Posted August 30, 201015 yr comment_5455189 Gangstas v. Samoan Gangsta Party I actually liked this. To short to rate, but as out of control Gangstas brawls go this was more fun than most and less ridiculous. J.T. Smith v. Louie Spicolli Pre-match J.T. finds the only woman in the crowd and serenades her which Guido seems to disapprove of. I'm a pretty big mark for J.T. and he looks okay here, but this was actually sort of disappointing. I had remembered Spicolli being better than he was and while he isn't awful here he didn't seem to know how to play off of J.T.'s bullshit the way other babyfaces would. Erotic Experience v. Bubba Dudley/Spike Dudley Boy the Dudz are really great in this. This is similar to the match from Ag Hall but it didn't seem as long and I thought the Erotic Experience held up there end of the bargain better. Bubba's early antics are more entertaining here as well. I absolutely love coming out and confounding the heels with "complex" mat work and roll ups and his bumping off of the heels double teams and big spots was really great. It's not easy to make a Chris Chetti spinkick look like a potential finish, but Spike pulls it off here. The build to the hot tag was really great here to and Bubba continues to be the king of big time power offense as far as the ECW guys are concerned. His stuff looked brutal here and his deadlift powerbomb of the non-Chetti EE guy was fucking crazy impressive. Post-match with the Big Dick-D-Von showdown and Bubba tope was pretty fucking sweet too. Awesome stuff. Bill Alfonzo v. Tod Gordon Well Fonzy bladed a gusher here so this wasn't a total disaster. His cover was also impressive I guess.... John Kronus v. Pitbull 2 I really liked Kronus in this. Not that he looked great, but I thought his offense looked good, he bumped well and he made every Pitbull 2 spot look outright murderous. This was sort of worked as a clash of the titans match and for two non-titans this was remarkably successful at achieving that. Too Cold Scorpio v. Doug Furnas Holy fuck I have no clue where this came from. I have been really disappointed in Furnas up to this point, but this is a really great match and while Scorp is the better guy in it, he really does hold up his end well. Early on they work some parity mat exchanges, chop battles and even shoulder block standoffs that work really well to establish that these guys are on equal footing. Scorp finally takes over off of a really good Furnas bump over the ropes to the floor and he really unloads on him with a big offensive run. From there the story of the match becomes Scorp trying to put Furnas away with his trademark stuff, Furnas barely escaping and making mini-runs and Scorp cutting him off and trying to finish him off. Lots of good shit in here including the Scorp staple of the escalating top rope move as he runs through a top rope leg drop, a twisting splash, a moonsault, et. to try and get nearfalls though not all in succession. He also hits a really sick diving knee in there that I don't recall ever seeing out of him. Furnas brings his powerslam, a nice lariat and the release overhead German which I thought Scorp took better than most. Really loved Scorp cutting off a Furnas run by blocking his rana with a brutal powerbomb. 450 was the finish. You would like to have seen a big Furnas dropkick, but other than that we got all of the staples of both guys offense in a really well laid out match that built better than virtually anything you will see from ECW. Easy nomination. Devon Storm v. Johnny Smith Shane Douglas sets this up so he can avoid working Smith. This was really strange to watch as Storm is usually presented as an afterthought and Smith seemed like a guy they were going to push at the time and this is worked really even with Storm probably taking the majority of the match. Sort of an up and down match in terms of quality, with both guys doing some cool shit but the match lacking flow and some scary flubs including a Storm rana attempt where he spikes himself badly on his head. I did enjoy Storm selling the arm Smith worked on for longer than two seconds after the fact, Smith's dropkick and piledriver looked great and Storm's dives were fun. Still this really seemed like a ludicrously long match given who was involved and what they were building to which was... Shane Douglas v. Johnny Smith Hey Shane was faking his injury and attacked Johnny with the tape that was on his hand. Who didn't see that coming? Hey here comes Pitbull 2 who didn't see that coming? Hey who gives a shit about any of this? Not me. Mikey Whipwreck v. Taz This was set up earlier in the night when Mikey made the save for Gordon after Taz suckered him at the end of the Fonzy match. Taz looks annoyed as fuck to have to sell for Mikey in the early going which is not a good start. Fonzy's whistle is the worst I've ever heard it here. Mikey takes Taz' stuff well, but Taz is just a worthless fuck in this. HIghlight was Mikey diving on Team Taz. Perry Saturn v. Sabu I really liked Saturn's cut off out of ring into ring dive to save the table spot. Liked the Sabu crowd dive. Liked Saturn's inside out diving clothesline. I thought virtually everything else in this sucked. Pacing was shit, Saturn was throwing some terrible punches, Saturn control segment was boring as piss. The table spot was well done and built to, but it was a rehash and it happened at a point in the match where the pace drastically needed to picked up not slowed down. Brian Lee/Steve Richards v. Sandman/Tommy Dreamer Camera work really sucked in this as they kept going back and fourth between Sandman v. Richards segments in the ring and the Lee v. Dreamer segments in the crowd/on the floor. To be honest I'm not sure how good this would have been anyhow. Richards and Sandman seemed to be working some decent exchanges but Sandman was probably to giving (a common problem of his) and the lackeys were getting involved so I doubt the camera missed much of any value.
