Talk about it here.

I'm not sure what else there is to say about these matches, except for that I understand why it stood out as a feud considering what else was going on in wrestling at the time, and I may have already said that even.

The matches sucked. They did have some good matches together, but the 96 feud was trainwreck match, after trainwreck match. And I'm a guy that likes ECW

I like Hostile City Showdown but hate the rest, and few people love Sabu and RVD more than me.

Rewatching ECW, RVD is a guy that went clearly down. I was never big on the guy, but would have given him more credit 10 years ago. I actually enjoy awkward karate early RVD more than late 90's RVD with all the chairs bullshit. Sabu was a million time more fun than RVD. Their matches were kinda fun carwrecks.

RVD was working a Carrot Top prop comedy gimmick by the end. Alfonzo made him worse and worse. By the end he was terrible, though his run-in period while he was heeling the leg was fun.

Alfonzo was the only fun part of his act actually at this point. It's just that RVD is not a very good wrestler, period.

While this match isn't awesome by any means, the guardrail + shin bump = owwwwieeee.

I actually liked this match the best of the three. No 2.9 wrestling and the "near falls" they did do were actually well-executed. Sabu is full train wreck worker by this point, but I do admire how he always sets up the table between the apron and guardrail, then makes you wait and wait and wait for one of a various number of payoffs. He *did* put some thought into some aspects of his matches, at least. This has a lot of cringeworthy spots and some inventive ones, too--the payoff in this case was RVD countering a springboard into a fisherman buster through the table.

Yeah, this is the only one I would call good just for the trainwreck aspect of it all and the fact that it felt more focused than the stuff that came before it. There were plenty of brutal bumps and less slop while I watched it. I am glad this series is over. ***

This was reasonably entertaining for what it was. They have two previous matches I like better. This felt sort of tame in comparison to those actually, which isn't too good for a stipulation pay-off. The thing about a match like this is you want the ending to be a real exclamation mark, but since the whole feud is build around tossing out big spots left and right, that's hard to pull off. It's hard not to call this an effective feud -- it established RVD, produced matches that I still find entertaining now and were clearly very well received by the audience. That said, I hope it's over.

Sabu vs Rob Van Dam - ECW Doctor Is In Stretcher

A pretty famous feud that put RVD on the map. Paul E was able to make RVD & Taz into stars on the back of Sabu pretty impressive. Im a pretty big Sabu mark and think RVD is useless. This didnt do much for me. I watched the whole feud about 15 years ago when youtube first came out. Basic gist was Sabu extended his hand in respect and RVD didnt take it. This led to a Matter of Respect which was two parts this and the Douglas/Scorp feud. At some point RVD gets "insider" info that Sabu has injured neck doesnt everyone know about the Benoit match anyways he targets and the neck and Sabu is carried off in a stretcher. Volia here we are.

I couldnt remember if I watched this match but the Sabu Asai Moonsault onto the Stretcher and his shins whacking the guardrail reminded me I had. Fuck that had to hurt.Up until then it was both guys doing their schtick. Sabu is at his best when he is unpredictable and finally all around. This was too slow. RVD had some nice karate kicks but other than that it didnt feel fluid. Felt stilted. They blew a couple spots. The table spot came off really, really well. That should have been the finish. Great Brainbuster through the table looked awesome and I guess it was a callback to how RVD targetted the neck previously. They teased carting Sabu out but RVD stopped it. Some lame action followed. The real finish which was also a good spot was RVD doing a somersault splash from the top rope on the stretcher. The best wrestling match was the wrestling the "EMTs" had to do to get the stretchers to work. Some of the spots were alright but yeah this is bad Sabu and I like Sabu.