Steve Corino vs. Yoshihiro Tajiri, ECW Hardcore Heaven (5/14/2000)

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It’s a very rare feeling — not just as a wrestling fan, but as a human being — to experience the greatest ever version of something, or at least, what feels to you like the greatest ever version of something, especially for the first time. Those are occasions you remember, if not so much in terms of where you were or the exact date upon which it happened, the act of experiencing them and the feeling it gave you.

There are not a lot of wrestling matches that leave me in awe after the fact.

Not to toot my own horn, but when you watch a lot of wrestling, it is a harder and harde effect to achieve. It very rarely happens now (although, writing this in 2024, the year of Demus vs. Mad Dog, it is not impossible), but even ten or so years ago, when I first binge watched ECW when I was in college, it was not an especially easy thing to do.

Steve Corino vs. Yoshihiro Tajiri left me in awe, and every time I have watched it since, it has continued to do so.

I believe that, throughout the entire history of professional wrestling, there has never been a greater version of a former lackey getting revenge upon his former boss than in this match.

Part of that comes from everything before it.

Yoshihiro Tajiri had previously done what nobody else in The Network could do by winning the ECW World Television Title, only for that apparatus to also turn on him to gift it to Rhino, in the ultimate kind of expression of the idea that for everyone else, the people Tajiri represents, some things will be taken away from you the moment you have them because they are meant for a handpicked favored few. Of course, far more important than the context of ECW history, The Network, or Corino and Tajiri together, it’s the pre-match microphone work from Corino that gives this so much of the flavor that it has, in which Corino not only calls Tajiri an old-timey World War II era light slur beginning with a J, but upon a rebuke to an offer to rejoin him as an underling, drops in a “slant-eyed bastard” as well, before being immediately kicked as hard as possible in the face.

That’s so much of what I love about this match, I think.

Not only that it is this moment of revenge for a put-upon great and that this has been building for nearly a year, but also that it is one of the great morality tales in the history of professional wrestling.

In a medium that so often rewards cruelty towards everyone else, whatever group that might come to mind when you read that, this is both arguably among the most direct and inarguably among the most brutal cases of revenge for that ever caught on film. Wrestling is not short upon matches revolving around punishments for transgressions, but they’re usually bigger and more dramatic in scope, and I think there’s such a thrill in someone simply being this exact type of an asshole and being given one of the most horrific beating ever captured on film for it.

Part of it is also that, just as a match, it is one of the sickest and coolest and tightest matches of all time.

Every single thing to happen in this match rocks.

Corino and Tajiri pack this thing to the brim and then some with things to love. Not only all of Tajiri’s hard strikes — and this is a match with very possibly a few of his hardest kicks ever and what I believe is the most violent Karate Rush ever caught on film — but every bit of Corino offense is fantastic, every Tajiri attack feels like attempt on the life of Steve Corino, it also gets constantly meaner with every moment. It is, sneakily, one of the more hostile matches ever as well, with Tajiri taking more and more offense to every moment Corino sticks around, and feeling as if he’s constantly punishing him even further for refusing to stay down after all of the shit he’s pulled.

The other thing I love about this match is that — much like another all-time classic to also happen on May 14th including two wrestlers who are SO Corino-coded in different ways — it is one of the best ever examples of elevating and legitimizing a bullshit heel in defeat while never once making it obvious that this is what’s happening.

Obviously, yes, Steve Corino bleeds a whole lot, genuinely one of the more gruesome and impressive crimson masks of the 21st century let alone the year, and survives a lot after that, but more important is what he does for himself. His manager Jack Victory (high spot) is barely involved, and for the first time, what Corino has, he gets by himself. The match is smart enough to present him as an opportunist, lucky enough to be in good situations like in front of a table Tajiri set up in a moment when Tajiri gets slightly overzealous, but also always smart enough to make the most of everything. It’s the genius of a match like this done right, one that never yells at you that this wrestler is Great or that this wrestler is tough, but one that lays the seeds of admiration in small ways so that they can be harvested later while still feeling organic (in one of the best ECW segments in its final years, in which Corino of all people, is the first to interrupt the Justin Credible catchphrase and call it the lamest thing in the world to a huge pop).

What Corino gets in this match is all fairly basic, but because of the genuinely grotesque combination of what Tajiri’s done to him in terms of offense as well as the deep red covering his face and all that bleached hair, it’s all impressive. More than that, it is never so impressive that it turns the focus away from what is rightfully happening him towards what he’s fighting, and it is never so much — in terms of what he does nor what he recovers from nor how — that it feels as though he doesn’t deserve this.

That’s the magic here.

For all he gains in this match by taking this stunning beating, it is also always one that feels earned, and that also feels great.

Be it Corino’s luck, Corino’s toughness, or Corino’s mind, it all runs into a wall at the end, and that wall is Yoshihiro Tajiri. Corino cannot overcome the staggering amount of blood loss nor just how badly Tajiri wants to beat his ass, and steps in it further and further. Leaning on the edge of the table, he is perfectly set up for the best Tajiri kick of all time across his face, perfectly lined up on this surface.

Tajiri follows up by double stomping him through said table — and not just breaking it in half, but with the long edges still in tact somewhat, meaning he has literally put him through it — and gains the greatest feeling victory of his career.

Genuinely, it is one of my favorite matches of all time.

Some of that is, to be fair, the fact that when I first watched it, it had less the reputation as an all-timer and more so just as a late ECW highlight. I know I was never the first one to talk about this match like THIS, but as the years have gone on and more people have come around to this as one of the best ever, there’s a certain pride I’ve gained in being there earlier. The other part, independent of that and way way way way stronger than that, is that it constantly fills me with so much joy, and has become one of those matches I watch over and over again. I don’t do that a whole lot, it’s really like this and the FEAR main event and few select others, and like those, this has never once lost its charm to me.

I think it is the best version of this idea ever, the greatest coward heel legitimization ever, one of the great bloodbaths ever, one of the best matches ever in the history of one of the coolest wrestling promotions of all time, and, above all, one of those matches that I can and have and would recommend to anyone, no matter to what extent you are a fan.

Yoshihiro Tajiri vs. Steve Corino is professional wrestling to me, and few matches have ever felt better, both on the first time and on maybe, I don’t know, the twentieth.

The only reason I’m not 100% positive this is the best match in ECW history, is because four months earlier, it’s possible Tajiri had an even better one.

****1/4

CM Punk vs Steve Corino, ROH Empire State Showdown (10/25/2003)

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This is one of my favorite matches.

As with any Steve Corino match early on in Ring of Honor, so much of the beauty comes before the bell, with the Bobby Cruise custom ring introduction. The best of these will come a week later as Corino has his man read out a list of every Southern Champion ever, but this is not too far away from that, with Corino making wrestling nerd and straight edge guy CM Punk hear a list of every drug and/or alcohol abuser in pro wrestling history. In classic fashion, unable to let anybody ever get the last word, CM Punk has a different ring announcer read off a list of every drug he has never and will never do to try and counter Steve Corino.

This is a sensational chunk of pro wrestling, even before the bell rings.

Once it does, the match delivers as one would expect.

Punk and Corino have this incredibly fascinating aspect to their work together in ROH from 2003 through their final interactions in spring 2005, in which Punk, Corino, the fans, and the company at large recognize that CM Punk is like Steve Corino in 1999 and 2000 if (a) the overall wrestling environment was more conducive to a wrestler like that breaking out than it was at that time & (b) Punk could avoid Corino’s vices, hit the gym more, and have a greater chance at lasting large scale mainstream success.

The match is hard fought and occasionally really mean. It’s twenty minutes that practically flies by, made up in large part in between the mean offensive moments by Punk stealing Corino taunts from ZERO1 to be mean, or classic veteran bits from Corino himself. The tempers of both men flare up here and there in ways that feel so realistic, pushed to those points by just how much they have in common after all. There’s a a real likeable spirit to the thing at large, two horribly unlikeable people riffing it out against each other in fascinating ways, Corino digging a little deeper to keep up with CM Punk, and Punk thinking up stuff to keep up with the more advanced and experienced version of himself.

Eventually, a twenty minute time limit hits, and neither Punk nor Corino are able to fully reckon with each other. The future cannot one hundred percent understand every lesson of experience and the past cannot one hundred percent understand everything that the future is trying to tell it.

The real beauty of the thing comes after the match. When they’ve hit the twenty minute time limit and they riff a little bit about the nature of ROH, the nature of being antagonists both in the first place and then in a promotion like this to begin with. The true lasting impact and beauty of the match comes not so much in the body of the twenty minutes of the match itself, nor in the pre-match, but here at the end of the thing.

What I’ll always remember about this is not any of the prelude, but the culmination of the half hour before it, in which Corino embraces Punk in response to the calls for more time, says he’s going to teach him here and now how to be a heel, and bellows out “SCREW YOU, PAY FOR IT NEXT TIME”.

A passing of the torch from one generation to the next, and a beautiful and wonderful thing.

***1/4

 

BJ Whitmer vs. Steve Corino, ROH Best in the World 2016 (6/24/2016)

This was a FIGHT WITHOUT HONOR.

Genuinely, this was an absolute blast.

Part of that is that, for a long-time ROH fan, there is so much to love here. Whitmer’s tease of the apron piledriver that broke his neck once, Corino’s use of Kevin Steen’s Package Piledriver, the rubbing alcohol into a cut that Corino used on Homicide in the original WAR OF THE WIRE masterpiece, a callback to recent ROH history with double roll of quarters style attacks. It’s a treasure trove of fun little things for all types of fans, this thing nearly as rich with history as it is with violence.

The match is far from just reliant on these neat little things though, because in the hands of a master like Steve Corino, these are little garnishes on the top instead of the main feature.

Corino and Whitmer have a disgusting match. It is a relatively short match given the part-time-at-best status of the men involved, but every inch of the thing is soaked in blood and covered in dirt. It is goddamned filthy, and I loved it. The violence of the thing is magnificent, but it’s also immaculately constructed in a way that allows it to hold up all these years later. Every spot is incredibly cool and deeply disgusting at the same time, while they also become both bigger and less showy. The hate pours out of the thing, as chairs to the knee become real punches to the head and glass bottles to the face and both men loading up different containers of coins. The last bit is especially great. Whitmer responds to a double down by taking out a roll of quarters, but the prize goes to Steve Corino. In one of the filthiest and most wonderful dirtbag moments in a wrestling match since Necro Butcher pulled a crumpled up CVS bag out of his jeans in PWG, Corino just takes a plastic bag full of coins out of his pocket, takes off his boot and sock, and loads the sucker up.

Both turn and swing, and just about knock the other out.

In classic ROH fashion, the finish is to build something else that never happens. Kevin Sullivan, of all people, shows up and he stabs Steve Corino with the golden spike, setting up Beej for the Exploder on Corino for the win.

Corino will wind up leaving ROH before they get to have a real blowoff, and with his plans to retire, his last match will go to Cody Rhodes instead in an endearing attempt to pay back a favor from seventeen years earlier. As such, it’s not really anyone’s fault that this wound up having no conclusion, not even the WWE’s, because Corino’s a guy they ought to hire, if for nothing else than as a make good for a career where Corino ought to have been making huge money from 2000 onward. So, there is no payoff, and nothing else really happens after this.

If anything, the weirdness of this finish leading nowhere only kind of enhances the charm.

This was a weird little thing. A love letter that works in the ways love letters often don’t, because it was done by people who seemed to genuinely understand what they were doing instead of simply liking the aesthetics of something or adopting the window dressing to receive easy acclaim. A genuine filthy old school bloodletting, soaked in filth, and with as insane of an ending as possible to match.

I write all the time about matches, wrestlers, and promotions half-doing things, and this is the antithesis of that. If you are going to do a thing, commit and put one foot in front of the other with your entire being. If you are going to have a match like this, put your heart into it, even if that means utilizing the thing to pump half of the blood out of your body. If you are going to be insane, be insane.

Half-measures are for cowards, and this was not a match between cowards.

God bless and hail Satan.

***1/2

Kevin Steen vs. Steve Corino, ROH Final Battle 2011 (12/23/2011)

This was a No Disqualification Match, with Kevin Steen’s future ROH job on the line, also featuring Jimmy Jacobs as the special referee. None of that matters, and it’s all bad. The point is that it unleashes these two in a match with no rules.

Corino is old and past it and this angle SUCKS, but this match is way better than it should be.

It’s like the match people pretend Triple H vs. Kevin Nash was.

Kevin Steen does Kevin Steen stuff and commentary has to pretend like he’s evil and not the coolest wrestler in the company. Still, they’re able to create a fun story given their history, with Steve Corino having created a monster that he can no longer control. Dr. Frankenstein loses control of The Monster. Corino bleeds a lot from the ear and he has the veteran wile to at least try and fight most of what Big Kev tries, but no longer has the grit and physical skill to do more than delay it. This is not some big epic, but it’s a fun garbage brawl and on a show as bad as this, it’s definitely the best match on the show.

In his effort to outsmart the horrible being he himself created, Corino winds up getting a little too cute, and Big Kev is able to fight whatever big bit was planned before hitting the Package Piledriver through four chairs to win.

This isn’t GREAT, but it’s the most fun that an ROH match has been in three months.

***