Super Crazy vs. Yoshihiro Tajiri vs. Little Guido, ECW on TNN (4/14/2000)

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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

 

Taz vs. Bam Bam Bigelow, ECW Living Dangerously (3/1/1998)

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