ECW: the most extreme matches
While I am a somewhat lasped wrestling fan I still have to admit that ‘classic wrestling’ (which for me means the 90’s) still holds a place in my heart. While I have no idea who most of the ’stars’ of the now-WWE are seeing many of the wrestlers I grew up with on the magic of DVD still brings a little thrill to my heart. Especially the guys of ECW, who I never saw when they were on TV with that company but saw in WCW or the WWF - and I still feel I missed out, especially given the quality of some of the matches.
So, was this DVD the one to bring this thrill back to my heart? Well its not bad. Was it worth the money i paid? Yeah, just about, there’s just enough material on this DVD to keep it going. Its just 10 minutes short of being six hours of material - which does lead me to wonder why somebody didn’t find another match just so the boxest could say ‘six hours of material!’ Granted, thats not six hours of matches, and not all of those matches are good but….
Well I should qualify that statement a little bit, the matches are some very ‘exteme’ matches and to be honest, if your expecting great wrestling from that you really are always going to be looking in the wrong place. The simple truth about exteme matches is that they are gimmicks - the idea is to give the fans either blood, or some crazy moves. With something like this the wrestling becomes somewhat secondary.
And there is a lot of blood - in particular the taipei death match between Ian and Axel Rotten where they pound each other with glass and the barbed wire match between Sabu and Terry Funk where towards the end of the match (as you are told in some of the special features) Terry Funk couldn’t move as the barbed wire was wrapped around his throat. Meanwhile some matches are there becasuse of a few moments - the Tazz v. Bam Bam Bigelow match is ok, but made memorable by the fact that they fell through the enterance ramp because they were hitting each other so hard, while a tag match between the team of Spike Dudley and Balls Mahoney v. The Dudley Boyz is simply notable bacuse it was the first time that ‘flaming tables’ (i.e -tables that had been set on fire) were used in ECW.
But, lest you think that there are no quality wrestling matches in this - the four corners match from heatwave ‘96 features some very good wrestling as does the 3 way dance between Tajiri v. Little Guido v Super Crazy. but oddly enough, in a sort of reverse complaint these matches are not very ‘extreme’ - they’re very good but not what the DVD advertises itself as being about.
A final complaint is the element of overlap - while the only other wrestling DVD I have is Mick Foley’s one there is one overlapped match from when he won the tag championship with Mikey Whipwreck. That would be ok, except those that are going to buy an ECW dvd are most likely going to buy the Mick Foley dvd too given the place of ‘hardcore wrestling’ in both - but lest I be accused of nitpicking with that match - could someone explain why the Mike Awesome v. Masato Tanaka match from ‘One Night Stand’ is on this boxset? I mean, the Mick Foley thing could be a genuine overlap, but when there are few enough ECW dvds out there why exactly is the WWE putting new ones together by using reacent dvds? There are more than enough Mike Awesome/Masato Tanaka matches out there that very good without having to go to such a reacent one. It’s just a small thing, and I know that some ‘overlap’ is likely in a compilation (which is what this DVD is after all) but some thought would be nice.
Still though, the DVD is nearly six hours long and even removing the ‘talking heads’ special features and Paul Heyman’s overly long intros into every match there is still a good 5 hours of wrestling in this DVD. Its worth a look.
Just as an example here’s a match between Awesome and Tanaka from Heatwave ‘98 (I think) It’s about 15 minutes long and is very good - so why not put that in?
I have a feeling I’ve seen this match before (or perhaps its just that these guys fought so much). Ignore the first 6 mintes of the first video (hell the whole thing bar the last minute is not wrestling) :
[...] as a few of the posts I have done before might suggest, I’m somewhat of a fan of ECW. Now, I have covered the [...]