HEATWAVE ‘98

August 2, 1998

Sooner or later it had to happen: The former ECW Mutant reviewing a highly praised ECW show. I was a diehard fan of ECW in my younger days, before getting a look at the world of wrestling outside of what was on television. I’m sure that most of the ECW storylines will hold up well, but will the wrestling? Let’s find out!

Chris Candido . . . stumbles and rolls around the ring like he just had a few six packs with Scott Hall.

Masato Tanaka . . . and not Steve Austin is the *real* toughest son of a bitch in the world.

Hayabusa . . . makes his only ECW appearance count by completely outclassing his partner and the ECW Tag Champions.

JUSTIN CREDIBLE vs. JERRY LYNN

For the first five or so minutes, this looked like it was going to be a hot opener. Lynn was busting out good spots and creative counters, with only his sunset flip in the corner not being very clean (thanks to Justin’s hesitation), then Credible took over and it crashed back to earth. Justin’s offense isn’t much more than punching and kicking. When he does come up with something good on his own, it’s because he’s got some help, such as the two spots that he gets to use the chair for, and hitting Jerry with the cup of beer (which is at least more believable than a cup of coffee). Or because Jerry sets it up for Justin, like the sidewalk slam.

Justin’s not completely at fault, there are some odd parts here from Jerry too. The big one being when Justin’s flunkies were beating on him on the floor, he sells a punch from Jason better than he was selling Credible’s strikes. The timing of their big spot was also ill advised. Jerry giving Justin a rana off the top rope and through the table made for a nice visual, but it wound up being complete throwaway, because they went right back into the ring and started the finish run with all of Justin’s flunkies running in. Jerry keeps the weird stuff coming when he totally blows off a chair shot to the back from Jason, the same guy who stopped an attempted comeback with a single punch. It’s fun to watch Jerry systematically take out all of Justin’s flunkies, and Styles’ line of ‘Right in the nuts!’ when Jerry gave Nicole Bass a low blow was priceless. The Tombstone off the second rope certainly ends the match on a strong visual, and was just the perfect way to put an end to Lynn’s comeback. It’s just too bad that the middle of the match wasn’t as heated and/or well-worked at the beginning and the home stretch.

CHRIS CANDIDO vs. LANCE STORM

While this is fun to watch at times, it’s got issues of its own. The big one being the question of whom exactly is the heel? The match came about because Storm turned on Candido in a tag match and slapped his injured ear. But the match starts with Candido bringing out Tammy Sytch, who interferes several times and eventually costs Storm the match. Of course Candido had turned on Storm earlier in the year and they were forced to continue teaming (they were tag champions at the time), but it was Storm’s action that caused the match to happen. The closest we get to a real heel moment from Storm is early on when he removes Chris’ headgear, but not once in the whole match does he take a shot at the ear, even just to try to slow down Candido. Even a simple headlock from Storm would have been nice, even if only to recognize that he was trying to target it. Storm does hit a baseball slide that looks like it may have hit the ear, but, if it did, it clearly wasn’t intentional. Until the finish, Tammy’s interference only wound up being stall tactics, nothing she did was able to turn the tide of the match in Candido’s favor.

The match had a whole bunch of fun moments, but nothing that really means anything to the match as a whole. A good example is their opening exchange. It looks like they’re going to do a standoff, but instead of stuff on the mat, they’re doing lots of ducks and dodges, only Storm outsmarts Candido, when Chris leapfrogs, Storm takes to the air with a spinning heel kick and levels Candido. The match is supposed to be a grudge match, but it’s rather honestly and cleanly wrestled, aside from Tammy’s interference. The closest the match gets to looking like a grudge match is their slugfest in the center of the ring, which Candido wins (by staying on his feet) and then doing a Terry Funk drunken sell job, stumbling around the ring and landing on Candido for a good near fall. But when Storm kicks out, Candido does a big jump up to the top rope, instead of selling the effects of the slugfest, Storm wound up cutting him off anyway and hitting a big superplex (with more animated selling from Candido), it’d have been just as well for Chris to take his time going up and let Storm recover more. In the end nothing either of them did beforehand mattered, because it was Tammy who made the difference. Candido’s attempt to blind Storm with the powder backfired so Tammy crotched Storm on the top turnbuckle. Candido hit a powerbomb off the top, and did another stumble around the ring before collapsing onto Storm for the win. This looked less like an old-fashioned grudge match, and more like an at-times competitive exhibition from two good wrestlers.

MIKE AWESOME vs. MASATO TANAKA

On the surface this seems like an odd choice to be on PPV. ECW had no shortage of big guys on their roster for Tanaka to mow down, and Awesome hadn’t done anything notable in ECW since ‘94. Granted, they’ve got chemistry and history from working together in FMW a lot, but Tanaka had been making Awesome his bitch all over ECW TV leading up to this, so there wasn’t any reason to think this would be any different, and there’s almost nothing here to suggest it’d be any different. They both wind up looking good here, but this only really has one thing that it wants accomplish, showing that Masato Tanaka is, in fact, the toughest guy in the world. But anyone watching ECW TV at the time (which probably accounts for 90% of the people watching this show at the time) would already know that.

Even though this doesn’t seem to set out to accomplish a lot, it does, at least, accomplish what it sets out to. Awesome puts Tanaka through the ringer, in the same ways that he was doing in their lead in matches, and Tanaka takes it all, asks for more, and hands it back. They do their dueling chair war on the floor, with Tanaka winning, and then Tanaka runs the ramp and plasters Mike in the head. Bless him, Mike puts it over perfect, his eyes roll into his head and he drops like a safe on the ramp. Mike gets his hands on a chair and hits three sick chair shots on Tanaka, and his Hulk-Up is perfect. Tanaka doesn’t totally blow it off like Hogan, his facials and body language show that they clearly hurt and had an effect on him but he refuses to admit defeat and keeps on fighting. Mike probably could have done without screwing over his own finisher, he hits both a regular Awesome Bomb for a near fall, and then a running Awesome Bomb that’s not even worthy of a pin attempt.

The only real drama comes from the table on the floor. In a previous tag match, Awesome had Awesome Bombed Tanaka through a table on the floor and put him out of commission for the remainder of the match, so when the Awesome Bombs fail, that’s all Mike has left. Of course this time it doesn’t work, and Mike takes the plunge. The timing is bit off here too, but not as badly as in the first match. Tanaka rolls Awesome in for a near fall, and while Mike doesn’t look like the macho man that Tanaka does (even though he actually is), he barely gets the shoulder up, and does so again after the Rolling Elbow (Styles and the TokyoPop FMW announcers miscall it, I’m not following suit), and Tanaka kills him for good with the Tornado DDT onto the chairs. Ironically, the idea here was for Tanaka to vanquish the ghost from his past and move to bigger things in ECW. Awesome would come back a year later, vanquish Tanaka, and move onto the biggest thing in ECW. ***

ROB VAN DAM/SABU © vs. HAYABUSA/JINSEI SHINZAKI (ECW Tag Team Titles)

If you want to see just how much RVD has improved since he joined WWE, this is as good example as any. I wasn’t impressed back in ‘98 and nearly ten years hasn’t helped it age at all. It’s a spotfest in every sense of the word. Hayabusa brings virtually all of the good work to the match, he’s good about selling his leg when Sabu briefly targets it, his flying is as graceful as ever, and on more than one occasion, his simple palm strikes are more than enough to halt Sabu and RVD. The match itself is as back and forth as it gets. Hayabusa and RVD will have a quick exchange that RVD wins, RVD will play to the crowd and then Hayabusa will hit a spot of his own. Rinse and repeat for pretty much the whole match with any combo. Neither team gets a decisive advantage for any length of time, and there’s no reason to cheer one team over the other. The only real hint of storytelling is early on. RVD is crowd playing and generally being a glory hog. Sabu, familiar with the opposition since he spent time in FMW, begs for a tag, and when he finally gets in he goes right after Hayabusa’s leg. But it doesn’t last for very long, and it’s not played up later.

All four of them have selling issues. They just don’t sell anything for very long before moving on. Even Hayabusa, pretty much the glue holding this together, is guilty of it. He winds up getting a chair kicked into his head by RVD, and very soon afterwards he’s back to trying to dish out punishment. Some of the spots they come up with are pretty, such as RVD coming literally out of nowhere and hitting a (before it was five stars) frog splash. Another good one is RVD hitting Hayabusa from behind and celebrating, and getting hit from Shinzaki from behind. Again, it’s fun to watch, but there’s no reason to really get behind either team, aside from the champions being the home team. Like the rest of the card thus far, they end things on a strong visual, with RVD and Sabu hitting simultaneous flying leg drops and putting the challengers through tables, and this time the big spot made sense, with them having to dig down deep to keep the FMW guys down. It’s too bad this was Hayabusa’s only (to my knowledge) ECW match. It’d be interesting to see what Hayabusa could have done with Jerry Lynn or even a singles with RVD (provided he was willing to work).

TAZ vs. BAM BAM BIGELOW

Matches like this are what made ECW so popular during its time. It’s not classic wrestling, or even really good wrestling by any stretch of the imagination, it’s a heated brawl around the building. You can probably count the actual wrestling moves done on one hand, but their brawling is so intense that wrestling winds up being secondary. As seems to be a recurring trend, some of their timing was a bit odd, like Taz getting hit with a section of guardrail and then popping back up and going for the Tazmission. There’s one remarkable aspect here though, it’s the first time that Taz has a match where his opponent sets up a table in the corner and it winds up going as planned, when Bigelow whips Taz into the corner and Taz goes through the table, not that it stops Taz from propping the remains the table back up and giving Bigelow an Exploder through the rest of it.

The big spot of the match, the DDT through the ramp was an obvious play off their previous match where Bigelow put Taz through the ring. By doing such an obvious play off it, it winds up coming off a bit flat, the first time was something that nobody saw coming. This one gets a big pop, but more because it looked cool than for any other reason. Also, they don’t really sell the effects of it very much. In the first match Bigelow had to pull Taz out of the hold to pin him, this time Bigelow (who went in head first) climbs out on his own, and then Taz (who was underneath him) climbs out, signals to the crowd and locks on the Tazmission for the win. The booking itself is fine, Taz was gunning for Shane Douglas and the ECW Heavyweight Title, and he had to go through the guy who beat him, and Douglas’ stablemate to get him. It’s just too bad a huge spot like that was just trotted out and was mostly throwaway.

TOMMY DREAMER/SANDMAN/SPIKE DUDLEY vs. BUH BUH RAY DUDLEY/D-VON DUDLEY/BIG DICK DUDLEY (Dudleyville Street Fight)

Like the last match, this is a good example of what made ECW so fun to watch. It’s also not a great wrestling match, but as a street fight and a spotfest, it’s completely acceptable. The first several minutes are actually like a normal trios match, there is a member from each team in the ring and the others are on the apron. The best parts here are from Spike and Buh Buh, as expected Spike gets thrown and bumped around a good bit, but when the tables get turned, Buh Buh is ready, willing, and able to return the favor. Buh Buh’s belly flop that he takes from Spike’s facebuster is hilarious, and his bump from the Acid Drop is perfect. Once the match breaks down into all six of them going at it all over the place, the spots start coming, and it’s fun to just sit back and watch them roll stuff out. Their spots range wildy from ridiculous, like Sandman’s butt-ugly Frankensteiner, to insane, like Spike diving off the top of the ladder onto all three Dudleys, to silly like when both Sandman and Buh Buh do jumps onto ladders that are laying on top of an opponent. Dreamer keeps the match even, by taking out the heels’ back up, giving Sign Guy (on crutches already) a figure four, a big piledriver to Jeff Jones, and helping take out Gertner with the obligatory spot with all three heels and Gertner in the Tree of Woe, and all three babyfaces (plus the ref) drop kicking chairs in their faces.

They find their way back to earth for the finish with a bit of build up in the form of several spots to take various guys out of the match. Big Dick takes out Spike by throwing him through a table. Sandman takes out Big Dick with several cane shots, and Buh Buh takes out Sandman with a big chair shot, leading up with Dreamer giving Buh Buh a DDT to win the match. Jack Victory hits the ring afterwards to beat on the babyfaces, New Jack makes the save and the babyfaces clean house with the plunder and end the show on a happy note.

Conclusion: This show is as good an example as any as to why ECW was so popular. Every match had something to like about it in one form or another. Be it crazy spots or drunken stumbling. No, you won’t find any all time classics here. But if you’re looking for an inoffensive way to kill a couple of hours watching wrestling, this isn’t bad at all.