Misnik's Musings
by Tom Misnik
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Since I have “been around forever”, I thought Id pass along my views on last night’s offering. ECW returned to PPV and proved that in fact ECW is a place that “Anarchy Rulz”, the Odeum looked great on TV and the fans were outstanding. If the ECW Arena fans were that into every match and every show, they’d be back to running there once every month again and Paul E would find a way to do a PPV or at least a TNN taping we all knew about.

What a way to start the PPV- Jerry Lynn proves he is in fact the New Fn show and Lance Storm, the pride of Calgary, Alberta, Canada showing why he is one of the Impact Players in the sport. Awesome opener- great action from both.

What started out as what Simon Diamond has been doing at the Arena shows lately made its way to PPV. Where as I enjoyed a lot of the stuff with Jazz and Tom Marquez, things seem to go all over as " the locker room" emptied. It was nice to see some of the guys like Tony DeVito and Bill Wiles on PPV- but you knew it was a matter of time for New Jack to be out. It was nice, served its purpose and what ECW can be, wrestling one match, wild brawl the next.

Guido vs. Tajiri and Crazy. I was happy that Sal E wasn't that much a part of things. The wrestling was left to that, the wrestling. Once Guido got counted out, it left it to Tajiri and Crazy- Let me tell ya that there's times when you see matches go on and go on Super Crazy and Tajiri kept getting better and better.
What a match between those two...

Justin Credible vs. Sabu. This was a lot of the fans first chance to see Sabu since he was "banned" and Sabu certainly didn't dissapoint showing once again he is the most suicidal, homocidal, and genocidal maniac out there. Also, Justin Credible didn't phone the match in either. Was shocked by the ending- seeing Credible with the clean pin was interesting. These two took it to a new level of the extreme.

ECW is poised to enter the next millennium with a new champion in Mike Awesome.
What a match, and the shocking ending. Based upon some stuff in the Ross report you weren't sure. Still you're not. Taz did the honourable thing as is the case with him and then Tanaka and Awesome took it up a notch. An amazing match and nice to see the strap on Awesome. If Tanaka can stay around, we'll see those two take it up again.

After the match was over, we had a moment. People talk about what a special place that ECW is, how tight the locker room is as everyone watches either’s back. Last night in a classy display, Taz came back to the ring and awarded Mike Awesome with that ECW World Title belt and also shared a moment with Paul Heyman. Based upon the comments on Taz’s site (www.tazmission.com) it looks like he is on the way out and those images showed us something. Even though Joey Styles tried to put Taz over as a miserable old workhorse, he is in fact a very classy gentleman who I have nothing but the utmost respect for. I sincerely wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavors. He was always very generous of his time at the CyberSlam fan weekend q/a sessions, stayed as long as he needed to sign every autograph and take every picture. It was a pleasure, brother. I guess I only have one question about his going onward to Connecticut, I didn’t know those thruways took EZ-Pass.

Tag Team title match saw Corino and Rhino face Dreamer and then later Raven was out. Interesting how Francine provided a lot of the offence in this one. This match was being billed as the big tag team partner mystery match up. The ragging on ICP was merciless on TV and well deserved. Interesting match, fans went wild for Raven.

Rob Van Dam ended up partner less when Jhonny Smith got ambushed, enter Balls Mahoney and those two had another one of their past epic battles, mixing the fine art of using a metal chair in professional wrestling. Granted it didn't have the false endings that the match with Jerry Lynn had, but still in all, a solid match up and show of class at the end.

Overall thoughts- wow. With the unpredictability with some of the matches and "format change", it gave the air of not knowing what’s next in an ECW show. I loved that. It was as close to a night in the ECW Arena that Paul E has been able to reproduce on PPV. What a night, what a show. Kudos to Joey Styles for hanging in there as long as he could with the voice or lack their of and of course Cyrus stepping up with some great commentary and also good wrestling comments as well. The commentary is as much the show as the in ring action and it was great last night.

Challenger to HeatWave 98 as possible best ECW PPV of all time, definitely cracks that top 10 overall show barrier. Let’s hope that the upcoming November to Remember on Sunday November 7th (the last November of the millennium) shows the same if not better originality and great work and makes people forget about last years.

 Until next time, thanks for reading my weekly musings and I invite you to enjoy the hard work of the other great columnists on www.ecwnews.com and also on www.1wrestling.com.

Thanks for reading…..