ECW November to Remember 2000

ECW November to Remember 2000

Chicago, IL - November 2000

CHAMPIONSHIP RUNDOWN: Coming into tonight's show, the ECW World Champion was Jerry Lynn, the ECW Television Champion was Rhyno, and the Full Blooded Italians - Little Guido and Tony Mamaluke - were the ECW Tag Team Champions.

The final ECW November to Remember kicks off with some hype from tonight's participants in the first-ever "Double Jeopardy" match (or matches?) and then the usual pre-match shtick from Joey Styles and Joel Gertner, who get interrupted by Simon Diamond. Diamond complains about not getting credit for taking out Tommy Dreamer - which, unsurprisingly, leads to Dreamer coming out and going after Diamond. This brings out Diamond's buddy Johnny Swinger and then the guys that Diamond and Swinger fought at the last pay-per-view - Christian York and Joey Matthews. This "match" goes lightning fast with very little back and forth, though I did like the amount of double-team moves on display. Overall, though, a pretty unremarkable opener and a bit of a waste of Tommy Dreamer, whose appearance could barely even qualify as a "cameo." (1.5/5)

The previous match morphs into CW Anderson vs. Kid Kash. Kash was very over with the ECW audience that was still around in 2000. Having now seen quite a few CW Anderson matches, I've gotta say, this guy improved a ton in a short period of time and was unjustly underrated by me initially. His offense looks great and he's a great foil against the high-flying Kash in this match. Plus, they pull off a stalling vertical superplex! I wouldn't call this a hidden gem because its not a "must see," but it is more than solid because Kash and Anderson have great chemistry and the crowd is into things much more than they may have been 6-8 months earlier when these guys were less established. (3/5)

A six-man tag match follows as Chris Hamrick, EZ Money, and Julio Dinero (with Electra) take on Danny Doring, Roadkill, and....Spike Dudley! Hamrick stands out as the best heel of the bunch and Spike Dudley is mega over with the Chicago crowd. Some of the spots were a bit contrived, but hey, that's not a bad thing when you have a match like this that is basically just organized chaos. Slightly above-average match. (3/5)

Before the match begins, Chris Chetti and his manager Lou E. Dangerously come out and Chetti announces that his bout with former tag partner Nova will now have a "Loser Leaves ECW" stipulation attached. I really liked how "personal" this match was, especially at its start, as Nova and Chetti brought the physicality and really got over the intensity of their rivalry. Nova was known for his innovative offense and there are some terrific spots in this match, though I'm not a fan of his Venom-inspired ring gear. I guess the rumor was that Chetti was headed to the WWE, but I couldn't find any actual evidence beyond someone mentioning in a review of this show that Meltzer reported it in the Observer. This one sort of fizzles out by the end, but I'd still consider slightly above average. (3/5)

After a crazy promo from New Jack, its time for a Flaming Tables match pitting Da Baldiez against Balls Mahoney and Chilly Willy. This is the sort of wild brawl that ECW built its reputation on, only its nearly impossible to see most of the action that happens in the crowd and, by 2000, there was nothing new to see here and the talent involved was far less interesting (aside from the only true "ECW original" in the match, Mahoney). There are stiff chair shots galore and I liked Angel delivering a powerbomb to Willy through a pair of chairs in the aisleway. This one ends with Mahoney putting Angel through a flaming table with a powerbomb. All in all, this isn't my sort of match, but I've seen worse and more boring brawls. (2.5/5)

Rhyno defended his ECW Television Championship against New Jack in the next bout. This is about what I expected - which is unfortunate because the mental bar I set was pretty low and Rhyno and New Jack couldn't surpass it. Rhyno can be a good-to-very good (I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say "great" based on what I've seen from him), but New Jack's one-note shtick had really become played out by 2000 and Rhyno, while certainly capable of getting as hardcore as anyone, didn't bring out anything new or exciting from the Original Gangsta. 3 years earlier, New Jack was part of a wild brawl that I gave 3.5 points to, but this was way less inspired and felt much less "dangerous," which is really the only thing that New Jack often brought to his matches. With all the silly weapons, he had almost become the Carrot Top of hardcore wrestling by this point when, years earlier, he exuded an undeniable amount of menace. (1.5/5)

Thankfully, the next match actually delivers the kind of wild-and-crazy chaos and hard-hitting action that the previous didn't as Little Guido and Tony Mamaluke defend the ECW World Tag Team Championships against Tajiri and Mikey Whipwreck. When he was "on," Mikey Whipwreck was a very fun worker to watch, Tajiri and Guido might be the most underrated and underappreciated acts in ECW history, and while Tony Mamaluke wasn't a phenom, he was a capable tag worker and had the speed and agility to keep up with the other three. I loved the combo work of Tajiri and Whipwreck, but found Whipwreck's phony injury a bit of an unnecessary swerve and, based on the crowd response, not much of a "swerve" because almost instantly after Whipwreck is helped to the back, the crowd begins chanting for Super Crazy. After withstanding a bit of a 2-on-1 beatdown, Super Crazy makes his arrival and the match gets even better as he was mega over with the crowd and his offense looks (mostly) fantastic. Super Crazy eventually hits a moonsault off the balcony, which gets a huge response (as expected), but it also ends up costing his team the match because Tajiri is left alone in the ring and has to deal with both members of the FBI. I enjoyed this match quite a bit more than anything else on the card up to this point. (3.5/5)

Backstage, porn star Jasmin St. Claire and The Blue Meanie (her real-life boyfriend somehow) are in a shower together plugging ECW's website. At this point, Meanie had lost a ton of weight and was looking pretty svelte.

Main event time - the Double Jeopardy match: Steve Corino vs. The Sandman and Jerry Lynn vs. Justin Credible happening at the same time with the winners competing for the ECW World Championship. Jerry Lynn came into the match as the ECW World Champion and starts the match essentially fighting on a 2-on-1 battle against the heels, though Corino and Credible end up brawling too. I like the realism in that but I don't always seek that out in wrestling, especially in ECW, where way too often there were matches that lacked a real structure and "through-line." The Sandman eventually shows up and does his extended introduction, which pops the crowd but serves no purpose in the context of the match. Again, for The Sandman's character and for his motivation, it would make total sense to not really care all that much as Jerry Lynn got beaten down in the ring - I mean, a beaten-up Lynn would only help The Sandman win his fourth ECW World Championship - but, in terms of storytelling, I kinda wish The Sandman had come in and started cleaning house, taking out the heels before bashing Lynn in the skull too. Anyway...from a wrestling perspective, Lynn doesn't really get the opportunity to shine much because this match is mostly a brawl, while Steve Corino stands out for his bumping and selling. Really, at this point, Corino might have been ECW's best overall character and worker and - spoiler alert - totally deserved to win the title here. Speaking of Corino, he and Credible defeat their respective opponents simultaneously, which (I'm guessing) was designed to push Corino even further into babyface territory as he had become somewhat popular over the previous months by proving his toughness in some brutal matches against Tajiri, Dusty Rhodes, and others. The crowd isn't fully behind Corino, though, and there are a ton of boos when the match becomes "heel vs. heel" (not a surprise there), though the crowd does cheer for Corino a bit more when Dawn Marie turns on him. I understand the booking here...but I'm not sure the execution was as strong as it could've/would've been if the Dawn Marie turn would've happened earlier and Credible had done more to "screw" Jerry Lynn rather than pinning him relatively cleanly (the extra heat on Credible would've helped Corino garner even more support going into the final minutes). All in all, I found this to be as messy as I suspected it would. (2/5)

For ECW, the writing was certainly on the wall by this point. Having lost their television deal (the WWE was in the process of jumping from USA to TNN/Spike), ECW's new plan was supposedly to put on monthly pay-per-views until they could land on a new network. That being said, their other issue was a roster that lacked legitimate stars after multiple years of seeing their biggest names leave the company (Tazz, The Dudleys, Shane Douglas, Terry Funk, among others) and then, when a select few would return, they no longer had the "buzz" they once did (Raven and The Sandman). That's not to say ECW didn't have some great young talents on its roster - Tajiri and Steve Corino delivered great work at this time, Jerry Lynn could always be counted on to bring the goods from bell-to-bell, and the tag division was arguably better than it had ever been now that the company had moved on from the garbage brawling of The Dudleys and Gangstas and got back to its pro-wrestling roots with solid teams like the ever-improving Roadkill & Doring, Mamaluke and Guido as a more serious version of The Full-Blooded Italians, and relative newcomers York & Matthews. Still, this show is hard to recommend with only one match worth checking out and a Kwang Score of 2.5-out-of-5...

FINAL RATING - High Risk Maneuver