On The Road: ECW 12/10/99
ECW 12/10/99 – VCU Siegel Center – Richmond, VA
THE DEATH VALLEY PLAYBOYZ VISIT THE ECW TV TAPING IN RICHMOND!
ECW TV TAPING- SIEGEL CENTER, BROAD STREET, RICHMOND, VA.
PR = Phil Rippa : DR = Dean Rasmussen : PS = Phil Schneider
BACKSTORY:
PHIL RIPPA: I hop into my comically small car and head up to the Tenleytown Metro stop to pick up Schneider and Tom, who foolishly accepted an offer to drive down with us. Because Schneider was getting his muttonchops trimmed, we were late leaving.
DEAN RASMUSSEN: It was a fine haircut, a sort of Ode to Heaven 17/ 80’s eurodisco number.
PHIL SCHNEIDER: I have to look good for all the LADIES that perpetrate the ECW shows.
DR: I’m hoping to find a second trophy wife at either a biker rally, the Virginia State Fair or an ECW TV taping. Hard and toothless is how I’m going next…
PR: We kick in the door of Dean’s pad and subdue the dogs. Schneider fears for his genitals as Emmitt has a long-standing obsession with them.
PS: You should have seen Rippa cowering in fear of Dean’s dogs. Dean had better fear the mean streets of Richmond, because the dogs did nothing when we broke into his pad. So all you criminally minded Lucha and Puroresu fans, the largest collection of rassling tapes in the world, this side of Rob Feinstein’s mom’s basement is basically yours for the taking.
DR: I came home from work after Cliff the King Of Danger picked me up- as my wife had wisely gone to Carolina with our only remaining car and thus missed the batch of rubes hanging around her house. My disappointment in my Lab and my Border Collie was immense when I realized that Phil, Phil and young Tom weren’t mauled beyond all recognition. No doggie treats this week, ya slackjawed mutts….
PS: Me, Phil and Tom watched some Bob Backlund in BattlArts and the pretty good Sasuke vs. Tanaka match while we waited for The Pleasure Models to hit the scene.
PR: Off to dinner. We originally wanted to hit Sweetwater but there was a NAMBLA meeting taking place or something so we went down the street. The Hole in the Wall provided the absurdly hot waitress with Fuck Me Boots. Molly, sweetie, if you are reading this – I didn’t notice her at all. I spent the night gazing into Dean’s eyes. Actually, ummm… aww crap.
DR: I too could not even notice our hot waitress with the lipid pools of Phil Rippa’s eyes glistening right across from me at the Hole In The Wall all night. Yep. Well, I might have noticed when she brought the Guinness and stuff. Actually, my wife NEVER reads anything I write, so- HELL!- YES! I noticed our hot waitress and her tiny tiny clothing. WOO-HOO! HUBBA HUBBA! WOO-HOO!
PS: Tom proves to be a big enough bastard to hang with the DVDVR by dissing the hot sluttishly-dressed waitress, Clint orders his food, and ditches us to hang with the ladies at the bar, Dean starts getting Drunk and belligerent and I spill beer on Cliff’s shirt, we were definitely in an ECW sort of mood.
DR: Cliff had the Celebration Lager because a MAN can drink what he wants. I tried it and it was quite spritely and zippy. I like the dull, bruising thud of Guinness when I secretly drink sweet, delicious booze so I stuck with the basics, as opposed to any forays into wacky microbrewage. I get Tom in dutch with the waitress by reminding her that Tom had asked for a glass two beers ago. Tom is a good-lookin’ fella and I didn’t want him to be tempted into ditching us to try to comically ply her with his punishing love. After the wretchedness of the show, I saw the error of my ways- luckily we did the DVDVR Playaz tradition of tipping enough to pay off her college loans (and buy even tighter skirts). Malt Liquor was never enough for the horror that awaited.
PR: $35 = front row seats. $16 = 10th row seats. SIXTEEN DOLLARS! SIXTEEN DOLLARS!
DR: I would have been SOOOO pissed if I’da spent 35 dollars for this crud.
SHOW
DUPPS vs. NOVA/CASH vs. DORING/ROADKILL
PR: I am happy about seeing the OMEGA boys again. I’m glad to see that Otto looks exactly the same. Meanwhile, Mike Maverick looks even creepier with hair. Nova reaffirms our decision to BAN HIM FOR LIFE from the DVD 500. Roadkill continues to win me over by being the big fat guy who can move. On a side note, Electra (or whatever her name is) is Whore #1 of the evening.
PS: Good God Nova sucks, he wrestles like a slightly less coordinated Shaggy 2 Dope. He may have some semi-cool spots, but so do half the backyard wrestlers in the world, and I bet they don’t look as lost in the ring. Cash does the coolest highspot of the night with the twisting top rope tope-con-hilo, but the rest of the match was crap. The best wrestler in the match (Puck Dupp, The Original Cham Pain, fuck you Kanyon) did nothing.
DR: David Cash is from Waynesboro, VA and is SO the rill dill. And MANNNNNNNN! does NOVA SUCK. I’m trying to think if Maverick and Schwanz have ever been in a match with a bigger stiff? I dunno, that Indian Chief guy in OMEGA was a rookie so he had an excuse and actually he was already better than Nova. This whole match looked more indie-level crappy than ANYTHING I had seen the three ex-OMEGA boys in – even when they were wrestling INDIES in armories in Southern Pines, NC. And add my “Fuck Kanyon” to the stack.
JERRY LYNN vs. LITTLE GUIDO
PR: The two tease everyone by having a short matwork segment. Of course, they stop and start the five-minute finishing sequence. Now, in a seven-minute match, this isn’t a good thing. Still a fun little match that was one of the better things of the evening. Lynn wins with the Cradle Piledriver.
PS: This was pretty good, both guys can rock on the mat, and they didn’t do nearly enough of that. The finishing stuff was pretty good though. I dig Guido.
DR: I was kinda indifferent to this match because it was so short because I was figuring that ECW would deliver the goods with everything else. If I’d a known that the rest was gonna suck as much as it did, I would have paid more attention.
MIKEY WHIPWRECK vs. C.W. ANDERSON
PR: Schneider, the self-proclaimed “US Indy Boy” tries to convince Dean and I that Anderson is actually Bill Whiles. I almost believe him until I catch a glimpse of Anderson’s gut. This match turned out to be the match of the night, which surprised me. I was less than enthused about seeing Whipwreck since I was positive he was still a shell of his former self. I am glad to say I was wrong. Anderson should be HOTSHOTTED right into a program at the top of the card. God, just look at that match he had with Rob Van Dam last week.
PS: This match rocked, with C.W., getting all old school on the arm, and throwing some great worked punches and kicks, which contrasted nicely with the ineptness of other wrestlers on the card (Robbie, Nova I am staring at you). Mikey looked good too, as his WCW stint appears to have let his body heal. He tries to unheal it quick as he takes a nasty ring barrier bump.
DR: CW is the bomb. Mikey was bumping like a freak and CW hits the world’s best spinebuster. I don’t know why Mikey would go over when your wrestler you really need to push is right there.
IKUTO HIDAKA vs. TOM MARQUEZ vs. SUPER CALO
PR: Marquez might as well have been Joe Luchadore because NONE of us had seen him before. This is where the evening started to go downhill. We came to see three people. Hidaka, Super Calo and Dusty Rhodes. Super Calo manages to try and die TWICE in the three minutes of the match. Sabu aka Piece of Shit comes out and beats all three guys up. Welcome to Nitro.
PS: FUCK YOU VINCE RUSSO
DR: This sucked a goat sucking a dog. Fuck US wrestling and shitty US booking.
SIMON DIAMOND vs. JAZZ
PR: One of the light stations got knocked out so there was about a 10 minute delay. Then Diamond and Jazz *cough* wrestled *cough*. The less said about this match the better.
PS: FUCK YOU VINCE RUSSO
DR: This was, like, one of the worst wrestling matches I’ve ever seen. I’m glad that ECW is jumping on the Total Sports Entertainment bandwagon so I can have my Friday nights unencumbered by the need to load a tape also. What a waste of five minutes of my life.
NEW JACK vs. TONY DEVITO
PR: New Jack won in a squash. No blood. No wrestling. The Baldies attacked after the match and did the really dull staple gun to the ear spot. They then call out Mike Awesome.
PS: Boy this was a batch of nothing, New Jack without the table dive is like Sable with a mastectomy.
DR: I think Schneider said it when he said, “This is like if New Jack showed up on Nitro.” Either way, this was SOO absolutely horrible.
MIKE AWESOME vs. VIC GRIMES
PR: I have seen reports saying that it was P.N. News. A) News was released, fired, quit. B) That was Grimes’ fat ass in the ring. Grimes took the powerbomb through the table to the floor and it looked all sorts of hurty. Dean’s close personal friend Jeff Jones got on the STICK and mentioned the word “giant”. Hence, Spike Dudley came out and laid out the ECW Heavyweight Champion. Paul Heyman – Booking genius.
PS: This was pretty good, but pretty short, Grimes didn’t get much offense in, but he did bump like a freak. I especially dug taking the German Suplex on his fat bald head. The whole Spike Dudley thing was completely incomprehensible.
DR: This had a really gnarly Released German Suplex and the table bump looked all hurty. HEY! Let’s kill Mike Awesome’s heat by equating him to the One Man Gang, Mabel and P.N. News. I guess they want to redo the Bigelow vs. Spike crap- but I don’t think Bam Bam had- you know- THE BELT. It’s going to add up to stink.
PR: It got to the point in the show when Dusty SHOULD have come out, cut a promo and then tapped a vein. Instead, Steve Corino brought out Tommy Rich. Rich did take a huge bump and they let him on the STICK so the segment wasn’t a total loss.
PS: For fuck’s sake, we have a card with Tommy Dreamer, New Jack, Raven, Sandman and FUCKING TOMMY RICH. And there is no blood, what is this Maryland?
DR: Yeah, fuck this. IN NINETEEN NINETY-FRICKIN-NINE, IF YOU PUT TOMMY RICH IN A WRESTLING RING AND HAVE A WRESTLING MATCH WHERE YOU EXPECT ME TO PAY TO SEE TOMMY RICH WRESTLE, HE BETTER HAVE A FUCKING GALLON OF PLASMA BLOWING OUT OF HIS HEAD BEFORE THE BELL RINGS. Even if you didn’t, the match was a big wad of nothing. It had the feel of a WWF main event dark match at the end of a Superstars taping. YEESH!
DREAMER/RAVEN vs. CORINO/VICTORY
PR: The less said about this match the better.
PS: A-fucking-Men
DR: Was that actually considered a match? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ECW- wotta a buncha kidders! Way to kill off the rest of a major NWA Horsemen town.
RHINO/CANDIDO vs. CREDIBLE/STORM
PR: Sytch and Bytch would be Whores #2 and #3. The fellas tried I guess. Rhino didn’t look horrible and Credible didn’t piss me off. Just the match in general and the building feeling of resentment from previous events led me to dislike this match. After the match, Sandman showed up from the crowd. Actually from right next to us. Phil and I had beer splashed on us and might get our ugly mugs on TV. Rhino did do the big spear through a table which was neat in a contrived type of way.
PS: This was pretty good, but the ending with the catfight and the horseshit, kind of blew the good stuff in the meat of the match. This was also too short. Rhino looked pretty good though. It was kind of neat to see the Sandman, it would have been nice to see him actually wrestle. CRASH BANG.
DR: Tammy is frickin SCARY with that perm. Storm was all nifty. This would have been more okay if I didn’t hate everything else leading up to this so much.
ROB VAN DAM vs. SPIKE DUDLEY
PR: I guess since Paul Heyman was saying that their match from the Georgia house show was a match of the year candidate he decided to put it on TV. Spike Dudley continued to take insane bumps. Van Dam did jack and shit but yet the crowd gave him the loudest ovation. I think the fruitty embellishment count was at about 16 by the end of the match. Van Dam exposes the business a whole lot. RVD = Stink.
PS: Spike Dudley played Psicosis to Rob Van Damn’s Rey Misterio Sr., as he took huge bumps all over the ring, while shithead Van Damn stood there, flipped and posed. Robbie really has Booty Man level punches, and he didn’t even bump much. Spike rules it, and deserves more than having to destroy his body to get that lazy pot head over.
DR: I liked the match just because it had a bunch of highspots and bumps and stuff- unlike the ration of shit that preceded it, though it was pretty sluglike in big areas as Van Dang tried to figure out which fruity embellishment to throw in next. It was fun just laughing hysterically at Van Durn’s AMAZINGLY shitty punches. Someone needs to sit him down and let him know. I had no beef with the match overall, though RVD shows wads of daylight and Spike kicked out of WAAAAY too many finishers. I like the neato roll-ups that Spike whipped out quite a bit, and he was quite the Cactus to Dam’s Hammer. There you go.
PS: The show itself kind of stunk, but I still had a good time. I guess if you broke everything down into individual spots, it was an impressive show, but it didn’t seem like anyone could put a match together. Richmond is quite the land of the mullets though, boy golly it was like a 1987 NHL All-Star game in there.
DR: Overall, I was really disappointed. I wanted ECW to deliver the motherfucking goods and get me back into US wrestling again- since Vince Russo has made me totally indifferent to two major wrestling companies in the US. Instead we got a boring card with nothing coming close to great on it. I’ve been to much worse cards- ones where I was repulsed and disgusted. This was more of a bored and disappointed feeling. It was more fun at the Hole In The Wall (and the party at Clint’s Monster Love Palace the night after. I made the Jeff Fisher Christmas ornament and the supplementary Ron Tugnut ornament. IT WAS FUN!)
As for the mullets, I think half the crowd was trying to look like Brad Armstrong in 1988 and the other half was trying look like Shawn Michaels in 1994 and the other half was trying to look like Billy Ray Cyrus… OH WAIT!
(Note – this show ended up airing on TNN on Dec. 17, 1999)