Posted August 23, 201015 yr comment_5454872 Chris Candido v. Mikey Whipwreck This is easily the best Candido in ECW match I've ever seen and to be honest he was easily outworked by Mikey. This is not a knock on Candido who did a great job incorporating his schtick into this, cutting off Mikey's comeback spots effectively and taking Mikey's offense well which is not always easy. They start this out at a good pace but it just explodes when Mikey hits his over the ropes rana and from there they are off, with a great Mikey dive into the crowd, Candido running around with a chair on his head, et. I thought Candido's selling of some of Mikey's bigger offense during his comebacks was questionable, but for a match of this type, with this pace it was probably necessary. Typically I am not a fan of Mikey working please don't stop style, but this was like a hybrid of that and the more standard Mikey underdog match and it worked incredibly well. At one point Candido cuts off a Mikey offensive barrage with a nut shot and it is totally awesome. There are some great nearfalls in this, including an awesome spot where Candido goes for a powerbomb and Mikey reverses it into a Northern Lights which I actually bought as the end. They actually teased the powerbomb several times which made the finish even more awesome than it already was as Candido finally looked to have the superbomb set only for Mikey to backdrop out and then hit a big splash which Candido rolled through on for a really tight and believable counter finish. Great match. I can't imagine anyone vetoing this, but this is something I will fight for/use a personal pick on for sure if it gets to that point. Louie Spicolli v. Balls Mahoney There were some really cool things in this, including a nasty Balls punch, some cool amateur escapes early and some really fun big offense from both guys. This was a strange match though because it would go back and fourth between hard hitting with brutal bumps and really loose looking fakery. The longer this went on the better it got though as Spicolli sold well during the heat segment and Balls is a charismatic motherfucker and knows how to work it to his advantage. Overall there was a lot more good in this than bad and Spicolli crushing Balls with the DVD was a cool finish. Bad Crew v. Bubba Dudley/Spike Dudley Oh my god the spot with Bubba backdropping Spike onto Bad Crew on the floor was unbelievably dangerous. Then Bubba tries to kill one of the Bad Crew with a whiplash clothesline. Spike ends up working FIP when this settles into a straight tag and as usually he was great bumping and selling his ass off for the Bad Crew of all people. I mean Bad Crew just fucking destroy him with double teams and it is awesome as all hell. Acid drop is sets up the hot tag here and was really well done. Bubba comes in and just murders these guys with splashes and dropkicks and a monster cutter that looks like it killed the guy. The finish has a great camera angle as Spike gets on Bubba's shoulders while he's on the top and leaps off and the shot from RF makes it look like a thirty foot drop down an elevater shaft. This had all the spots you would want to see plus good structure and selling. No way in hell this shouldn't go through. D-Von Dudley/Axl Rotten v. Gangstas Man D-Von and New Jack just beat the fucking hell out of each other in this. I dont' know if these two legit hated each other but everytime they pair off things look unprofessionally stiff and here New Jack tries to kill him with a piledriver through the merch table, so D-Von follows up with a nasty table spot himself and then New Jack headbutts him in the nuts. This is pretty quick and was fun and ended with Axl getting decked by a diving New Jack chairshot. Chris Chetti v. Steve Richards So Chetti is the guy under the GQ match which explains the botched sunset flip spot from the Spike match. Weird that I have no memory of him in this role. This is actually a pretty good little match. Not sure why Chetti got to kick out of the powerbomb, but I liked the way the superkick was hit in this. Solid competitive squash. Eliminators v. Rob Van Dam/Sabu Holy shit Rob Van Dam botched some shit horribly here. Maybe it's because Saturn beat the piss out of him early in this, but he was just garbage in big parts of this. I did enjoy the dive train on this and the subsequent run of spots was pretty good too. Van Dam almost got killed by Kronus on some bizarre spot where Kronus powerbombed him on the top rope and just let him full in a heap on his neck to the floor. There is a really cool cutoff spot where Sabu goes to put Kronus through a table and Saturn runs from behind and kicks his legs out from under him with the end result being Sabu taking a vicious pump handle slam to the floor. Down the stretch the Elims isolate Sabu who keeps trying to run in and make the save. At one point Kronus hits an awesome backhand on Sabu to keep him out of the ring. A few seconds later they hit the Total Elimination on RVD and Kronus dives onto Sabu to stop him from making the save for the clean finish. There was a lot of silly shit in this, some bad looking stuff from Van Dam and the early part wasn't very good, but I liked enough of this to put it through especially given how loved this series was at the time. Brian Lee v. Pitbull 2 This actually wasn't half bad. Lots of crowd brawling, a cool table bump and a neat finish with Brian Lee going for a chokeslam off the top and Pitbull reversing it into a fall away slam. Sure parts of this sucked, but it was kept short and was better than expected. Sandman v. Raven I really liked Sandman in this as he was taking some huge bumps and was really working a devil may care style with the table/guardrail spots that a lot of these supposedly hate filled brawls often lack. As with virtually every Raven match from the era there is a multiple run-in, screw job finish, though it was fairly well executed this time. Still just for once I'd like to see these guys go ten or fifteen minutes with a clean finish. Shane Douglas/Francine v. Tommy Dreamer/Beulah This is JIP and starts with Douglas beating the shit out of Dreamer with a chair and that's pretty much the whole match as Tommy just gets his ass kicked while Shane tries to convince Beulah to tag in/fuck him. They do the girl feigning interest leading to nut shot spot and that inevitably leads to the finishing run. Not bad, but the worst of their series so far.
