VIOLENT PANDA Wrestling Review: ECW One Night Stand 2006

VIOLENT PANDA Wrestling Review

ECW One Night Stand 2006

ORDER THE REPLAY.

Paul Heyman hits the ring to start the show… It’s funny, more fans in the crowd literally bow down to Heyman when he appears than HHH has ever gotten.. and Trips has Lemmy telling them to “BOW DOWN FUHR DE GAME-UHHH in his bonus theme.

Paul says that this show is for “… everyone who wanted to be hardcore more than they wanted to be a ‘superstar'”. Paul mentions Vince’s name and it gets boos.. hopefully Vince takes that as “mark reaction”. Paul also calls himself “the swinging shlong of the extreme”. He thanks the fans and welcomes us to the rebirth of ECW. The crowd heat is INSANE for this, and carries through the entire show. It’s incredible.

Not long into the night, Joey Styles points out that the fans are clearly the stars of ECW, and that is 100% true. It feels so good to hear passionate fans letting everyone know exactly how they feel, after years and years and years of WWE crowds going along with stupid angles to a large degree.

Taz vs. Lawler:

– Lawler bitchslaps Styles on the way to the ring, and Styles sells it with a dramatic collapse, knocking over his set, even. King hits the ring, and Joey Styles races in the ring and tries to CHOKE OUT LAWLER. Lawler shrugs him off, and Taz locks in the Tazmission. Fans chant “tap”, but instead Lawler’s arm is raised and dropped three times. Taz wins in maybe 10 seconds.

A perfectly-booked announcer match. Vince would have given this 10 minutes.

Winner: Taz

Kurt Angle vs. Randy Orton:

– The crowd just lit this thing up huge. “You can’t wrestle” chants at Orton. Orton cinched in his legendary piece of crap chinlock and gets a giant “boring” chant for his lack of effort. Angle rolled out some submissions, but he was grinding and working as he did it – he wasn’t just sitting there.

– What was really exciting is that it seems like Angle has developed a new “shoot” style of wrestling. It felt new, it felt real, it felt.. *gasp*.. CURRENT. It’s also smart, as everyone has pointed out that Kurt’s all banged up. Working a mat-based style means not taking too many bumps and thus this might not shorten his career as much as everyone thinks.

– Chants as the match progressed: “Fuck him up, Angle, fuck him up”, “Pussy”, “Angle’s gonna kill you”, “Break his ankle”, “You got bitchslapped”, “Orton swallows” and when it was all over.. “Get the fuck out”. Awesome.

Winner: Kurt Angle

The FBI (Little Guido & Tony Mamaluke w/ Big Guido) vs. Super Crazy & Tajiri:

– So is Tajiri back full time? Last I heard, he’d laid an egg and was waiting for a tag partner to hatch out of it for an upcoming bout in Japan’s HUSTLE promotion.

– A decent match made more refreshing because the guys are given time and able to cut loose. Crazy and Takiri hit stereo tarantulas. Big Guido cheats to help the FBI win.

Winners: FBI

After, Big Show hit the ring to a slightly heavier version of his theme and beat the piss out of everyone. The reaction was not great until Tony Mamaluke did an awesome spot where Show wrapped him up and flung him sideways. Show then delivered a huge boot to Big Guido’s face, and the fans bought into it.

Then came the worst part of the show. For some reason, JBL was in the balcony. He cut a long, drawn-out promo that, just like last year, got shat on. And not in a “heel heat” way, but a “go away” way. It brought the show to a screeching halt and was totally ineffective. Unfortunately, I think that management takes the huge chants of “You suck dick” and “boring” as big heat. I guess you gotta give him silence if you really want him to go away.

World Title Match – Sabu vs. Rey Misterio©:

– Since early 2005, Sabu has been on an incredible roll. The guy is just hitting on all cylinders. It’s really, really sad that in ONE NIGHT the WWE got a better match out of Sabu than TNA did in a year.

– Rey got booed mercilessly, but won a portion of the fans over by the end. His big suck-up “ECW” letters stitched in the back of his mask made it worse, and Styles even acknowledged it.

– Rey cut loose a bit more, hitting a big sitting splash out of the ring putting Sabu through a table. It was a war from there, and culminates in a gigantic spot where Sabu hits a tornado springboard DDT through a table TO THE FLOOR. It was completely sick.. brutal spot. The ref stopped the match, claiming both guys were injured. At first the crowd chanted “bullshit”, but it turned into applause. The match was good, and we had to expect a wonky finish.

– I actually like the finish. I’d like to see more ref stoppage finishes in wrestling, like in MMA. A ref refusing to let one guy continue seems like a great thing, as that wrestler can then claim he could have continued on and demand a rematch.

Winner: draw

Mick Foley hit the ring and got very little reaction.. seriously. The crowd is thoroughly confused. The build-up to this big tag match just did not work. Mick says yes, he did sell out… MSG. He said he loved ECW in its’ glory days.. when Stephanie McMahon was in control.. hahahah. Awesome. Crowd still doesn’t bite though. Mick even namedrops The Alliance.

Edge and Lita join him. Edge cuts a generic promo and can’t get much heat in a building full of it. Lita grabs the mic and calls Tommy Dreamer the “Innovator of Silence” hahahha. Finally the faces come out with Beulah. Beulah pretty much cut a more effective promo than all the heels combined, and insisted that this match be a 3 on 3.

Tommy Dreamer, Terry Funk & Beulah McGillicutty (Dreamer?) vs. Mick Foley, Edge & Lita:

– The ladies stayed on the apron almost the whole way through, even though it was an anything-goes-style brawl.

– A barbed wire board came into play and shocked the crowd into hotness. Everyone took sick bumps into it. Mick started gouging Terry with some barbed wire, and Funk made like his eye was injured and was taken to the back. Terry came back after a few minutes with a flaming barbed wire two by four.

– It got REAL scary there, as we almost had a fire chair incident in reverse. Terry hit Mick twice with the fire board, and Mick’s back CAUGHT FIRE! And then he bumped off the apron and into the barbed wire board! Thankfully the fire didn’t spread, and guys sprayed Mick with fire extinguishers after not too long.. still. That was scary.

– We got a “CATFIGHT” finally, and Funk ended up taking a sick bump on the barbed wire board. Edge ended up pinning Beulah with her legs behind her head.

An insane.. INSANE hardcore match. Incredible stuff.

Winner: Edge, Mick & Lita

Balls Mahoney vs. Masato Tanaka:

– Tanaka got a pretty big reaction. But this match was short. The crowd was into the “BALLS” punches, brawled at ringside. Then, in the ring, Balls landed a big, chair-denting chairshot on Tanaka.. and that was it?

Tanaka no-sells chairshots as a hobby! What a waste. Too short to be anything. I just don’t see what Balls has to offer. Is Tanaka sticking around? If he is, this was a crime.

Winner: Balls Mahoney

EUGENE hit the ring. The crowd did not give thunderous boos like the bookers probably figured. Eugene read a poem, which was pretty funny, and then Sandman came out.. to some generic theme. Without the “Enter Sandman” theme, Sandman’s big entrance falls REAL flat. Come on Vince, why be such a fucking cheapskate?

Sandman canes the crap out of Eugene and that’s it.

WWE Title Match – RVD vs. John Cena©:

– I don’t care what anyone says.. John Cena is a total star and deserves to be at the very top. John hits the ring to 100% boos.. 100%, no question. He throws his hat into the crowd. A fan throws it back. He throws his shirt into the crowd and a fan catches it. The crowd turns to that guy and chants “throw it back” at him, and he does. John picks the shirt up, throws it to another section. Fan again throws it back. John throws the shirt to each side, just looking for ONE PERSON to keep it, but they all throw it back. This is genius.. this is something only The Rock would think of. A totally unique moment, incredible stuff.

– The match goes about 20 minutes, and is dominated by the pure hatred of the crowd on hand. People were throwing toilet paper in the ring and gave out a massive string of hateful chants like “Fuck you Cena”, “You can’t wrestle” and then, when John was on offense.. “Same old shit”. He actually then went from the top to the floor.. with a stupid forearm. Why bother? heh heh.

– Cena actually dominated this one, and rolled out a couple cool moves. He catapulted Rob into a chair in the corner, and the sound it made was absolutely perfect. John also gave Rob a one-armed powerbomb. Tazz oversold it, though, acting like John had really “come into his own”. No he didn’t. He just did two new spots.

– John locked in the STFU and you could sense the anxiety.. Rob reached the ropes, but John didn’t want to release. That’s smart, as this is “ECW rules”.. and doesn’t that mean there are no rules? The ref got in Cena’s face and John decked him. Nick Patrick came in to ref and Edge ended up giving John a lame-looking spear through a propped-up table.

– But I do like the Edge interference, as it potentially re-ignites the Cena/Edge feud on Raw, a feud that NEVER should have been cut short in the first place. It drew ratings and was exciting. Much more exciting than Vince’s Ass, D-X (who look incredibly lame now, compared to ECW) and the Spirit Squad.

– Rob plays up the PATHOS – should he pin John? Should he try to win the title on interference? The crowd screams “YEESSSS” and Rob ends up hitting a frogsplash. But the ref had been bumped, and Paul Heyman himself slides in and counts.. 1, 2, 3. Rob wins.

Incredibly hot match, a total spectacle. I loved it.

Winner: Rob Van Dam

I’m sure Rob will be stripped or lose in a re-match tomorrow on Raw, but whatever. For tonight, it was great.

Rob celebrates with the ECW locker room and then joins his wife in the balcony.

OVERALL: FIVE OUT OF FIVE. This is the best wrestling show I have seen in years. The crowd made it absolutely incredible.