Commissions continue again, this one coming from frequent contributor and the most generous contributor of all of them, Kai. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi.
This was for Taz’s ECW World Television Title.
If you’ve been reading this site for any significant length of time, you know that I have a supreme affinity for a certain sort of big match that largely hit its zenith in the 1990s.
Generally, I mean the sort of a punchy big title match that feels like a prize fight. It isn’t a hard set of criteria, of course, as I’ve said before that several 2010s NXT Womens Title matches, especially the Bayley/Nia and Bayley/Asuka matches have felt like this, and those aren’t exactly Sting vs. DDP, but I know it when I feel it. While I often refer to it among friends or in initial notes as “WCW World Title style”, it isn’t just the province of WCW, so much as that WCW is where I think it happened most often, as a result of being the home to guys like Sting, Goldberg, Lex Luger, and to a lesser extent, Scott Steiner and Diamond Dallas Page, these wrestlers overflowing with presence or aura or charisma or whatever other word you might like to use, whose gifts were best served in matches under fifteen minutes. Beyond that though, the difference was that these matches walked the line that big pro wrestling ought to walk for me, in many respects. Matches that felt like legitimate competitions (in spirit if not in style, sadly there are very few shoot-style Stinger Splashes), in that every move either felt like a big swing and an attempt to win as soon as possible, but with these huge dramatic moments that, in theory, ought to be the entire point of a fake sport in the first place.
ECW is not often a place that lent itself to this sort of fighting, both by definition and just as a reality of scale, but these Taz vs. Bigelow matches in 1998 are arguably the closest that they ever came.
Mechanically speaking, they are not perfect.
The match is not assembled flawlessly, there are moments of meandering brawling outside, there’s even an unfortunate bit where Bigelow slips on some liquid (this is an ECW show so place your bets) at ringside, and the audio mixing does as many favors (the ring) as it doesn’t. If you insist on nitpicking, there are things here that I think, credibly, everyone has to acknowledge.
At the same time, fuck all of that.
Bigelow and Taz have a fight that feels fucking gigantic from start to finish. Those smaller problems, while not nothing, also all work within the framework of the thing, and make it feel a little realer, given that within the confines of the show, this is not a fight between two scientific and mechanical marvels. The things they get right, like the big spots — a T-Bone suplex off the classic ECW PPV Big Ramp into the crowd or the big finish — are not only breathtaking, but built to well and sold even better. The secret of the match, as well as what makes it feel like a major event fight on par with some others like it in larger companies, is how great the exhaustion selling is.
The big stuff obviously takes a toll, but throughout the back half, Taz and Bigelow are better than most ever at using everything in their selling arsenals, from stumbling to facial expressions to simply the way they walk to express that they have been in a genuine war, and it makes SUCH a difference in the feeling of the match, as well as enhancing all that follows, especially the finish itself.
Famously, Bigelow leaps down on Taz to counter the Tazmission, and for I think the first time in wrestling history, they go through the ring. After climbing out himself — handled perfectly, with Bam Bam initially failing to pull Taz out the first time — Bigelow drags Taz out to pin him, becoming the first to cleanly beat him in ECW since he really became Taz, perfectly setting up a rematch.
It’s wonderful stuff.
1998 being what it is, a banner year for big American professional wrestling, it’s hard to throw superlatives at it, but it’s one more example of ECW at or at least near its best. The sort of thing that, while maybe not all that as a cold match, is enhanced so much by the booking of Taz for years before this, and by the choices made, particularly a genuinely stunning finish that stands the test of time.
Not the best they can do, as to my memory I liked the Heat Wave 98 match even more, but once again, the real shit comes through, and there’s nothing quite like it.
***1/4
HANDWERK 