wrestling / Columns
Against The Grain 10.12.08: ECW Heatwave 99′
Welcome everyone to Against The Grain, my (bi-weekly) take on some of the most unconventional and not-often talked about subjects in the wrestling world. I first wanted to say thanks to everyone who read my first edition. I received some great comments on the column and I again hope that you all enjoy it even more in the next upcoming weeks. Now moving forward…Heatwave 99′, easily one of my personal favorite PPVs of all time. Initially hearing its name, some fans may have a “?!?” above their head thinking of when the hell did this event take place and thinking of what makes it so special above all of the rest. So I’m here today not to convince anyone that this is greatest PPV ever nor claim that it is, but instead simply to describe why I loved watching it so much and share my theory on why I think that it’s overlooked by casual viewers and ECW fans alike.
Back in the heyday of ECW, before its corporate resurrection by the WWE, the company offered up a horribly wide variety of wrestling matches ranging from bloody hardcore bouts to the finest in technical and high-flying matches. While viewers of their weekly TV program, “Hardcore TV”, got a preview of what they had, it was really the PPVs where all of the action was to be found. I had started watching ECW on and off on a weekly basis back in late 1998 when I happened to discover it playing one late night on a “bootleg” small-time local station in my Detroit area. I had heard about the promotion but I was never able to locate a station and wasn’t willing to shell out my limited high-school student/McDonald’s-made cash to buy their video tapes on a whim. So when I did discover it and saw the crazy-ass action that was night and day from the “same-old, same-old” that the WWF and WCW had to offer at the time, I was instantly hooked. The format was random and insane and the matches (all or part of them!) were addicting to watch.
So after watching the program for a few months, I still had not mustered up the cash to want to buy their tapes nor their PPVs to see what else they had to offer. I just thought that whatever I missed couldn’t been better than the stuff I was catching on free TV…and then I discovered that I was solely wrong. One random night when I was bored out of my mind, I had stayed home to watch the program on Friday night and much to my delight, Joey Styles announced that they’re be playing the ENTIRE PPV match from Living Dangerous (99′) between Rob Van Dam and Jerry Lynn for the TV title. I had been following their feud for a little while and thought that it would be just a “above-average” match…boy was I wrong. The match (which is one of my personal favorites) was a crazy high-flying, technical, and hardcore affair. Not only did both tear the house down, they actually went to a time-limit draw, which is a true rarity in wrestling. RVD ended up winning, but it had set-up the opportunity for a rematch at the next PPV (Hardcore Heaven). So you would think that I being the one who was drooling over the entire first match-up would automatically want to order this PPV, but I, being a supreme cheapskate, STILL didn’t want to give up the cash. The match happened, they played the highlights (sadly not the whole match) on Hardcore TV, I watched, I drooled again, and I automatically put my $30 on the side and finally decided that I had to order the next PPV.
So…getting to the topic of this column…Heatwave 99′. It didn’t have yet another RVD/Lynn rematch that I was looking for, but it did promise a tag-team main event featuring the two “forcing” to be teamed up against the team of The Impact Players. So with the sure premise of the main event solid in my head, I watched the PPV and was taken back at how good and how crazy the other matches were on this card.
The show first started off with a very interesting (semi) tag-team bout between the odd pairing of Nova and the “lady-chasing” Chris Chetti versus the, still to this day in my opinion, VERY underrated team of Danny Doring and Amish Roadkill. Before the bout began, Doring brought out his “girl” Miss Congeniality (aka pre WWE-bound Lita) and wanted to propose to her with…a condom (?!?), but then Nova and Chetti came out to start kicking butt. So suddently in the middle of the match after Chetti started taking out everyone on his own, he stopped in the ring and then demanded that his “music” be played. I wish I could make this next part up, but the man then started to dance to the mind-numbing Ricky Martin song “Livin’ La Vida Loca” and proceeded to seduce Lita into the ring to start grinding together to the song. After the random silliness occurred, the match continued and after a sweet sequence of finishing moves to one another, Nova and Chetti got the win in one of the best opening matches that I’ve ever seen. After this, the show took a slight detour from what defines a “normal” PPV by having an intergender match between the two former stablemates in the Justin Credible clan, Jason Knight and the mean-looking tough girl Jazz. When I expected a match that was a fun, harmless affair like the WWF Sable vs. Marc Mero match I saw months beforehand, I instead got a pretty stiff and well-fought bout that showed how much of a crazed athlete Jazz was and how women can definitely hang tough in the same ring as a guy at anytime.
To continue the strong momentum, the next bout was another classic “international cruiserweight” match-up between rivals Super Crazy (repping Mexico) and Little Guido (repping Italy). Those who normally watched ECW at the time knew what the norm was with these series of matches: sick moves, crazy reversals, fantastic finishes. So essentially, it was a great staple to place in this already hot show and if you’re never seen any of these matches, please do yourself a service and look up one to watch now! Next on the menu was a bloody hardcore battle between fierce rivals Balls Mahoney & Spike Dudley and tag champs The Dudley Boyz. This match contained the usual ingredients: wicked chair shots, the demented use of cheese graters, a whole slew of close finishes. But after the Mahoney and Spike pulled off the upset winning the tag team belts, the Dudleys took some horrible exception to this and did the unthinkable at the time. The two proceeded to set a pair of tables on fire and powerbombed both Spike and Balls through each of them. At the time, I believed that I saw it done once before this PPV just to Balls on an episode of Hardcore TV thinking that it was one time thing, but when they did to much more dramatic effect to BOTH men on here, it was easily one of the sickest things that I’ve ever seen in wrestling. This established to me that the Dudleys were one of the greatest tag teams that I have ever watched.
After I recovered from my jaw being dropped at the last match’s carnage, Tommy Dreamer (along with his girl Francine) came out to announce his “retirement” from wrestling and I remember marking out soooo bad at this moment because it wasn’t announced and because of what ECW always empathized on every show about Dreamer running the constant risk of breaking his back and paralyzing himself in the process. I honestly believed that the man was really going to hang it up because of the crazy shit that he had done with taking sick piledriver after sick piledriver, so I thought this really was it for Dreamer. That is until “Old School” Steve Corino and his cronies (Jack Victory, pre-WWE Tajiri and Rhino) came out to break up the pity party. Then all participates (including Francine) got into a scuffle that ended up with Dreamer “sacrificing” himself by locking Tajiri in his own “Tarantula” move in order to give ECW Champ Taz a chance to get an advantage on his World Title match opponent. The match then suddenly begin with Taz versus Tajiri and it was an awesome bout with both putting on a hell of a fight. Then the dramatic ending came when the two were fighting on the entrance ramp and Taz just had enough of Tajiri’s comebacks. So, in another one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen at the time (next to the flaming tables), Taz took a piece of barbed wire from the ECW sign and wrapped it around Tajiri’s neck in his “Tazmission” finisher as announcer Joey Styles yelled “Zoom out!! Zoom out!” to the cameraman in fear of the explicit scene that was cause. I know that it was of course not real, but the shot (and idea) of Taz taking a sharp wire to Tajiri’s neck and causing him to bleed like a stuck pig was very unsettling and even further solidify Taz’s status as an undefeatable bad ass.
Lastly in the main event was the tag team bout between RVD/Lynn and The Impact Players (Justin Credible & Lance Storm)…the one match that was truly my reason for buying the PPV in the first place. The funniest part about this whole Heatwave 99′ event was that by the time I got to this bout, I would have been satisfied if I didn’t get to watch because of how great the undercard was leading up to it. So I won’t take any more time describing because this match simply was the best of the bunch with pitch-perfect action from all four men and was easily worth the $30 (and plus because I had already written about it in my other column weeks ago if you wanted to read it here). But in this column, I really wanted to make the point of saying that this PPV not only holds so many unique memories for me, but is also unintentionally swept under the carper by ECW fans, casual and non-casual alike. Like the Wrestlemania I had described in my first Against The Grain column, this event also isn’t in the usual “top 10” list because of it not having just one match or moment totally defining it. This, in my opinion, was one of the few ECW PPVs that had every match be above average, contained no “squash” matches (i.e. Sid destroying someone in a minute and a half), and put on a horribly good diverse set of match-ups that defined ECW as a whole. You had cruiserweights, high-flying, hardcore action, blood, fire, technical grappling, random comedy, women’s wrestling, tag-team battles at its finest. This event had it all. If I could suggest to someone who has NEVER seen ECW in their life what to watch to introduce them to the brand, I would give them their first PPV, Barely Legal (which is heralded by everyone) and Heatwave 1999. This is how good I think this event is and this is why I hold it up as one of the best PPVs I have ever seen.
Nova and Chris Chetti vs Amish Roadkill and Danny Doring
Dudley Boyz vs Balls Mahoney/Spike Dudley
With the predictable appearance of Stone Cold Steve Austin at next week’s Cyber Sunday PPV looming, I wanted to take a good look back at one of the Rattlesnake’s best runs in the form of his 2001 heel turn. We’ll reminisce about the crazy moments during this brief time and I express why I think that, while people have definitely given it the deserved due, the true genius of his turn is still somewhat underappreciated. See you all in 2!
