Leighty’s WWE From the Vault Review #3: Top 50 ECW Moments

-Welcome as I go back to the WWE Vault for a third time to find something interesting to review. As I have mentioned countless times I am a sucker for countdowns and when I saw this one, I knew it had to be next on my list. The good thing with this list, is there will be nothing new to add years later as ECW seems to buried for good. This should be fun. Let’s get to it!

50. Total Elimination
-The Eliminators beat The Dudley Boyz at Barely Legal to become ECW World Tag Team Champions for a third time.

49. Sabu Saves Paul E.
-Tazz hits Paul E with a T-Bone Tazplex and chokes him out only for the lights to go out and Sabu makes his return after being fired. Taz and Sabu have a stare down that has the Arena going bonkers and set the stage for the first PPV.

48. Extreme Lucha
-Rey Mysterio Jr and Juventud battle into the streets of Philly. Juvie powerbombs Rey onto a car, but Rey jumps off the hood and gets a rana onto the concrete. Eric Bischoff was paying attention and both men ended up in WCW.

47. Triple Threat Reforms
-Hostile City Showdown: Taz takes out Shane Douglas and Chris Candido, but turns his back on Bam Bam Bigelow, who turns on Taz and we have a new Triple Threat after the heel beatdown. This was around the time I started getting into ECW.

46. RVD’s Record Setting Reign Ends
-RVD gives up the ECW Television Title due to injury to end his 23 month reign as Champion. Back in a simpler time when a nearly 2 year reign seemed crazy. Then Roman Reigns entered the picture. RVD promises to get the TV Title back, but never happened.

45. Sid Arrives in ECW
-Sid showed up in ECW and the smart ECW fans creamed their pants.

44. The Gangstas Split
-The overdub music is awful here. Mustafa turns on New Jack to start a long feud. The crowd was not happy seeing them apart.

43. RVD and Sabu on The Same Page
-Taz and Sabu shake hands after their Main Event at Barely Legal. RVD is out and Sabu helps him beat down Taz.

42. Funk Brands Cactus Jack
-The title pretty much says it all. Terry Funk carries a flaming branding iron to the ring and brands Catcus Jack with it. I am sure Mick covered this is one of his books.

41. Saturn off The Scaffold
-Saturn drops an elbow off a Scaffold to get the pin for The Eliminators!

40. Mikey Wins! Mikey Wins!
-Mikey Whipwreck pulls off one of the biggest upsets as he gets a sunset flip pin on Steve Austin. Whatever happened to that Austin fellow?

39. A Helping Hand For Fonzie
-Todd Gordon has a match with Fonzie, where Fonzie gets split open. Taz was a ref earlier in the night and come out to make the count, but blasts Gordon and puts Fonzie on top for the pin. THE CROWD IS PISSED! This started the Path of Rage and should have been much higher on this list. The crowd immediately starts a Sabu chant.

38. Rey Off The Eagle’s Nest
-Back to Rey Mysterio as this time he hits a Rana from jumping out of The Eagle’s Nest (where Joey did commentary).

37. The American Dream Gets Extreme
-Dusty Rhodes pops up in ECW and has a feud with Steve Corino. Again, the ECW fans who like to rage against WCW and WWF, always seemed to wet their pants when a big star showed up from either company.

36. Awesome and Tanaka Eliminate Taz
-ECW Champion, Taz, gets eliminated minutes into a Three Way Dance involving Tanaka and Mike Awesome. The crowd roars with approval as they knew Taz was bound for WWF. The ECW Fan: we love you until you want to make more money in WCW or WWF.

35. The Franchise’s Head Cheerleader
-Francine turns on The Pitbulls and becomes Shane’s Head Cheerleader. We get an ass shot as she removes her shorts. Francine and Douglas were perfect together.

34. Dreamer Through Four Tables
-This is one of the first memories I have on ECW as they played this moment in video packages forever. Brian Lee chucks Dreamer off The Eagle’s Next and through 4 tables stacked on each other. This showed me a world I never knew existed outside WWF and WCW.

33. Ryhno Becomes Final ECW Champion
-For history alone it should be higher on this list. Rhyno beats The Sandman to become ECW Champion and while not known then, he was the last man to hold the original ECW Title (not counting the WWE version).

32. Flaming Tables
-The Dudley Boys are heading to the WWF and want to take the ECW Tag Titles with them. They put Spike through a stack of flaming tables. Poor Spike!

31. RVD Into The Crowd
-Another moment that was played in video packages forever sees RVD spring off the top rope, over the guard rail and onto Bigelow in the crowd. Insane! That’s not enough though as he comes off the top with a flip dive because it’s RVD!

30. Raven and Dreamer: Tag Team Champions
-As mentioned earlier, The Dudleys were trying to leave for the WWF with the Tag Titles. They face Dreamer who has no partner, but Raven makes his return and hits a DDT to win the Tag Titles and add to the Dreamer/Raven rivalry.

29. Public Enemy’s House Party
-Public Enemy have a party in the ring with a ton of fans and they end up causing the ring to collapse. Someone would be getting sued today!

28. Taz Becomes TV Champion
-Shane Douglas ran his mouth one too many times and accepted an open challenge from Taz. That didn’t go well as Taz chokes him out and wins the ECW World TV Championship.

27. New Jack and Spike Take Flight
-New Jack and Spike jump from a balcony and put The Dudleys through some tables. Jeff Hardy was watching somewhere and was taking notes.

26. 911 Chokeslams Fonzie
-Bill Alfonzo had the chokeslam banned which pissed off the crowd as they were begging for 911 to chokeslam him through the ring. One night Fonzie sees one of his men use the move and unbans it and the crowd immediately knew what that meant. 911 hits the ring and the fans get the payoff they had been desperately wanting.

25. Cane Dewey
-AWESOME! Cactus Jack with an amazing promo that led to his turn against Hardcore wrestling. He brings up how he saw a “Cane Dewey” sign in the crowd and how it changed him became someone wanted to see his son canned. “Dewey Foley is a three year old boy, you SICK SONS OF BITCHES. You ripped out my heart and took everything I believed it and flushed it down the toilet.”

24. FTW Champion
-Crazy that over 20 years later this Title was being defended in AEW. Tazz creates the Fuck The World Belt as his way of protesting Shane Douglas ducking him. Funny how The Brooklyn Belt didn’t stick, but they sure latched on to the FTW monicker.

23. Born to Be Wired
-Sabu and Terry Funk scar each other in a barbed wire match. The match is insane with Sabu tearing his bicep to piece and just wrapping tape around it. He ends up pinning Funk to become ECW Champion. They then had to cut them loose to get away from each other. You can’t say they didn’t give the fans what they advertised.

22. “Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?”
-Should be higher as Tommy Dreamer goes from a pretty boy the fans hated to the heart of ECW by letting Sandman cane the shit out of him. He asks for more and Sandman just lays it in. Sick!

21. Jerry Lynn’s Big Win
-Jerry Lynn and RVD were having revolutionary matches that were stealing the show all over the country. In this case, Lynne finally gets a win over RVD.

20. The First 3-D
-Bubba Ray and D-Von join forces and hit Spike with the very first 3D. Ugly one too! They would get better at it.

19. Steve-A-Mania
-Oh man! Steve Austin dressed up like Hulk Hogan and cuts a promo raging against his run in WCW. Funny enough that Vince was looking for his next Hogan and he was in ECW mocking Hulk Hogan. Classic stuff here! Steve with hair is still weird to see.

18. World Champion Whipwreck
-Mikey wins the ECW World Title from The Sandman to pay off his underdog storyline. Cactus celebrates with Mikey!

17. BWO Take Over
-Too high as this was just ECW mocking the nWo, which is fine, but the nWo made more money in 1996 than ECW did in its existence. Funny enough Stevie ended up in WCW.

16. Paul E’s Message for TNN
-Paul SHOOTS and BURNS EVERY BRIDGE POSSIBLE AGAINST TNN. He rages against TNN giving Vince McMahon 100 million dollars to replace them. Think about how much the WWE now gets for their TV deal. Paul: “We hate this stinking network,” and then he dares the Network to throw him off the air.

15. Beulah defeats Fonzie
-Beulah is an absolute smokeshow and I’m not ashamed to say it. Anyway, here she wins a legitimately great smoke and mirrors match involving Fonzie. Word was Fonzie was going to get fired for his part in the WCW mole ordeal, but this match where he bled all over the place and turned in a great performance working with Beulah saved his job. I have this match on some ECW DVD somewhere when they released collections of their best matches.

14. Sandman Betrayed by His Son
-Tyler, son of Sandman, had been brainwashed by Raven and showed up dressed like his dad for a reunion. It was all a ruse as Raven blasts Sandman, hits him with a DDT, and Tyler poses with Raven.

13. Spike Goes Crowd Surfing
-Iconic moment as Bam Bam tosses Spike into the crowd from the ring and they body surf Spike through the crowd. Great stuff!

12. Dreamer and Lee’s High Incident
-Another moment they should countless times on their weekend shows sees Tommy Dreamer knock Brian Lee off a scaffold and through a stack a tables in the ring. Again, it was this stuff that made ECW different and had me watching as it was so different from everything else I had seen.

11. Eddie and Dean Go to a Draw
-ECW showed they could be more than blood and weapons as they had Eddie and Dean go out and have a great wrestling match. This would be akin to Mr. Burns telling Strawberry to go hit a home run. Both men ended up in ECW soon after this.

10. Terry Funk becomes ECW World Champion
-Paul E pays Terry Funk for being the legend to give ECW a stamp of approval by having him beat Raven in the Main Event of Barely Legal to win the ECW World Title. Good for Funk!

9. Douglas Gets Despicable
-Shane Douglas gets major heat by grabbing Pitbull #1 by the halo that is holding his surgically repaired neck together and throwing him to the mat. That draws a gasp from the Joey on commentary and it’s bedlam from there as wrestlers rush the ring and police and officials have to get Shane out of the ring.

8. Through The Ring
-Another famous moment as Bam Bam Bigelow counters by The Tazzmission by falling backwards with Taz and GOING THROUGH THE RING. This was years before it become a more common spot. This one I watched live and it’s still a pretty great visual.

7. The Dudleys Make History
-The Dudley Boys put Balls Mahoney through a thumbtack table and hits Spike with 3D to win the ECW Tag Titles on their last night in ECW. The crowd popped because they thought it meant The Dudleys were staying, but as we saw above, they dropped the titles to Raven and Dreamer later.

6. WWF and WCW Collide in ECW
-This is still surreal as Mike Awesome signed with WCW while the ECW Champion, so they had him lose the ECW Title to Tazz, who was signed with the WWF. So we had one of the few instances of WCW vs. WWF and it was in a VFW Hall or something similar in ECW. Not show here, but Tazz then jobbed to HHH on SmackDown.

5. I Made It in The ECW Arena
-Tommy Dreamer gives an emotional speech after winning the ECW World Title. It’s funny he mentioned he may never make it to WrestleMania, when he did make it years later. Great, emotional moment for Dreamer.

4. The King Invades ECW
-YES! You want to see HEAT! Jerry Lawler invades The ECW Arena and has help from Sabu and RVD to beat down anyone that enters the ring. Just bedlam and chaos and Lawler cursing out wrestlers and the fans. This makes me smile!

3. Shane Douglas’ Extreme Defiance
-Probably should be #1 as this was the moment that kicked of Extreme Championship Wrestling. Shane Douglas wins the vacated NWA World Title, but double crosses the NWA by throwing the belt down and declaring himself the ECW World Heavyweight Champion.

2. Dreamer Vanquishes Raven
-The greatest feud in ECW history sees Tommy Dreamer finally get a pin on Raven. This feud is one of my favorite of all time. Raven was heading to ECW and even still Dreamer wanted to lose as he knew they would be back in a ring together, but Paul wouldn’t let him lose again.

1. Raining Chairs
-The Public Enemy are down in the ring with Terry Funk and Cactus Jack asking for a chair, so the fans start firing chairs in the ring and The PE get buried under them. Insanely dangerous and you have the ring announcer yelling for the fans to stop, but once it started they had no chance of stopping that.

-This was a fun watch as it was all about the nostalgia and I can appreciate that. Minor quibbles about placement aside, this covered pretty much everything you would expect that can be covered it today’s world. Obviously Mass Transit, Sandman being crucified, and even Tommy’s “I’ll Take Them Both,” were excluded. Probably some others that I am forgetting. I kind of hope they release more Top 50 lists because this is right up my alley.

-Thanks for reading!