TNA Hardcore Justice
We open with Mike DeAngelis in the ring, who quickly throws us to Tax, standing on the ramp with a mic in hand. Taz cuts a blistering promo, welcoming everyone to the show, tossing a few shots at WWE and reminding everyone of the legacy which is being celebrated here tonight although he never once uses the phrase ECW. Fairly early on, Mike Tenay acknowledges that, for legal reasons, they can't use the initials or some of the familiar names. He also acknowledges that most fans will be so familiar with everyone that they won't need to use them. Throughout the broadcast, euphemisms like "hardcore" and "the Philly promotion" are bandied about. With the exception of one slip by Taz when he refers to Balls Mahoney (using the name "Kahoneys" here) as "Balls" and is swiftly corrected by Tenay, they're very careful to avoid tempting lawsuits. Sounds like it should be jarring but you get used to it pretty quickly. For teh sake of my sanity though, I'm just going to use the names we're all familiar with.
Beware, from here on out, there be SPOLERS...
Once Taz and Tenay get to their announce desk, we get the expected news that Jerry Lynn blew his back out in training and won't be up to working a match with RVD tonight. However, his replacement is veteran maniac, Sabu. Good choice. If you think of RVD's classic opponants, Jerry Lynn would be your first choice but your second would probably be Sabu. Through the show tonight, they have various workers, both former ECW and current TNA (and Francine via sattelite from her home), reminiscing about what ECW was to them. I'm not going to recap them because they're superfluous but a nice touch. Something else to note, this wasn't a regular show so I'm not going to cover it as one. It was a nostalgia show and that's how it should be viewed, as a pleasent walk down memory lane with no real attempt to match what today's workers are capable of.
First match of the show is a six-man tag: The FBI (represented here by Jim "Guido" Maritato, Tony Mamaluke and Tracey Smothers with Big Sal on the outside; number of actual Italians in there: 1). Sal has somehow managed to get even bigger which is impressive since he had his own gravitational pull last time I saw him. Tracey looked ancient, because he is. Tony looked a little like Chachi from Happy Days and Guido looked... exactly the fucking same. Their opponants (loosely heels but there weren't really face/heel roles) were Kid Kash (looking fat), Simon Diamond (also fat but he's been retired for years so we'll let that slide) and Johnny Swinger (still lean and muscular but losing his hair). Match wasn't half bad and included the traditional mid-match dance contest (yes, both sides are still awful). Spot of the match came from Kash who used a little assisstance from ref John Finnigan to hit a triple-jump flip dive onto everyone brawling at ringside. Finish comes when Guido hits the Kiss of Death (better known as Christian's Unprettier/I'm Prettier but Guido invented it) on Simon and picks up the pin. On the strength of this, TNA could do a lot worse than invite Guido to stick around. The X-Division has plenty of fliers, why not bring in Guido as the resident submission expert? In fact, there's a built-in story, Guido as the ECW guy who just won't leave.
Backstage segment in which Al Snow argues with Head and Stevie Richards, followed by Stevie arguing with the BWO (Nova and the Blue [i]Tilly[/i], replacing the Meanie but bizarrely, the Meanie cut a "Remembering" segment earlier on the show). Then Lupus (remember him?) turns up and argues with Al. Weird.
Next up: CW Anderson versus 2 Cold Scorpio. Scorp has put on a little weight and shaved his head and I question the wisdom of working a match with your eyebrow-ring still in place. CW looks exactly the same as he did fifteen years ago. Match is a tidy piece of work which wouldn't disgrace the midcard of any promotion. CW works the traditional Anderson style; nothing flash, nothing fancy but everything looks credible. Scorp is a half-step slower than he was back in the day but still lightning fast and acrobatic. Finish comes when Scorp kicks out of the Anderson spinebuster. CW hits a few forearms, bounces off the ropes with a final forearm and runs straight into a wicked superkick from Scorpio. Scorp polishes him off with a moonsault legdrop for the win. Again, both these guys are in decent shape and TNA would do a lot worse than ask them to do the odd show.
Backstage segment with RVD and (for one night only) Bill Alfonso. RVD is clearly high as a kite and they cut a rambling, back-and-forth promo in exactly the same way as they used to. Fonzie is apparently going to be managing both RVD and Sabu in the main event. Interesting.
Back to teh ring for Justin Credible against Stevie Richards. The two brawl back and forth for a while, the bWo gets involved whenever they can. Justin hits the spinning DDT and the "That's Incredible" spinning tombstone but Stevie kicks out of the first and Justin pulls him up at 2 on the second. That leads straight to our finish as Justin taunts Stevie with slaps and then tells him "That's not just the coolest, that's not just the best, that's..." and eats a lethal Stevie Kick which allows Stevie to pick up the dukes. Decent match. Nothing special but, on a nostalgia show, worthy of polite applause.
After the match, Justin nails Stevie with his Singapore cane for a few moments. Then the lights cut out. When they come back, teh Sandman is standing in the ring, cane in hand. Justin has the most wonderful "Aw, fuck it" expression on his face. Justin goes for Sandy but Sandy hits the White Russian legsweep and then canes the living piss out of Credible. Bet that hurt.
Now we have a three-way dance (ECW so it's elimination rules) with Spike Dudley, Al Snow and Rhino. Highlights include a suplex/diving stomp on Snow, a spinning huricanrana by Spike on Rhino and Snow laying everyone out with Head. Eventually, Rhino is down and the ref is just waking up from an earlier bump. Spike grabs a chair, slams it on the mat, tosses it to Snow and hurls himself to the canvas in what I can only presume was a tribute to the late Eddy Gerrero. Snow decides two can play that game, slams the chair on the mat and then hurls himself on the canvas. Ref wakes up to discover a chair in the ring and all three men down. His "What the fuck?" expression is priceless. After everyone gets up, Spike hits the Acid Drop/Dudley Dog on Snow and pins him to eliminate Snow. That leaves Spike and Rhino which lasted about four seconds. As Spike gets up from pinning Snow, Rhino Gores him out of his boots for the 3-count and the win.
Generic promo from Mick Foley for tonight's Dreamer/Raven match.
Axl Rotten & Balls Mahoney (here called Kahoneys, pronounced [i]cajones[/i]) hit the ring and call thmselves the most hardcore team in wrestling. They challenge anyone with the guts enough, anyone with the nuts enough, to come out and face them. That brings out the Dudleys (in old-school tie-dye) who have Joel Gertner with them. Gertner cuts one of his infamous obscene poems which bears repeating: "Lady Gaga promoting celibacy / now that's just a disgrace / but if she won't let me stuff her muff / I'll have to poke her face". Yep, Gertner's still got it, his routine brought the house down and Balls corpsed at ringside. He gets as far as calling them "the Dud..." before Bubba and D-Von's look of horror forces him to slide into "3-D". Now, that was funny. Bubba gets on the mic and says no-one wants to see them have a wrestling match (very true!) so let's make this a South Philly Streetfight (i.e. no countout, no DQ, falls count anywhere). Cue unhinged brawling all over the arena. Axl hits his old Rhodes routine on Bubba and D-Von. Bubba resurrects his old dance routine before planting Axl. At one point, Bubba and Balls have an honest-to-god lightsabre duel (I swear I'm not making this up). Usual assortment of foreign objects destroyed before Bubba tells D-Von to "GET THE TABLES!". Table in the ring and the crowd is chanting "Fire!". Joel Gertner hops up on the apron with the biggest shit-eating grin you've ever seen and hands Bubba the lighter fluid. The table is promptly set alight and it's Balls who takes the powerbomb through it tonight. After that, the pinfall is academic. The fire table spot is actually really safe to take because the petrol doesn't burn very hot and the impact of going through the table snuffs out the fire straight away. Looks great though.
Bubba gets back on the mic and proclaims the Dud... Er, 3-D, the most hardcore team in wrestling history. Don't look now, sparky, but THE GANGSTAS beg to differ. Now, I was really surprised by this. These two had a massive falling out in the mid-nineties and, word had it, genuinely hated each other for years afterward so it was a real shock to see them teaming again. The Gangstas cart their usual collection of weapons to ringside and a somewhat shorter unhinged brawl is on. After the Duds absorb shots from chairs, a trash can and the traditional staplegun, Joel decides to stick his oar in and gets Jack's guitar obliterated over his head. After which, the Gangstas, Dudleys and Balls & Axl take a collective bow. Oh, and as is traditional, the Gangstas music kept playing throughout.
Awesome promo from Raven who recaps the whole storied history of his feud with Tommy Dreamer.
And that brings us to The Final Showdown: Raven versus Dreamer, special referree Mick Foley, one fall to a finish (and with the state of Tommy's back and knees, it bloody well better be their last match). Raven briefly breaks character on his way to the ring to reassure Dreamer's kids (sitting with Beulah and Dixie Carter) that it's still Uncle Scotty under the makeup. Tommy, in his final match, capping off the feud which has defined the careers of both men, is struggling not to weep. Right off the bat, Foley tells both men that, as long as it's just the two of them, anything goes. Raven instantly takes advantage of that by punting Dreamer in the nuts. Out to the floor and Raven legsweeps Dreamer into the guard rail. Brawling back and forth for a while, Dreamer eventually takes over as they get back in the ring. Back outside the ring and Raven tells Dixie to take Beulah and the kids backstage, sensible move there 'cos Tommy is now bleeding like a stuck pig. Tommy takes over again by reversing an Evenflow attempt into a Dreamer Driver. Locating a length of barbed wire under the ring, he slaps a Crippler Crossface on Raven, using the barbed wire across Raven's mouth for leverage. Now that was brutal. To break up Raven's predicament, the bWo hit the ring, Nova taking down Foley while Blue Tilly goes after Dreamer. Tilly quickly misses the fat kid splash from the top and Dreamer wipes out both of them before walking straight into an Evenflow DDT from Raven. Tommy kicks out at two. Raven disputes the count with Foley and winds up eating a Socko claw for his trouble. Meanwhile, Lupus runs in and hits a major altitude top-rope legdrop on Dreamer. Unfortunately for him, Mick notices that and he eats a barbed-wire covered Socko claw that has him bleeding profusely. Mick takes the poor bastard to the back as Raven locates some handcuffs somewhere and cuffs Dreamer. Couple of unprotected chair shots (to the back, thankfully) and Beulah hits the ring. She begs Raven to stop, reminds him that they're all friends now, etc. Raven relents and hugs her... then blasts Tommy with a positively evil chairshot to the head. He follows that up with a couple of chairshots to Foley. Somehow, Dreamer manages to hit the Dreamer DDT despite still being cuffed but it fails to put Raven away. Raven back up, he chairshots Dreamer in teh head (protected) and knee, then Evenflow's him onto teh chair to finally put Dreamer away and finally, at long last, cap off their feud. Good fun match. Both guys are getting old and slow now and Tommy shouldn't have been anywhere near the ring but when the bell rang, they gave it their all and left everything in teh ring.
Backstage segment with Borash and So Cal Val. Suddenly the Gangstas show up. Jack greets Val with "Hello, new white girl" and asks her if she's heard about black men, "Once you go black, you get bad credit". After Val leaves, Jack turns to Borash and says "Now, she's gone, you're my bitch". Harmless and pretty funny segment.
And here's our main event, RVD versus Sabu. RVD enters first, back in his old tiger-stripe unitard and accompanied by Fonzie. Once he makes it to the ring, Fonzie has to leg it back up teh ramp and accompany Sabu down as well. This was entirely highspots with very few transitions in-between so I'm not even going to attempt a full recap. Highlights included Fonzie sliding a chair directly between the two, Sabu winning the struggle for the chair and then just hurling teh chair into RVD's face. Leaving teh chair on Rob's chest, Sabu hits a splash and gets a two. When RVD rolls out to the floor, Sabu uses the chair to set up the triple-jump Air Sabu into teh third row. Back into teh ring and Rob takes over for a parade of chair spots, including Rolling Thunder (been a while since we saw that). Both men go for springboard moves at the same time and crash into each other in mid-air. Both men down on opposite sides of teh ring and Fonzie jumps in and tosses them both a bottle of water. Again, I swear I'm not making this up. Back to the ouside and RVD hits his traditional twisting legdrop off the apron. RVD hits an Arabian Facebuster on Sabu through a table. Sabu hits a huracanrana off the top and follows that up by returning the favour with an Arabian Facebuster of his own. RVD crotches Sabu on the top-rope and hits the Van Assassin (top rope Van Daminator) on him. Rolling Thunder. Sabu sets RVD up but misses a chair-assissted splash and crashes through teh table solo. RVD follows that with the 5-Star Frog Splash to take the win. Great fun match, just a parade of highspots that gave Sabu one last match to strut his stuff in the spotlight. he looks weird with a shaved head though.
RVD and Sabu share a hug. All the ECW Originals (including several who weren't booked) hit teh ring, share a beer and hug each other. Tommy cuts a speech thanking the ECW fans and thanking Dixie (now in the ring) for letting them put on their reunion show. Fans chant "FUCK YOU, VINCE!". Ha! Dreamer thanks everyone one more time and we're out.
Final thoughts: Let's be honest; if this was presented as a standard PPV, the fans would be in open revolt. Some of the work was sloppy, several of the workers were out of shape and one (Tommy) shouldn't even have been in the ring. But it wasn't a standard PPV. This was a nostalgia show, a chance to look back fondly on the glory days and looked at from that point of view, it was more than acceptable. RVD and Sabu soared, teh FBI had a nice tight technical match (and a dance contest) and the Dudleys, Gangstas and Balls/Axl beat the living shit out of each other. It felt like an ECW event. OK, you can't do this every month but as a one-off or even once a year or two, it was fine. The problem now, is how TNA are going to follow it.