Living Dangerously 2000 begins with a message from The Sinister Minister, James Vandenberg. Vandenberg isn't remembered or brought up much, but in the late 90s/early 2000s, he was an interesting character and dependable manager who did some good work in WCW and ECW (I can't speak for his TNA years managing Abyss). I like this little intro, but its a bit of a "hat on a hat" thing as Vandenberg's promo is followed another in-ring welcome from Joey Styles, Joel Gertner (who was now a babyface), and Cyrus (Don Callis). After 10 minutes of this stuff and the usual ECW music package to open the show, it feels like it takes forever to actually get to the first match...
And before we even get to that match, Steve Corino comes out and cuts a wild and NC-17-rated promo on The Sandman's wife, Lori Fullington (who is sitting at ringside with their son). Lori Fullington slaps Corino, which leads to some man-on-woman violence that results in Fullington getting GORED through a table by the Man Beast, Rhino. The Sandman carries her to the back and Corino calls out his opponent, Dusty Rhodes, who he is set to face in a Bullrope Match. As violent and crazy and outright offensive as the opening segment was, this was what ECW was known for at the time and I can't say it wasn't entertaining. The first time I saw this match - I believe it was on the night that Dusty passed away - I was much more into it than I was on rewatch. Its not that its "bad" - its just a one-note, bloody brawl through the crowd and then eventually into the ring. Corino bumps and sells well and Dusty is over with the live crowd, but there's no way to sugar coat what is an unremarkable match. (2/5)
Next up - The New Dangerous Alliance (CW Anderson and Beautiful Billy Wiles) taking on Danny Doring and Roadkill, who had become babyfaces over the previous few weeks. Doring and Roadkill are accompanied to the ring by Elektra, while the New Dangerous Alliance was managed by Lou E. Dangerously. I was not expecting much out of this match, but it is actually not too shabby. Roadkill is more over than the crowd than I ever thought he was and Doring puts his body on the line early to get the crowd engaged. Anderson and Wiles aren't bad, but they're not great or special. Elektra ends up turning on Roadkill and Doring to help the New Dangerous Alliance win the match. This was fine but felt more like a TV match than a pay-per-view worthy contest. (2.5/5)
Simon Diamond is in the ring and seems to be gearing up to take on Kid Kash, but before that match can get underway, Mike Awesome shows up. Awesome was the ECW World Champion and one half of the ECW Tag Team Champions at the time. What starts as just Awesome beating the crap out of Kid Kash somehow turns into an impromptu match with actual back-and-forth action and a pinfall after 3 minutes. Kid Kash gets to look tough, but I kinda wish they had gone ahead and stretched this out even longer to not only further establish Kash, but also to allow Mike Awesome a better "out" for his performance later in the night. The crowd liked see Mike Awesome do his powerbombs and splashes and Kash takes an ass-whipping but its hard to rate something like this aside from saying it was a serviceable squash match, but its unclear what the purpose was. (2/5)
Nova and Chris Chetti take on Jado and Gedo in the next match. This is a nice showcase match for the Japanese stars, but they do look noticeably small compared to Nova and Chetti (not exactly two staggering giants themselves). The two teams don't have a ton of chemistry and I'm not sure the Connecticut crowd really knew Jado and Gedo well enough for this to work. The match goes less than 10 minutes, which also doesn't help make it feel like anything other than filler. Based on other reviews I've read, this was another "impromptu" match and I think it would've been smarter to actually build this up as being something along the lines of a Number One Contenders' Match to give it some stakes and make both teams seem like they were actually trying to climb the ladder towards tag team gold (which, considering how long Nova and Chetti had been teaming, would've made sense for them). (1.5/5)
Elektra cuts a promo backstage that is kinda crazy and erratic, but, hey, I kinda dig how unpolished she came across. According to the internet, some of Elektra's lines about Roadkill were a "shoot" - specifically about Roadkill had talked shit about her backstage and called her a diva - but the rest of this is so batshit and all-over-the-place that I'm not sure the whole thing isn't a legit look into the psyche of Elektra. I'm not surprised that she didn't get a call from Vince McMahon when he bought ECW.
Next up - another short match: Super Crazy vs. Little Guido. These two could always put on a great match, but this one falls pretty far short of that. It's a fun outing - I like Super Crazy's work in the corner on Guido and Big Sal and the live crowd ate it up too - but instead of it being the usual fast-paced clash of styles that these two (and Tajiri) had done so well in the years before this, Crazy grabs a chair early to pop the crowd and the match doesn't even go 10 minutes. Guido deserved better. The ref seems to botch the ending a bit, which confuses the crowd and makes the ending fall flat. Not bad, just nothing special and certainly not up to par with the matches these two could usually provide on a big show. (2.5/5)
The next match is...confusing as all hell as Balls Mahoney squashes Kintaro Kanemura in under 2 minutes for no apparent reason. I'm not at all familiar with Kanemura, but based on the commentary, he was supposed to be a tough competitor and a cursory Google search reveals that he was more than capable of putting on a seriously violent death match, one in which I believe Balls could've also delivered. So...what happened? I haven't been able to dig up much online but would be curious to find out as this seems like a total waste of money (if Paul E. had to foot the bill for airfare). A very puzzling "match" if you can call it that. A half-point because the 90 seconds they do are perfectlyfine. (0.5/5)
This non-match somehow leads to another "match" that is really just a brawl leading to a ridiculous stunt - New Jack vs. Vic Grimes of Da Baldies. If you've seen a dozen New Jack brawls before this, there's nothing here to see except the final minutes as New Jack and Grimes find their way on top of a scaffold and end up collapsing/falling off of it in a terrible heap that definitively shows that neither guy, no matter how experienced they were, had no business trying to do anything remotely athletic. It is just a complete mess of a spot and, watching it back, it seems fairly obvious that they had no idea what they were even trying to perform once they found themselves hovering over a table. According to legend, Grimes resisted following through with the spot they had planned and New Jack effectively pulled him off the scaffold (and onto himself), leading to his skull getting cracked and losing sight in one eye. Whatever the case, whatever they had planned was probably just as bad of an idea considering Grimes' weight and New Jack not necessarily being the smoothest worker on his best day. A half-point for the carnage and "historical importance," but nothing more. (0.5/5)
The ECW World Tag Team Champions - Raven and Mike Awesome - put the titles on the line in the next match against The Impact Players (Justin Credible and Lance Storm) and the team of Tommy Dreamer and Masato Tanaka. There are a few cool moments in this match - Tommy Dreamer's face breaking the edge of a table, the Tanaka/Awesome exchanges, the Impact Players' double-team maneuvers and cohesiveness as a unit - but what could've felt and should've felt like a war seemed a bit short, the match only going 10 minutes. The right team won as the Impact Players were easily the best team of the three, but this was underwhelming. (2/5)
Main event time - Rhyno vs. Super Crazy for the vacant ECW Television Champion (Rob Van Dam had to put the title up when he suffered a knee injury). Like so much of this show, this doesn't feel like a true "match" as much as more storyline fluff for the "ECW vs. The Network" saga, which felt old hat even in 2000 as both the WWE and WCW had done multiple storylines in a similar vein (the Corporation vs. Austin, the Right to Censor stuff, WCW's Powers That Be storyline). Rhyno and Super Crazy probably could've put on a great contest, but this was loaded with run-ins (including what I believe to be the ECW debut of Scotty Riggs) and felt super rushed and overly gimmicky, which didn't play to either guy's strengths. The crowd was undeniably into it - especially once Rob Van Dam and The Sandman showed up - but Super Crazy felt like an extra in what was his highest profile match ever (and the same can be said for Rhyno at this point). This was fun, but I expect more than just "fun" in a pay-per-view main event for a championship that had become arguably just as legitimate and credible as a top title as ECW's World Championship. (1.5/5)
With a Kwang Score of 1.67-out-of-5, Living Dangerously 2000 was a sub-par show even for a company known for its unevenness. Not a single match on the show was worth checking out, though the main event did have storyline importance and the crowd was certainly into it. The Dusty Rhodes/Steve Corino match is one I remember enjoying much more during a previous viewing. The New Jack and Balls Mahoney matches stink and the Mike Awesome/Kid Kash squash felt like a waste of two of the company's best performers at that time.
FINAL RATING - DUDleyville
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