Dark Pegasus Video Review: CZW: Opening Night

CZW Opening Night by J.D. Dunn Twitter.com/jddunn411 Facebook.com/jddunn411 February 13, 1999 From Mantua, N.J.. No hosts. Opening Match, CZW Junior Heavyweight Title: The Sensational One vs. Quicksilver. Sensational One apparently won one of those heralded Rio de Janeiro tournaments because this is the first match and he’s already the champion. Quicksilver (aka White Lotus) is not the guy who would go on to mild notoriety in PWG. Anyway, this is not exactly Mysterio vs. Psicosis or anything. It varies between marginally competent and “Man, that’s sad.” Check out Quicksilver’s handspring rebound off the ropes. Better yet, don’t. No good can come of it. Sensational One bumps around okay, saving this from being a total loss. Quicksilver ties him up in a Haas of Painish inverted figure-four to get the pin and the title at 6:40. After the match, Sensational One attacks Quicksilver from behind and demands a rematch. Brutal in a bad way. 1/4* The Kingpins vs. Extreme Fahrenheit. EF are your resident heartthrobs, one of whom has a healthy beer-gut going. I’m not sure which one it is, but their names are “Mr. Motion” and “Heartbreaker.” The Kingpins (Jim Price & Bill Schaffer) are two guys who look like a chunky Glenn Jacobs and the Kingpin from Marvel comics. No cool white suit, though. Kingpin is 80% suit and the rest a combination of judo and that sweet cane. This being CZW, even the blowjob team gets hardcore, using a chair at one point. It is at this point that I begin to realize that the Kingpin with hair is significantly suckier than his partner. He’s blowing everything! Maybe that’s how he got the job. The match breaks down, and the one who looks like the Kingpin nails… um, I’ll just say Heartbreaker with a bowling pin (really) for the win at 9:27. Laughably bad in parts. 1/4* Ric Blade (w/Lady Blade?) vs. Mr. Meaner. I put the question mark because I’ve never heard of her, and the PA system is pretty bad. It might be “Lady Blade” or “Lady Blaze.” Or maybe Lady Jaye of G.I. Joe fame, but I doubt it. This is either Blade’s debut or close to it. He is one of owner John Zandig’s pupils, so look for him to become a big deal fairly quick. Mr. Meaner looks a lot like Justin Credible. Hard to believe that look ever caught on. Meaner smacks Blade around but makes the mistake of hitting on his girl. She come in and low blows him Chyna style… except very slowly. That sets up a huracanrana Lita style… except very slowly. The ref refuses to disqualify her on the grounds that Meaner was antagonizing her. Okay, well, as long as there’s an explanation because otherwise my suspension of disbelief would be totally shot right now. Blade misses a moonsault, and Meaner finishes with a Michinoku Driver at 7:29. Well, the one-third of the participants that you’ve heard of looked okay. * CZW Iron Man Title: Derek Domino vs. Lobo (w/Zandig). If I find out that “iron man” means this is a sixty-minute match, I’m going to fucking lose it. Derrick Domino is a Cactus Jack ripoff right down to “Born to Be Wild” music. Oh, but he says they played the wrong music for him. Yeah, it probably should have been “Layla” now that I think about it. Lobo is another trainee of Zandig. That’s kind of a weird situation. Zandig debuted in 1998 and started a wrestling school in 1999, which is akin to having Justin Bieber judge talent on American Idol. The action is just too darned fast and furious to keep up with, especially the part where Lobo goes for a spinning wheel kick but Zandig has already tripped Domino from the floor, so Lobo just does a spin in midair and lands on his ass. Not exactly Baba/Tsuruta in terms of student/teacher relationships there. Lobo wins the very prestigious Iron Man title with a schoolboy at 4:50. 1/2* CZW Tag Team Titles: John Dahmer & Jose Rivera Jr. vs. The Brothers of East L.A.. It’s been a bad night for “reigning” champions so far. Dahmer looks like Vince Russo in S&M gear. Btw, just because Cactus Jack Manson did it, that doesn’t mean that *every* serial killer has a name that works for wrestling. Charles Manson worked because he was a friggin’ nutbar who was half rockstar and half hippie messiah. Jeffrey Dahmer looked like a guy from the B-story in a Mike Judge movie. The East L.A. boys are Mexican gangsters. They should probably just shoot the champs and take their titles. The champs are antagonizing them, after all. Instead, they use weak chairshots that Hulk Hogan would call light. And to think, this is the hardcore fan’s paradise? The crack production staff follows a brawl on the floor, so they miss whatever went on inside, but we do see one of the East L.A. guys pin Dahmer about 10 minutes in to become the new tag champs. Not even a real match. Just a bunch of chairshots and wandering around. The historical significance of the very prestigious tag titles (invented earlier in the day) changing hands makes it watchable, though. I’m just kidding, this sucked, but I liked the entrance music. 1/2* Four Corners of Pain: Justice Pain vs. Nick Gage vs. Derrick Domino vs. T.C.K. Domino says “the big Jew” broke his nose or words to that effect, so he attacked him in the back and is taking his spot in this match. Wall-to-wall chaos here, and the poor camera operator can’t catch any of it. Domino gets eliminated at about 7:02. Someone comes off the stage area and puts someone else through a table. A guitar filled with talc gets used. The bell rings, so maybe someone got counted out. Seriously, 9/11 footage was shot in less panicked fashion. The guy on the PA is leading a “CZW” chant. Oh, now that’s a little gauche, don’t you think? Zandig comes out and distracts the ref as Lobo returns and staples Gage in the face. That allows Justice Pain to get the win at 14:03. Well, it was not boring. That’s about all I can say. It got significantly better when it was down to two guys. **1/4 After the match, Gage calls for a match with Lobo at the next event.

The 411: A laughable show by today's standards, and there's no production staff to speak of that can hide just how horrible this show is. Thankfully for CZW, they debuted in an era where anything and everything that even resembled wrestling drew money (yes, even WCW). By the time the wrestling bubble burst in late 2001, CZW had already established a niche with the hardcore audience, something that has kept them alive to this day. Thumbs way down.

Final Score:  2.5   [ Very Bad ]