ktc

Dueling Chair Shots
by Kurt La Mont
column date 07/17/2000

Heatwave 2000 Review

ECW put on a very solid show on Sunday. While I didn’t feel that the wrestling was on par with Hardcore Heaven the production was improved which is good to see. Of course it’s hard to top the lights going out.

Anyway on to the matches. All matches are on a scale of 4:

Sal E. v. Balls

While looking to set the tape of this show after the last PPV, I watched part of Hardcore Heaven. One match I watched was Balls v. Tanaka. What a great match that was. And now Balls is booked to be squashed by Sal E? What a waste. 1 - 4

Doring, Roadkill, and Kid Kash v. Diamond, Swinger and C.W. Anderson

Surprisingly this ended up being the best match of the night. It’s nice to see the undercard guys pull off a really good match on a PPV. There are usually few and far between. On a side note, I’ve come to the conclusion that Doring and Roadkill need to be split up. Roadkill is far better as a face and Doring is far better as a heel. It could be part of an angle at the tag tourney in August. 3.25 - 4

Steve Corino v. Jerry Lynn

Corino is now officially the best bleeder in wrestling. This was another strong match, the 2nd best match of the night keeping Lynn’s streak of being involved in one of the top 2 matches every PPV alive (beginning with Heatwave 1998). It was funny when Lynn wrote “DIE” on his chest with Corino’s blood. The crowd had no idea how to act. 3 - 4

Nova/Chetti v. The Baldies

Chetti is a former amateur wrestler, is the cousin of Taz, and went through the House of Hardcore. So with all of that background how come 80% of his offense involves kicks? Not that I don’t like innovative moves, but it seems that that is all that Nova does. I thought that Nova and Chetti were ready for the belts when the Impact Players vacated the belts. Now I’m not so sure, I think the Impact Players carried them more than I realized. They aren’t back to their form before Chetti’s injury yet. This match didn’t do much for me. 2 - 4.

Psicosis v. Guido v. Tajiri

This was a real solid match. I was hoping to get more out of Psicosis then the 3-4 minutes that we saw. Hopefully there is a next time. And where was the horned mask? I feel bad for Guido. The guy is a heck of a wrestler and seems to lose every PPV match. 2.75 - 4

Sandman v. Rhino

I actually like this match a lot more than I was expecting coming in. Sandman was just killing himself on the guard rail. Rhino held his own as well. To me, this was a hardcore match, not a match where guys just smash things over each other’s heads that you’ll see in the WWF and WCW. I was mildly surprised that the Sandman didn’t win here since he has been on the short end of the singapore cane for what seems like forever now. 3 - 4

Rob Van Dam v. Scotty Anton

You can take Anton out of WCW but you can’t take the WCW out of Anton. This match was RVD’s offense and RVD overselling Anton’s weak offense. Another squash match but this is especially bad when it’s the match before the main event. In addition, this match was about 5-8 minutes too long (and I’m usually a long match mark). On the plus side RVD showed again in this match that his athleticism was second to none. While the Van Terminator was overhyped it was still impressive to see. 2.5 - 4

Tommy Dreamer v. Justin Credible

I like each of their promos before the match, although I didn’t see why Dreamer couldn’t have done his promo after Cyberslam to help build for this match. It was sad to see that the whole XPW situation take away from this match. The whole match seemed to be flat. I think the distractions probably took the crowd out of it. While this was not a bad match by any means, it certainly wasn’t up to what I was expecting. 2.75 - 4

Overall, I thought it was a good show, though not quite as good as Hardcore Heaven. It probably ranks 2nd with Living Dangerously a close third and Guilty as Charged pulling up the rear of the 4 ECW PPVs this year.

Heatwave 2000 gets an official DCS score of 2.75 - 4

Random Thoughts:

I think it’s time the whole Network angle is dropped. It’s very tired and isn’t going anywhere. Maybe the departure from TNN will do that.

When did Joey start swearing so much? I

t’s nice to see that Meanie lost all that weight. But apparently he lost his sense of humor as well. The only thing funny about his two promos I’ve seen so far is how not funny they are.

Was Justin’s eye sick looking or what? It looked worse than it did a week before.

I wouldn’t have wanted to be Francine when Dreamer fell off the ladder on top of her. Ouch.

What was the deal with the tape on Francine’s breasts? If you’re going to rip her clothes off you might as well do it right. What’s the big deal about nipples anyway that you can show anything but them?

Cyrus was much better on color before this whole Network angle. It’d be good to see him back to his pre-Network heel color commentary.

On the flip side I enjoyed Dawn Marie being in the booth. Now she’s hilarious. It was also good that her comments were between matches and not during matches. Any more would have been too much..

Who said you can’t learn anything from wrestling? Last night Anton taught us that it’s not what you can do it’s who you know in life that will get you places.

How pathetic was that XPW press release? And was I the only one who found it curious at how quickly they put the press release out?

How badly did Frank wish Jeff Jones was part of the XPW pummeling?

More good stuff next week. Send any comments or questions to me at [email protected]