ktc

Dueling Chair Shots
by Kurt La Mont
column date 07/06/2000

ECW has Tag Team Championship Belts?

Justin Credible threw down the Tag Team belts at Cyberslam back in April. It is now July and we still do not have new tag team champions. There’s hardly been a mention of the belts recently. As far as we know there is no current plans to settle this at Heatwave. I read that there might be a 2 day tournament in NYC in August.

Mike Awesome was brought back after he defected to WCW to job the ECW World Heavyweight Championship. The reason this was done instead of vacating the title was to preserve the Title’s lineage.

Apparently a title lineage is only important with the World title as RVD was stripped of the TV Title a few months back due to injury and now the Tag Titles have been vacated for nearly 2 1/2 months.

To me it makes no sense to have a vacant Title. I’ve been trying to figure out Paul E’s thinking on this and I can’t come up with a good answer. The only possible explanation that I can come up with is that he doesn’t feel that any of his current tag teams are worthy champions.

Back at Cyberslam at the Q&A while the Impact Players were still champions Justin said that while he thought “all the tag teams in ECW are great that I really want to work a program with someone outside of ECW.” A month later when Lance committed to WCW he made a remark on WCW Live that he really wished that he and Justin could have “worked with a really hot babyface tag team”, so that they could take it to the next level, but none existed in ECW.

These aren’t exactly resounding votes of confidence. Apparently Paul E. is thinking along those same lines.

Currently, the tag team division is essentially made up of 5 teams:

Nova & Chetti

Doring & Roadkill

The New Dangerous Alliance

The Baldies

Swinger and Diamond

Of all the tag matches these teams have had I can only think of one memorable match. That was the Nova/Chetti v. Doring/Roadkill match at Heatwave 99 at the beginning of Chetti’s Ricky Martin gimmick. Outside of that match I can’t think of any match that I would consider memorable. When 2 of these teams face off you get the same general 7-8 minute match every time out.

The problem is not that any of these teams lack the talent, it’s that they have is a lack of direction. None of these teams are involved in a feud or angle. They just get tossed out there and are told to wrestle. If you are not told where to go, any road will take you there. Right now these teams have no direction.

There has never been an angle between 2 of these teams that has built up to a PPV. There hasn’t even been an scheduled PPV match between 2 of these teams announced before a PPV. If there is no reason why these teams are wrestling each other then why should the fan care when they watch?

The frustrating part about all of this is that booking something for these teams wouldn’t be too difficult. I could sit here and think about it for 10 minutes and come up with some general outline of how things could go for a month that would be mildly entertaining and I’m not even terribly creative. You’d think it would be pretty easy for a “genius” to come up with something half way decent. Instead ECW has a handful of tag teams and no tag champions.

While these 5 teams currently aren’t as good as most of the past ECW Tag Champions it doesn’t mean that they won’t be if given the opportunity. And an opportunity is something that these teams have not been given to date. If Paul E. gave these teams some direction and an opportunity I’d bet that he’d be surprised at what these teams could do. Hopefully we see this sooner rather than later. There’s no good reason why the Tag Belts should be on the shelf.

Random Thoughts:

While the Arena is for sale I don’t expect anyone to buy it in the near future. I can’t image what someone would want to use that building for. It’s a dumpy building in a dumpy part of town. Not exactly prime real estate.

If Axl is really looking for work in ECW like I read he’s more pathetic than I originally thought.

There’s already four announced matches for Heatwave? That’s four more than usual.

Psychosis is going to be at the Arena this weekend. I don’t care who he wrestles, that match better make TNN and he better wrestle Super Crazy at the PPV. I promise to be less bitter if that happens.

More good stuff next week as I will preview and predict the Heatwave PPV. Send any comments or questions to me at [email protected]