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THE ROCKTAGON
W/ JAMES SWIFT
 
Happy holidays, cretins and scalawags!

Your friendly neighborhood whatever-I-am decided to take a break from the overt gayness of Mixed Martial Arts for one evening, so that he can focus on perhaps the only thing MORE homerotically tinged. . .mid 90s professional wrestling.

You know, a lot of people have been wanting me to write about ‘90s era wrestling for a while, so I said “eat the shit, I’m doing homework.” But now that the semester’s over (and there’s no way I’m using gas money to see a UFC card with Stefan goddamn Struve in the co-main event), I decided to eschew the octagonal real violence for the simple pleasures of four sided scripted mayhem from sixteen years ago.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but it’s kind of Christmas. Since I’m a lifelong worshipper of Ra, the holiday doesn’t really mean all that much to me, but even a hardcore, sun demon-worshipping INTRANET WRITING LEGEND such as myself can find it within his big, red, white and blue corpuscles to intake all of the snowy imagery and, if for just a brief moment, smile at the absurdity of all of this peace and goodwill. Also, the fact that I’m a full grown adult with a functional mid also makes it a little hard to overcome the fact that it’s a holiday dedicated to the supposed non-cum-related birth of a magical Jew with a mullet despite the overwhelming lack of historical evidence to support such a character ever existed. But, uh, just a little.

Well, that isn’t going to get me over with the Red State readers of The Wrestling Fan, that’s for sure. Seeing as how I am productive member of society sans superstitious, nonexistent rationale for my doings (I mean, a soul on the fast track to eternal damnation, isn‘t that right retards / evangelists?), why not take this time to vaunt the life efforts of ANOTHER godless sodomite?
You know, whenever I think of Christmas, I think of a number of things. I think of playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the first time on my shiny new Sega Genesis, eating enough homemade gummy snacks from the Dr. Dreadful lab set to give me juvenile diabetes, and uneducated, Northeastern street trash hitting each other in the face with kitchenware for the amusement of the only people on the seaboard with less money than them. If there was ever a man that spoke to the souls of the downtrodden layman and his worries (pending such a soul existed circa 1996), than your spokesperson was this fellow by the name of Paul Heyman.

Oh, Paul. A man that’s about as trustworthy as a rabid weasel in a henhouse. A man who’s handshake is as good as his word. . .and by the way, his word just bounced at the bank. An absolute creative genius, albeit the person that single-handily destroys that old stereotype about all members of the Hebrew persuasion being good with money.

Some people think of home around the holidays, and they think of hot cocoa, and Christmas trees, and stockings. Not me. I think of VCRS, my parents yelling in the living room, and me escaping the tedium of my lower class hell by entering the magical world of crack rock smokers garbage wrestling during the Clinton Administration.

In honor of, uh, all of that stuff I just said, I’d like to open up the Rocktagon for a very special Christmas themed episode. Forget a Charlie Brown Christmas, and tell The Grinch to stick it up his big, olive colored ass, because it’s time for a TRUE sliver of nostalgic yuletide cheer:

ECW Holiday Hell 1995! We are coming to you LIVE (on tape) from Queens New York. This show was filmed on December 29, 1995, so it was at a point in which a number of breakthrough stars had just left for WCW (Benoit, Malenko, and Guerrero, namely), but there was still a pretty healthy number of original and imported talent on the roster. Although I’d say that the product was better overall around mid 1995, you really can’t fudge the numbers too much: as far as ECW got as a holistic product, it was never as good as this, overall.
Since it is the holidays, how about we turn on the old J. Swift jukebox of not really giving a shit about international copyright laws? Yeah, let’s do that. Here’s my fifth favorite Christmas themed song of all time.

The show kicks off with a bunch of chanting nihilists in oversized baseball caps standing outside a YMCA center in New York. We cut to Joey Styles and Paul Heyman, who does some cursing. You know, because he’s in New York, and New Yorkers enjoy cursing, and other things along those lines.

Cut to some guys wrestling each other in the snow. Nope, nothing gay about that AT ALL.

Cue our national anthem, which sounds suspiciously like a really shitty cover of White Zombie’s “More Human Than Human”. Man, that ECW opening package sure did look a whole lot cooler when it had Rey Mysterio Jr., Psicosis and Too Cold Scorpio in it.

Joey Styles welcomes us to our doom. The crowd, IT IS RESTLESS. Well, being hopped up on Sudafed cut with drain cleaner would probably do that to you. Styles gets a nice chant, and out comes Stevie Richards and The Blue Meanie. Quasi-homophobic chants flare up, and I get nostalgic for the good old days when you could debase people in accordance to their sexual orientation without getting slammed in the media. . .you homos.

Richards decides to turn the favor, and states that a number of audience members are both transsexuals and transvestites. Yeah, you won’t be seeing THAT on Monday nights these days, that’s for damn sure. Eventually, Richards pinpoints MISSY HYATT in the crowd. The two trade insults, and after Stevie says he can score Hyatt a date with Raven, she decides to jam her(?) tongue down his throat to seal the deal. Considering that mouth has seen more WCW mid-carder junk than the piss testers at the CNN Building, I’d say that swapping spit with Missy is only slightly less hazardous than dipping your Johnson into a bucket of radioactive waste, but since it is Stevie we’re talking about here, I suppose we can allow the guy a little action.

Jump cut to Joel Gertner, who’s serenading some Japanese FMW dude in pink tights to the ring. Holy shit, GERTNER was actually SKINNY at one point in time. THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. As it turns out, this FMW lad as a fellow by the name of Koji Nakagawa, who is important because. . .uh, well, I’m sure he did something or another at some juncture.

Bill Alfonso is escorted to the ring by a guy that kind of looks like Stephen King’s DOWN syndrome afflicted brother. Taz, as always, follows his lead, sporting the UBIQITIOUS orange towel OF DESTRUCTION.

The New York crowd boos Nakagawa, because they think he’s black. Oh wait, that’s the stereotype for BOSTON sports fans, my bad. Alfonso grabs the mic and says stuff through his rat-like incisors while some dude in the crowd holds up a sign that reads “Taz ain’t shit”. That one made me chuckle, just a smidge. Hey, there’s that classic “Camp Town Races” sing-a-long, only with the lyrics reinterpreted to entail references to hardcore sodomy. TAKE THAT, CIVIC RIGHTS OF AN INCREDIBLEY EXPANSIVE CROSS-SECTION OF THE UNITED STATES POPULATION. Taz gets a lukewarm response from the crowd, while Joey puts over his accomplishments as a junior college football player and amateur Judo practitioner. Alfonso slaps Nakagawa, Taz slaps Nakagawa, and the match, IT IS ON.

Arm wringer exchange. Hip toss from the other orange goblin. FUCKING NASTY GERMAN TAZ-PLEX. Sheesh, that was WICKED. Maybe not All-Japan “Fuck the safety of our top three performers” levels of wickedness, but wicked nonetheless. “Fuck you Taz” chant as Nakagawa gets tossed to the outside. Nakagawa goes on the offensive, Taz doesn’t sell shit, and we get a belly to back Taz Plex. Fuck, does Taz name everything he does after himself? “Honey, can you go get the Taz-glass out of the Taz-cabinet and poor me some Taz-milk out of the Taz-refrigerator while I scratch the Taz-balls?” Dude, I’d TOTALLY do that, now that I kind of think about it, a little. ANOTHER HEINOUS Taz-Plex. Jesus, I haven’t seen a Japanese person get roughed up by an Italian this bad since. . .ah fuck, never mind, they were both Axis Powers. Shit. Half-nelson Taz-Plex, Kata-Ha-Jime, and this match is over. Post bout, Bill Alfonso does some more trash talk, Taz talks about making more money in one night than most New Yorkers make in a month and calls Sabu a “pussy” before telling the crowd to “fuck off”. Yeah, it works here, but when I said the same thing during my eighth grade debate meeting. . .

Another jump cut. Hooray for static stock video!

OH MY GOD, FUCK YES! This is one of my all time favorite ECW matches, and one that you need to go WAY out of your way to see.

JT Smith (basically, what would happen if you put Apollo Creed and Norman Smiley in the teleportation device from The Fly) is in the ring, rocking a leather jacket. Hack Myers (basically, the single grossest looking leather bear you could possibly envision) is his opponent. Hack gets a HYUGE pop from the crowd, because secretly, all followers of the original ECW were closeted homosexuals. Well, maybe not, but you have to admit, this is pretty damn homoerotic, like listening to a Judas Priest song from circa 1985. I mean, yeah, we all see it clear as day now, but at the time. . .

Gertner addresses Smith from South Philadelphia. JT Smith corrects him, and tells him that he’s actually from the Italian section of Brooklyn, New York, and that his nickname is “The Italian Stallion“. The crowd EATS it up like a year’s worth of pineapple pizza. Hack Myers (looking like the bastard amalgamation of Bushwhacker Luke and Zangief from the Street Fighter games) is listed as hailing from “The Last House on the Left.” Laugh-out-loud. Bell rings, and the ultra rare “Whatsamatteryou!” chant breaks out. This match is already better than anything TNA has ever done. Every time Hack hits a move, the crowd yells “Shah”, and every time JT lands a blow, they shout “Shit”. Oh, I haven’t been able to smile like this in YEARS. The crowd starts chanting “JT has a woody,” and because he’s arguably the greatest person EVER, Smith starts SELLING IT. This is fan-fucking-tastic right here. “Watch your ass, Hack, watch your ass” chant gets up and running. “Shit-Shah” exchange. Smith takes the upper hand, nailing a flying head butt to the outside and (believe it or not) a power bomb at one point. Smith goes up top, signals for a moonsault, takes a pratfall (I think it was supposed to be a pratfall, anyway) and Hack ends it with a double under-hook face-buster (HHH who?) off the top rope for the win.

Simply put, it was outlandish, non-P.C. super fun bullshit like this that made ECW one of the best things to happen in the 1990s. If you’re feeling blue, this match right here is an AUTOMATIC perk pill. Honest to god, this company could do MORE in eight minutes without really giving a shit than WWF or WCW could have done with a month’s worth of programming and a multi-million dollar payroll. SEE THIS MATCH.

Hey, it’s more static, and I ain’t talking X! [yes, I just quoted a Machine Head B-side from ten years ago. I rule. To some degree.]

Too Cold Scorpio is in the ring. His opponent is Mikey Whipwreck, sporting that one dragon tee shirt that was always on sale at Spencer’s Gifts circa 1994. Not only is Scorpio’s TV title on the line, but his TAG TEAM STRAPS are also at stake, per Joel Gertner. This causes a dismayed sigh to echo throughout the arena, because as we all know, the ECW faithful are some WRESTLING purists, I tell you what.

Scorpio requests being called “2 Gold” for tonight’s show. “Kick his ass, Mikey” chant as the match gets started. Arm wringer exchange. Scorpio gets the best of it. A Biz Markie chant? Scorpio works the arm for a bit. Thanks get vertical. Scorpio DOESN’T connect on a spinning heel kick, but Mikey sells it anyway. If I didn’t know any better, I’d surmise that this wrestling business might be kind of fake. Hey, what do you know, Scorpio MISSES on the baseball slide to the outside, too! Scorpio makes up for it with a NASTY looking boot to the face. That was about an 8 out of 10 on the Tajiri scale, I’d say, as far as volume went. “You the man” chant for Scorpio. Whipwreck gets a tilt-a-whirl head scissors takedown. And a baseball slide. And a tope. Or is it a pesacado? I think it might be a plancha. Or an enchirito. It’s been a while since I’ve brushed up on my lucha. Mikey misses a top rope splash, and Scorpio capitalizes. A pointless shot of Missy Hyatt, who in 1995, was already kind of looking like a dried up tangerine. Badass DDT-Suplex hybrid from Scorpio, followed by a Tombstone. Moonsault. Only worth a one count. Power bomb, and a 450 leg drop? Only a two. HEINOUS super kick from Scorpio. Scorpio goes up top, and gets crotched by Mikey. Franken-Mikey, but only for a two count. Ref bump, and Scorpio splashes the referee. It doesn’t really do Mikey any good, as he automatically gets super kicked on the rebound. Scorpio with a backbreaker and a Power bomb. He goes up stairs for THE TUMBLEWEED, and who other than CACTUS JACK shows up to push him off the top rope. DDT, Cactus throws Mikey atop Scorpio, the revived ref registers the three count, and we have ourselves a NEW World Television And Tag Team Champion in ECW. Post-bout, Cactus declares himself new tag team belt co-holder, while Mikey frowns in the corner. A pretty good match, carried by Scorpio, who in case you didn’t know, RULED THE FREAKING WORLD.

STATIC, STATIC, STATIC. . . We’re on a video break.

Oh, and my fourth favorite Christmas song ever, in case you were needing some tunes.

Holy shit, Jason (you know, “The World’s Sexiest Man”) used to have the World’s sleaziest pompadour mullet. That thing is HEINOUS to unprecedented depths, my friends. With him, are The Eliminators, John Kronus and Perry Saturn, who, if you can perceive it, once had hair. And a job.

Here come The Pitbulls, and Francine, and one really, really homoerotic looking staredown. Shit, these guys did everything but buy one another breakfast. There’s that “Camp Town Races” chant again. Pitbull 1 and Saturn to begin. I can tell already, this is going to be a really hard one to call. Two minutes into the bout, and we already have a “We Want Blood” chant. Now it’s Pitbull 2 and Kronus. NASTY dragon suplex from Kronus. Saturn does a bad ass looking summersault dive onto Pitbull #2. Now Jason holds up #2 on the outside so Saturn can plancha him again. Pitbull #2 ducks out of the way, Jason, gets clobbered, and at four minutes in, we’re already in full car wreck mode. Jeez, the revisionist haters ARE right: NOBODY in ECW bothered selling chair shots. More mayhem, as THE COOKIE SHEET OF CHAOS enters the mix. Holy shit, Jason sells the COOKIE SHEET more than he does the steel chair. Man, I miss this nonsense. Exit light, ENTER TOILET BRUSH. Back in the ring. All right, enough of this technical bullshit. You know, for a dude the size of The Barbarian, Kronus was a pretty mobile mother fucker. “Tables” chant. Funny, I start one of those every time I’m in the furniture section of K-Mart. Jeez, did the Tombstone finish anybody outside of when The Undertaker did it? TOTAL ELIMINATION, you mother of fuckers, only reversed a little. You’d have to see it to understand what I mean. Yeah, there’s no denying it, this Kronus kid could move. No more “Camp Town Races”, please. The Eliminators hit a couple of double team moves that lack names, according to Styles. Funny, where I come from, we just call them “superfluous tandem maneuvers that while aesthetically interesting, really serve no psychological bearing in the match-up at hand“. And also, “the assisted elbow drop”. Either term fits, really. Take off your pants, because it’s time to CLUSTERFUCK. Doomsday Device. No pin. Super Bomb. No pin. Jason gets suplexed through a table that doesn’t break. No pin. Total Elimination (this time, done in the traditional manner). No pin. Francine and Jason scuffle on the outside. Now all of a sudden, we have a pin. How? How the fuck should I know, because the cameraman missed it. Yeah, that’s good old E-C-W for you. Apparently, The Eliminators won, by something. An OK match, up until it stopped being so.

STAT-TICK.

Hey, it’s Tommy Dreamer! Uh-oh.

Huh, I guess this was a night in which the sound technicians forgot to bring in the P.A. equipment. Oh well, that’s probably for the best. Here comes Beulah, Richards, and Meanie. Gertner says the winner of this match gets to take on The Sandman later in the evening for the ECW World Heavyweight title. For some reason, a dude in the crowd brought a sign featuring a hand drawn sheep to the show tonight. Huh, ECW, sheep. . .yeah, I don’t make any connections either [/blasphemy].

“You fat fuck” and “you fuck sheep” chants in tandem. Oh, now I get it. Kind of. Richards says Raven is injured, and Dreamer uses some curse words. The crowd approves. Meanie Pearl Harbors Dreamer. DDT. Three Count. Richards U.S.S. Coles’ Dreamer. DDT. Three Count. Dreamer feigns pile driving Beulah. Raven throws a shopping cart at Dreamer. Yeah, after covering UFC bouts for a while, this stuff looks really fucking weird on an MS Word document. Shit, it took until the FOURTH match of the evening to get our first broken table? That’s got to be some sort of record for ECW. You know, about doing all of those DDTS burns a lot of calories. Overweight housewives of America, take note. Dreamer to Raven: Do you like Sonny Bono? Raven to Dreamer: Not really. Dreamer to Raven: All right then, how about some CHAIR instead! (Note: Dreamer hits Raven with steel chair). A fan gives Dreamer a cheese grater. You know, I beat Tommy must’ve collected an entire set of kitchenware during his ECW stint. Meanwhile, Dreamer makes some shredded Jew cheese out of Raven’s forehead. So, uh, does that make it automatically kosher, then? There’s that toilet brush again. And now, a portable radio. And a garbage can lid. DIET SPRITE TO THE FOREHEAD! Scoff if you must, but if you’ve had carbonated soda in a flesh wound, you know that shit stings like ten kinds of mother fuck. Brief street fighting segment, followed up with the always charming “Can’t see shit” chant. REF BUMP! Raven gets some Aqua Net in the eyes, and DDTS Richards “by mistake”. Dreamer nails a DDT of his own. Just a two. Raven gets knotted up in the tree of woe (located at Walgreens right next to the shrubbery of discontent). Ladies and gentlemen, WE HAVE BALL PUNCHING. A pile driver. . .on a piece of particle board? Dreamer, YOU MONSTER! Just a two count, by the way. REF BUMP 2: This time, it’s personal. STEVIE KICK!~~~ Meanie misses the moonsault, Raven hits a DDT on a chair, and uno, dos, tres, Raven picks up the win. And is it just me, or does Raven kind of look like Topanga from “Boy Meets World” a little?

Well, Dreamer and Raven weren’t exactly known for putting on mat classics, but as far as plotless bloodbaths go, that was actually one of their better outings. In fact, I am pleasantly shocked by the overall quality of this card, as there hasn’t been a single out-and-out bad match on the entire show. Furthermore. . .

. . .holy fuck, it’s the god damned Mantaur. Or as he is known in ECW-land, “Bruiser Mastino”. And his opponent this evening? El Puerto Riqueno. Well, shit, scratch that thing I said about there not being a single bad match on this card, then. Wait. . . El Puerto Riqueno is billed from Ecuador? THE FUCK. Mastino strips down to his underwear, and some incredible human being in the audience lets out a sarcastic whistle.. Shit, ECW really is like pizza: even when it sucks, it’s still pretty enjoyable. Oh man, how I chortle at the “All you can eat” chant. I take it back, this match fucking rules after all. The crowd is absolutely shitting all over this match, and it’s outstanding. Mastino lands a fall away slam (actually, it was more of a fall forward slam, but what the hell ever) for the three count.

Post-bout, Mastino keeps slamming El Puerto Riqueno, which does kind of sound like a Mexican seafood platter, now that I give it some musing. This, of course, brings out 911, who choke slams Mastino. This, in turn, brings out Bill Alfonso, which brings out Tod Gordon, which brings out Taz, which leads to a scuffle between Alfonso and Gordon, which leads to a stare down between Taz and 911, which results in Mastino getting choke slammed AGAIN, which leads to the entire locker-room emptying to keep Taz and 911 from getting into it, while Alfonso and Gordon roll around like two hot dogs on a rotisserie. NOW Taz and Alfonso leave, which leads to Mastino and Hack Myers trading punches, which SOMEHOW leads to JT Smith getting choke slammed by 911. And all of this overbooked mayhem leads us, naturally, into a dance contest between the Blue Meanie and Buh-Buh Ray Dudley. Of course, what else would all of that shit led to!

Stevie Richards makes fun of Buh-Buh Ray for being retarded, and says that if he can’t beat Meanie in a one-on-one match, he’s fired by Raven. Buh-Buh Ray cures his own Asperger’s Syndrome, tells Richards to fuck himself, and he gets Gulf of Tonkin-ed by Meanie. Meanie hits the Moonsault, Buh-Buh no-sells it, hits a splash off the top rope off, and it’s over. In the post-match, The Dudleys (at this point, consisting of Big Dick, Dances With and Sign Guy) beat on Meanie some more, until Richards comes out, does some of his “two-faced” mic shtick, and gets serenaded by a variation of Ton Basil’s “Mickey” in which the crowd insinuates that he sucks on sphincters for sexual gratification. Huh, I wonder why that one never made it into the pantheon of revered ECW chants?

And thank god, we have ourselves some transitional static.

Song number three on the J. Swift countdown of best Christmas songs EVER, by the way:

Woman (R.I.P.) comes out, followed by The Sandman (Career, R.I.P.). Raven (rocking the Ministry tee) follows suit with his gaggle of miscreants. Richards tries to down a can of Budweiser, but spits it up. Well holy shit, Richards actually has good taste in something. Sandman utilizes the opportunity to kill off a tall boy, which allows Raven to Fort Sumter his ass. We begin with the obligatory “guardrail pinball spot” where the two competitors KEEP throwing one another against the crowd railing. This leads to Sandman (who looks JUST like Frighteners era Jake Busey, by the way) to sneer at the camera and mock The Offspring, which if you ask me, makes The Sandman a pretty good person. Check the dude rocking that sweet old school Washington Capitals jersey. Not surprisingly, this match isn’t exactly moving at Dragon Gate speed. You know, say what you will about The Sandman having about as much technical ability as an unplugged vending machine, but the guy got the little stuff right, like when he sells hurting his hand after punching Raven. Ah, who am I kidding, the sauced mother fucker probably did legitimately hurt his hand throwing an errant punch. By now, you should know that doing the play by play for a Sandman match is like being the Closed Caption transcriber for Boomhauer on King of the Hill: yeah, you can try, but it really doesn’t matter.

Dig those bright blue mats on the outside, eh? And Raven goes through a table. That’s two broken pieces of furniture, for those of you partaking of the official ECW drinking game at home. This is kind of a non-sequitir (from me?), but there is this one chick at school that I SWEAR looks just like Raven, now that I’ve had time to put two and two together. And yes, I DID try to get her phone number, so fuck you if you think that means anything. Yeah, this match is. . .everything I expected it to be. What the. . . A referee bump. . .in an ECW match? Unfathomable! Stevie jumps Sandman, so Woman canes him. Woman tries to cane Raven, but he kind of gets off on it, which allows Richards to bonk Sandman over the head with a “Caution! Wet Floor” placard. Yeah, and a week ago, I was writing a thirty page paper on the influence of religious conviction on academia, folks. Raven and Richards double team Sandman, until Tommy Dreamer makes a run in., whom proceeds to cane the ever loving shit out of EVERYBODY in the ring. Dreamer pile drives Beulah, which is really ironic, since he went on to marry her. Lovelorn teenagers reading this, take note: the way to a girl’s heart is through dropping her on top of her skull, really, really hard. Cactus Jack makes a run-in, double arm DDTS Sandman, throws Raven atop of the champ, and old Sandy kicks out at two. Overall, this match kind of sucks, but at least it’s reaching a pretty hot crescendo. Raven tries for a last ditch super plex, and Sandman counters it into one of the shittiest looking bulldogs you’ve ever seen to score the pin fall.

Well, that wasn’t exactly pretty, but then again, ECW is like the girl with the snaggleteeth and bushy eyebrows you knew back in the tenth grade that, despite her homeliness, gave pretty good
hand shandies, so consider that last bout a respectable, under the table jerking and try not to dwell upon the matter.

Static. Hey, it’s The Public Enemy! Oh, shit.

Joey Styles makes a joke about Tom Pritchard. Huh, a joke about a joke, am I right? So, you’re probably wondering something: exactly who are The Public Enemy wrestling tonight? Well, as it turns out, it’s The Gangstas, which means there will be absolutely ZERO wrestling going on for the next ten minutes. Instead, I’ll just list the number of weapons used in this bout, based on order of appearance:

1.) Cow bell
2.) Trashcan lid
3.) Baking sheet
4.) AM radio transmitter
5.) Steel folding chair
6.) A bigger trashcan lid
7.) A chair, only opened differently
8.) A different colored chair
9.) Fork
10.) Rolling pin
11.) Barbecue tongs
12.) ANOTHER chair
13.) A trashcan lid that was bigger than the first one, but not as big as the second one
14.) The timekeeper’s hammer
15.) A walking cane
16.) Frying Pan
17.) A NONSTICK frying pan
18.) A TERTIARY frying pan
19.) Table
20.) A FOURTH chair

For those of you keen on statistics, that averages to out to be about one unprotected shot to the noggin once every twenty seconds in this bout. And in case you haven’t been on the Internet in the last decade, half of the people involved in this match are now dead. Coincidence? I think not.

Post bout, the ECW faithful chant “sellouts” at The Public Enemy, and then, inexplicably begin cheering them. Fickle much?

All right, we see static one final time.

Oh, and number two on the countdown of best Christmas songs OF THE EVER:

Cactus Jack is making his way ringside. He grabs the mic, says WCW sucks, talks about hanging out with a disabled ECW fan, and promises that his match with Sabu will be contested under NCAA rules. Cactus brings out his own ref, who then gets choke slammed twice by 911. 911 grabs the house mic and declares himself the new referee, and Sabu Battle of Salsus Cactus.

Give Joey Styles all the credit in the world, he manages to keep the Olympic wrestling shtick going for longer than must people would attempt it, actually keeping a point tally as punches, kicks and chair shots are annexed into the mix. “All right, that slingshot leg drop technically resulted in a takedown, so Sabu is back up to negative two points now.” Joey Styles, you rule.

I think you know what to expect from these two. I’ve seen a couple of different matches involving these two, and I’d say that this bout is probably my favorite the two ever had against one another. Granted, that’s kind of like picking your favorite deep cleaning experience at the dentist, but hey, Sabu should appreciate compliments however he gets them.

Our highlights include: an oblique homage to the tangled-in-the-ropes spot that cost Cactus half an ear, Sabu getting hit in the face with a Styrofoam cup and kind of breaking character by acting like he didn’t know what the fuck just hit him, Cactus eating some nasty chair shots off the top rope and Sabu, for what may be the ONLY time in his professional career, attempting the Atomic Arabian Face Buster and ACTUALLY landing it. Like I said earlier, this isn’t a mat classic, but considering what these two had to work with, it’s actually pretty damn respectable.

Well. . .that was an entertaining little diversion. I think that at that point in time, there was no denying that ECW was the best booked product amongst the big three in The States, and while nothing on the show was truly decade-defining, I don’t think there was anything out and out horrible on the card, either. ECW, alike Friday the 13th movies and Taco Bell, is the kind of thing that is great in really small doses, but if you gorge yourself on it nonstop, not only do you get burned out really quickly, you may also develop a mean case of the liquid shits. Well, maybe not, but it has to be prefaced, anyway.

It wasn’t the best ECW show in history, but it had more than enough entertaining moments to keep me glued for a couple of hours. You can do better, obviously, but you can also do a lot (and I do mean A LOT) worse, as well.

Oh, and before I forget, I think my pick for the number one Christmas song ever speaks for itself:


Happy Holidays from The Rocktagon!

(P.S.: Your object of worship is still a lie, though).

- - J. Swift (XoXo)

JAMES SWIFT is a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm. He’s also the runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb. He is the world’s forgotten boy, and he is the one sent here to destroy. . .and periodically, recap WCW PPV events from 1994. But mostly, just the part about recapping WCW PPV events from 1994.

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TWF FLASHBACK

November 2006

SATIRE: DISCONTINUED WWE XMAS PRODUCTS!

by Sean Carless

With Christmas just around the corner, what better way to spend your few remaining dollars (left over after the seemingly infinite line-up of fucking pay-per-views ) then on the following "quality WWE merchandise!" After all, if they don't move this stuff, and fast, stockholders just might get time to figure out what "plummeting domestic buyrates" means!... and well, I don't think they need to tell you what that means! (Seriously. They're not telling you. Everything is fine! Ahem.).