount of wrestling in, there was plenty of ECW brawling around the ring, and Jannetty had one of the best singles matches I’ve ever seen him in. Marty finally got all of his big moves in, only to be shorted by a rope break and then be on the wrong end of a reversal for Douglas to retain. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but its worth a look to see two workers who never really get the credit they deserve have a really good match in the last place you’d expect to see it.
FINAL GRADE: B
Despite a lackluster main event, this was an overall enjoyable show that showcased a little of everything that the company had to offer. I can even forgive the main event a little bit because the actual action was all in the post-match attack. Not to mention the hidden gem that was the Douglas/Jannetty match.
Alright, time to find out what will be the Retro Christmas present for both you and me. We load up our Wheel o’ Shows and I wish I could show you the list we’ve got to work through. Either way, be on the lookout on Christmas Eve, as we’ll stuff your stocking with a Retro Review of 1998’s Capital Carnage!
The Finisher 