After a good month+ break, I'm back to my ECW watch. I was going to say Heat Wave 1998 is the first PPV that doesn't shyt the bed...until the last two matches. The under card is solid enough, just straight matches without any gimmicky bullshyt or swerves, although all have the same finish: 15-20 minute matches that end with some kind of super top rope move (Super That's Incredible, Superbomb, tornado DDT on a stack of chairs, double splash/leg drop through tables). It's actually kind of weird. Just total autopilot booking.
Then Bam Bam/Taz comes and it's a shytty brawl around the building, most of which can barely be seen even on camera, so I'm sure the live crowd couldn't see shyt unless it was right in front of them, both guys slip and fall multiple times, and it's all in service of them doing another fall through the X spot, in this case the ramp, which shreds like paper, and both guys get up and do an unrelated finish seconds later. Taz continues to get softer and softer and resorts more and more to just trashy brawling I assume due to injuries because I can't imagine he'd intentionally sandbag and stop hitting the gym in the middle of the push of his career. This is made worse by Shane Douglas, who had become Joey's co-host while injured and is generally pretty decent at it although he often sounds like he's reading a script to the letter, screaming the entire match.
But then comes the main event, Dudleys vs Spike/Tommy/Sandman. It's a street fight. It starts with TWENTY MINUTES of a cheap heat promo from the Dudleys that goes absolutely nowhere and really doesn't even get much heat and Sandman's entrance. Then the match starts and....it's just a normal six man tag. A bad one. I want to give Sandman the benefit of the doubt that he got a concussion early in and wasn't fukked up, because he looked pretty lucid during his entrance but lost a few minutes in. Just the idea of having the main event be a street fight on a show where every match had multiple chairs/tables/crowd brawling/big stunts and expecting people to give a shyt about seeing more of that after 2 hours and previous 20 minutes of talking and an entrance is so stupid. I think one could argue that the main event street fight wasn't even the most hardcore match on the show. And at this point, WWF was doing better hardcore main event brawls than ECW. Those Austin/Foley matches in 1998 blow ECW main events out of the water. Really, WWF is doing ECW better than ECW at this point. You can talk about Russo swagger jacking Paul E's style all you want, the culture was that kind of trashy TV and attitude in all mediums during that time, and Paul E. offered ideas to the WWF while taking money from Vince anyway. It's telling that starting at Wrestlepalooza 1998, you start seeing a lot of Austin/Rock/DX/Attitude shirts at the front of ECW crowds, something that through out 1995 and 1996 would literally get fans attacked by other fans and singled out by talent at ECW shows.
Also lmao at Dreamer stealing the Emerald Flowsion and Joey getting indignant that one of the Monday night shows will steal it and rename it soon. He did that all the time, though. shyt on WWF/WCW announcers for not knowing the names of moves, or guys stealing ECW moves, while himself making up his own names for moves, almost always just calling a move a Wrestler Name Driver/Bomb/Sault.
Anyway, after 15 minutes of shytty brawling and blood, Jack Victory comes out to hit Dreamer with a guitar, which brings out New Jack and his cart of weapons to do....another 5 minutes of shytty brawling. When the actual Jack/Jack weapons match that was scheduled and promoted for earlier in the show was called off with a pre-show angle. Just so they could tack it on at the end after 15 minutes of brawling.
Meanwhile, on WWF shows, you're getting wild brawls that go all over the arena that do so in service of stories and angles and are worked by actual top talent who aren't out of shape bumps pilled or boozed up so they can bleed 30 seconds into a match that no one will remember 30 minutes later. Hell In A Cell was 2 months before this. WWF throwing dudes off 16 feet cages and doing thumbtack bumps on PPV, ECW on PPV is tamer than their syndicated TV show
this was well done. I see why Luger won wrestler of the year in 97. he was on fire from mid 96 on.
a match that on paper you'd think wouldn't be worth it, The Outsiders vs the Faces of fear was hella physical and hella fun.
