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This was a Three Way Dance for Crazy’s ECW TV Title.
Across the last two years of ECW’s wonderful life, there were a number of three way dances involving these three, occasionally broken up with wrestlers like Jerry Lynn (this made them worse) or Spike Dudley (in one case in late 1999, this made them much better), so much so that one could understandably lose track and tie them all together. Mainlining ECW from 1995-2001 across a span of a little over twelve months like I did, originally, from 2013-2014, it is very easy to lose track of them even further.
However, among all of them, this has always stood out to me as the best.
Part of that is, admittedly, the occasion, and what it allows them in a booking sense.
While so many of those three way were wonderful undercard window dressing, this is a real ass TV main event with the bells and whistles that come with it. Blood and multiple table bumps and, in the best way, all of the bullshit that goes along with it too. Bullshit often gets a negative connotation tacked onto it, but with ECW, I almost always mean it in the best possible way, and the same is true here. ECW had an eye and perhaps an ear for bullshit — the exact right amount in any given moment — that very few other wrestling promotions have ever had (given its short shelf life, one can say that in an absolute sense, rather than, like, “WCW 1996-7 had the perfect feel for it” or “the WWF in 2000-2001 had a mastery over bullshit”). There is enough put in the way of our heroes — the pure babyface Crazy and the about-to-turn Tajiri — to make their final half impressive, before more bullshit gets in the way of that, and at the same time, the bullshit provided is also always deeply impressive and impactful.
The other is what it allows them, in terms of the match itself, and what that brings out on an individual level.
So often in matches like these, there are limits or ceilings bumped into, but this is one in which all three get to bleed a lot and go through tables and have every single thing possible going for them. All three go completely insane, but underneath that, also hit everything perfectly, wrestle and conduct themselves in a way that feels big and makes the entire match feel big, and every single inch and centimeter of the match, on top of all it does right in a larger sense, is a delight.
It is also, absolutely, the Yoshihiro Tajiri show..
Near the middle of a career year that, with the exception of a rare collection (2000 [REDACTED + OTHERS], ’01 Austin, ’89 Flair, mid 1990s Kawada, 2005 Joe, 2006 Necro, 2013 Bryan, 2015 Roddy), few can come close to, Tajiri puts on another violent masterclass. It doesn’t hit the highs of either the January Super Crazy match that it obviously walks in the footsteps of, itself arguably the best ECW match ever, or of the Steve Corino PPV match this begins to set up a month later, itself among the greatest “punishment for a crime” matches in wrestling history, but it is a wonderful medium. Tajiri is involved at all points, while Crazy is out for a while in the first half, and once Guido is eliminated, and something like eighty five percent of this match runs through him. The sharp offense, the blood, the inventive weapon spots, all of it. It isn’t quite what I would call a masterclass, but there are few others in wrestling history who have ever felt like they had either a fuller command of a multi man than this, and even fewer to turn that command into a match as great as this.
What results is a beautiful and wonderful piece of blood, violence, bullshit, and nonsense, one of the great examples ever — and in terms of the TNN show, perhaps the greatest ever — of just what ECW could be when every single thing was working right.
Following Rhino’s interference with a Piledriver off the apron to Crazy, Tajiri wins the title, setting up something else entirely.
Not only one of the better matches in the history of television wrestling, especially through this point in time, but really really arguably also one of the best three way matches ever as well.
***2/3
HANDWERK 