The Described Wrestling Project #1

I found a channel that had some blessedly unedited ECW matches, and picked an episode at random.

The Described Wrestling Project is one author’s description of the type of thing you’d see in decades past, should you have turned on a television and found some pro wrestling on, already in progress. All described video content is copyright its prospective owners. All opinions stated are the creator’s own. Rest in Peace to any and all performers described, who have since moved on to the next world. Fans will do all we can to make your work stand in history, regardless of who you were.

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Welcome to the ECW Arena, in Philadelphia. The year is 1995, and you’d be watching this on June 13th if you were watching it when it aired. You wouldn’t realize it, looking at it on this video, but this building is only about as big as a small warehouse. It’s just that ECW used to pack fans into the venue so deep, so far up the bleachers, that the sheer volume of humanity packed into it, combined with the minimalist lighting, make it look more like small-scale gladiator games than unbridled violence occurring in a former bingo hall.

Fans throwing their hands in the air and waving them like they just don’t care, signal the arrival of the Public Enemy, then the ECW World Champions: Flyboy Rocko Rock and Johnny Grunge. Funnier pro wrestling analysts than I have aptly summed up the Public Enemy as “the Nasty Boys with table spots” and while that’s really good, it’s kind of mean, too. Because to be fair, Public Enemy came out to Here Comes the Hotstepper; they had much better entrance music than the Nasty Boys.

I kid the Nasty Boys. Well, I kid Jerry Saggs, at least.

As Public Enemy display the slogan printed across the backs of their 90s LA Kings-style hockey sweaters- VIOLENT BY DESIGN -the opening chords of White Zombie’s Thunder Kiss ‘65 starts roaring through the arena. If this was a fight between theme music, I’d count three right here, because that song rules; that said, it’s also the theme of the Pitbulls, Gary Wolfe and Tony Durante, two absolute juiceboxes of masculine physique, men so absolutely gizmoed on gas that they trip carbon monoxide detectors if they linger indoors for too long, and despite everything, I am more smirking than in awe. This is because these two grown men have decided to operate under the completely baffling team architecture of “naming themselves Pitbull Number One and Pitbull Number Two” and dressing in roughly the same shiny black singlet. Pitbull Number One has long hair; Pitbull Number Two is bald but for his facial hair; for the sake of their dignity, I will call them Pitbull Gary and Pitbull Tony from here on out. Because seriously, Pitbull Number One. Pitbull Number Two.

With them, is Stevie Richards, acting in managerial capacity to the Pitbulls. Steve Richards, as he’s known at this point, appears to be a transporter accident between Shawn Michaels and Raven, wearing a bare midriff cutoff t-shirt, daisy dukes and with a plaid shirt tied around his waist- remember Grunge? I sure do. Stevie displays both an Adonis physique and a breathtakingly fluffy mullet at this point in his career, and has basically cultivated his look to be as offensive to the ECW crowd as psychically possible: a pretty man, who is also physically fit and strong. As commentator Joey Styles puts it during his ring introduction:

“OH, HE’S SUCH A GOOF.”

The crowd is chanting something at Stevie, and while I can’t make it out, it’s probably homophobic. This lies in stark contrast to the fact that this Tag Team Title Contest is a double dog collar match, and if the Public Enemy win, they get five minutes alone with Steve Richards. To be clear: these two teams of men are volunteering to themselves to each other via spiked collars around their neck, two to a chain, for the prize of not only two shiny gold and leather belts, but also, who gets to dominate the pretty twink for five minutes, with an audience. This is one of those moments where professional wrestling sanity checks you with your ability to handle homoerotic kink, and you either pass it via sheer obliviousness, or you just smile and realize, “yep, it’s always been about this gay, and always will be.”

This is further amplified by Johnny Grunge taking the house mic and cutting a short promo about Public Enemy’s recent tour of Florida, where they learned one thing:

“That Steve Richards likes it Doggy Style!”

How’d you learn that, Johnny? How’d you learn that Johnny.

The crowd now begins chanting the name of a common sexual position, because the 90s were a time that would seem quaint were it not for all the simmering rage, hatred and arrogance everywhere. Referee Todd Gordon, then playing the role of ECW commissioner, states that despite the Double Dog Collar Stipulation, this is still ECW, so you know the rules: there are no rules. So in other words, you can be just as violent as you could conceivably be under normal conditions, it’s just that in this instance, bondage chains are compulsory.

The crowd continues to chant Doggy Style as the teams are hooked together. It is unclear if they want the chubby men to fuck the muscular men, or the muscular men to fuck the chubby men, but given that the front row on the hard camera side is wearing a bunch of those “ECW: Politically Incorrect and Damn Proud of It” t-shirts, I’m not sure deeper thought or impulse control are things these people are capable of. This whole thing feels like that Mr. Show sketch about the homophobic rockstars that leaked the tape of them having sex with each other.

After a shot of Stevie Richards looking pensive on the outside, and rightfully so, the bell rings, and our contest is underway. Two teams of burly men begin to yank at the chains binding them by the neck, and right from the jump, it becomes very apparent why you don’t see dog collar matches very often: because it’s deeply unpleasant to have the full weight of a grown adult of any size pull on your neck via a thoughtless lean, let alone actively yanking on it. Still, you still see them to this day, as means of demonstrating how toxic and venomous a feud has turned, a willingness to enter into a contest of mutually assured vertebrate destruction. All four of these guys are making sure they choke up as much as they can, but you can tell by the winces in their movements, even slight pressure through the collars they’re wearing just sucks all over to feel. I might make fun of these guys for other things, but never for the amount they put their bodies on their line over the course of their career, how much of them they left in the ring. As a somber note, of the wrestlers in this match, only Gary Wolfe and Stevie Richards remain with us today. Rest in peace to Tony Durante, Mike Durham and Ted Petty, all of them gone much too early. Understand that I might riff on these people’s work, I’m also working to archive it in my own way, because the pain and exertion they put into it deserves to stand: preserved by a community that has that level of basic respect for worker effort.

Terrifyingly, Johnny Grunge begins flailing his choked up length of the chain like it’s an ad hoc nunchaku. This provokes Pitbull Gary to charge in and get backdropped over the ropes, beginning to feign that he’s being hanged. The delicate art of it making it look like the life is being choked out of him while keeping it from actually being choked out of him begins, and realizing it’s a little early to be doing a spot like this, Grunge hikes Gary back over the ropes, and he manages to bump clean, relatively without incident despite circumstances. The same can not be said for Rocko Rock, who is launched out of the close right-hand side corner with a Biel Throw by Pitbull Tony. As Grunge chokes Pitbull Gary with their chain, Flyboy Rocko takes flight, and an easily three hundred pound man does a front flip over the shoulder of a man his equal in height. As he sails through the air with surprising grace, the chain tightens and rakes across his face, and the way he grabs at his eye as he lands says everything about how actually not fake pro wrestling is. Predetermined, yes; fake, noooooo. Cause that wasn’t a man selling, that was a guy immediately sitting up to check to make sure a part of him was still attached properly. Sensing a moment of distress, Pitbull Tony begins to feign throttling Flyboy Rocko with the chain, applying what’s called a Rest Hold in pro wrestling theory, giving his opponent and coworker a moment to recombobulate himself. Rest Holds are exactly what they sound like: any submission hold that doesn’t take a great effort to maintain, that can be used by wrestlers to catch their breath and shake cobwebs loose after extended or high-impact move sequences. While pro wrestlers are physically tough individuals and bitterness can develop between them, you frequently see compassion and professionalism like this even in brutal promotions like ECW, as matches tend to fall apart when people get hurt legitimately, and people would generally prefer their peers go home safely than not, even if they might not personally be friends.

So with that legitimate threat of danger established, it’s time to heighten the violence.

Pitbull Gary slugs Johnny Grunge with a series of punches, and Grunge pratfall bumps into the ropes, cleverly hooking and arm and leg on the second and bottom to spare his tailbone the full impact of his fall. As Pitbull Gary puts boots to him, medium style, his partner Flyboy Rocko Rock demonstrates what a much harder bump looks like, as Pitbull Tony whips him across the ring, and he puts his back so hard into the close left-hand side corner, the entire ring shifts juuuuuust slightly, including the people standing in it. People might ask: are turnbuckle pads soft? Well, in theory, yes, when they’re just sitting there; in practice, when you’re flying into the corner and you slam your lumbar and upper spine into them? You mostly just feel the metal rod and the rope they’re holding tight. Wrestlers are really tough, folks.

Pitbull Tony taunts, holding his chain above his head and roaring like a fantasy barbarian. He goes to whip Rocko back into the far right-hand corner, and Rocko reverses, then hits him with the Big Man’s Sidearm, the standing body splash into the corner. To explain this move, simply picture a big fat guy running with intent at another guy wedged in the corner, then assuming a wide posture just before impact to sorta form a human gravity bomb. Yeah, it’s sorta silly to picture, but also, gridiron football and sumo wrestling- shit can be downright destructive when properly applied outside of kayfabe. Rocko is pretty nice here, though, and hits Tony with about as much force as an overexcited partier giving a chest bump, and nothing heavier.

Pitbull Gary and Johnny Grunge have spilled to the outside at this point, and Pitbull Gary whips Grunge against the guardrail. Grunge again chooses to take things lightly against the guardrail, and I say that as a positive- that’s a metal fence, and he’s a 300 pound man crashing into it and pushing it into fans. Better to go light and just act like that hurt 4 times as much as it actually did, sorta do the Tekken wallsplat crumple, and spare the fans getting their shins crushed by a ponytailed torpedo. Of special note: as he slides down the guardrail, we get a good clear shot of the infamous ECW Arena Post, a roof support with what I think is a water main running up to the building’s sprinkler system. It’s infamous because it makes the seats by the entrance runway an even worse view of the ring than they’d normally be, without doubt the dirt-worst seats in an iconic venue. There’s Just a Big Post In The Way of Everything, Jesus.

Back in the ring, Pitbull Tony has reversed momentum on Rocko Rock, and is now seen yanking him by the throat, face first into the close left-hand side corner. This looks like it sucked a lot to take, as Rocko was only midway into his committal to the jump before Tony gave full send on the chain pull, and the result was sort of a Scorpion spear-yank into the turnbuckle, only in bone-aching slow motion. Accordingly, Rocko sells this like he was just shot with a small caliber firearm while in the midst of a coughing fit, and momentarily turns into a GTA ragdoll that has spent most of its momentum. Pitbull Tony ascends the top rope and stands to his full height before coming off in a double axehandle, but Rocko gets to one knee and meathooks him in the midsection on the way down. Setting him up to stand straight with a punch, Flyboy Rocko goes for a flying headscissors takeover, and Pitbull Tony counters by powerbombing him directly onto his cornrows, momentarily making it look like a someone just beat the hell out of a heavyset beaded curtain. Cover, but two count only.

We return to Pitbull Gary and Johnny Grunge on the outside. Johnny Grunge has gigged and is bleeding, and I don’t know where that happened, but to be clear and informative to people who don’t know: could have happened at any point during the double axe-powerbomb exchange, as it only takes a literal second to nick your forehead with a razor a couple of times, which is what gigging is. Yes, the blood is real, and yes, people still do this. Anyway: Grunge whips Pitbull Gary into the guardrail, in time with Pitbull Tony hitting Rocko Rock with a steel chair. He drops it and postures directly into the camera, shouting something that the mic can’t pick up. Commentator Joey Styles states:

“I don’t know what he’s saying, but I believe him.”

Unfortunately, this only serves to make him look like a complete pillock, as Johnny Grunge has followed suit with a steel chair, and noisily whacked Pitbull Gary with it. Unlike Pitbull Tony, Grunge keeps grip on his weapon, and proceeds to smack Pitbull Tony in the spine with it, knocking him out of his tirade and into the local branch of dumb baby jail, located in the corner of the guardrails. His opponent’s incandescent baldness momentarily vanquished, Rocko Rock begins to throttle Pitbull Tony with the chain, before hopping the guardrail and garotting him with it. Perhaps realizing that a member of the Philadelphia police department is providing security for this event, and that he probably should not murder a man in full view of people who ostensibly respond to that sort of thing sometimes, Rocko instead accepts some sort of object from a fan, which he promptly destroys against the guardrail trying to stove Pitbull Tony’s head in with it. It is never seen again, and I have no idea what it was. A fan offers Rocko a can, and given the way it sort of puffs open on impact with Pitbull Tony’s forehead, I think it might have been sealed. Then a child with the most mushroom-headed haircut I’ve seen since my own youth then hands Rocko Rock a rolling pin, and he unfortunately misfires his swing so badly, that Pitbull Tony doesn’t sell it, as he’s too busy describing his soda-based stupor in his physical performance. It’s worth noting: the fans were incredibly happy to get hit with collateral damage from the soda shot. Keep that in mind moving forward.

Pitbull Tony catches Rocko Rock with a light punch to the stomach, which is enough to reverse the momentum and allow the Pitbull to rack Rocko against the rails. Pitbull Tony picks up a chair and gives Rocko a loose-gripped shot with it. It goes flying and hits someone in the crowd, in full view of the cop standing nearby. The fans howl with delight, because violence is awesome, especially when it causes splash damage.

More walk and brawl occurs, with Rocko Rock taking control from Pitbull Tony by putting him into the ringpost. A helpful fan hands him a skillet, and he whacks Pitbull Tony with it, being sure to apply his sunglasses first for safety. Yes, fans sometimes bring the weapons to matches like this, I’ve been to shows that have that specific stipulation advertised.

Meanwhile, across the ring, Johnny Grunge has Pitbull Gary set up on a table, on the outside, by the guardrails. With only a moment’s hesitation, Grunge executes a Vader Bomb to the outside, a move named after Big Van Vader, Leon White. To picture a Vader Bomb, picture a significantly large person bracing themselves against the ropes, leaping up as high as they can from a vertical position, then kicking their feet out, putting their body horizontal and parallel with the mat. Or, in this case, with the concrete floor to the outside, because while Johnny Grunge definitely does hit Pitbull Gary on the table, he also manages to lever himself face-first onto the foundation of the ECW Arena. No, there are no safety mats on the outside, why do you ask? Hopefully he got his hands up, and given that he seemed to be okay afterward, he probably did. On the bright side: at least he didn’t smack his ankles on the guardrails, that’s always one of the most painful looking things that can come out of a spot like that.

It’s now time for Pitbull Tony to brain Rocko Rock with the pan. He gets him back into the ring, as Stevie Richards begins passing a table over the ropes. Pitbull Tony bridges the top rope with the table and rolls Rocko Rock onto it like he’s luggage going into an overhead bin. Joey Styles warns us that we’re going to break in 60 seconds, and if the match concludes during the commercials, they’ll show the replay- this is a little thing, but it really does add to the notion that you’re watching something that’s a real sporting competition, even as the incredibly jacked man ascends onto a precariously placed folding table and picks the man he’s dog-chained to up into powerslam position. After demonstrating a remarkable amount of balance to even manage that, Pitbull Tony drops Rocko Rock like a boat anchor and comes augering in after him, cratering the both of them into the ring with a spectacular move. They land in what I would describe as a momentary rendition of “mutual Yamcha position.” As Pitbull Tony gets a two count off his pin attempt, the fans pepper genuinely impressed applause among the cheering and bloodlust. We fade to commercial break. What do you want to bet there was an Eagle Insurance “Eagleman” commercial somewhere in that break?

Back from the commercial, and we find that things have escalated from how we left them: the ring has another table set up in it, or perhaps the same one, and it’s now in the center of the ring. Pitbull Tony is laid out of it, and as we fade in, Rocko Rock stands to his full height on the third rope. With genuinely amazing agility given the amount of mass he’s flinging, does a Moonsault, a backflip that inverts him almost perfectly over the center of the ring and puts his core straight through Pitbull Tony and the table. Judging by how Flyboy Rocko rolls out of his own move and immediately goes blankfaced and open-mouthed into the camera, that knocked every last cubic inch of air out of him, and he curls into a semifetal position to recover. As Rocko Rock remembers how to make his lungs work, Johnny Grunge obligingly covers Pitbull Tony for a two count, even as he’s still laying in the wreckage of the table.

As Pitbull Gary hikes Johnny Grunge up and clotheslines the sweat off his forehead, the crowd begins a cacophonous chant of “FUCK SABU.” See, because Sabu liked to do moonsaults through tables. Sabu, longtime on-and-off roster member of ECW due to a troubled relationship with ECW management- that’s a common thing, by the way -had recently gone over to WCW, which many wrestling fans forget he even did. I did, up until I had cause to rewatch the first episode of WCW Nitro, and found there was a video package for a debuting Sabu on it. It always seems weird to me that the Moonsaults, Chairs and Barbed Wire guy went to the King of Southern Wrasslin, it just seemed like such a mismatch. And if you think ECW holds ill will longterm? Naw, these same marks would be losing their minds for the Suicidal, Homicidal, Genocidal Sabu the second he was back in the promotion. Wrestling fans are like that and always have been like that.

The teams take a few seconds to gather themselves because, to be clear: a bunch of shit just happened, and it’s completely acceptable for anyone to want to take a few breaths at this point, let alone a bunch of human tanks like these dudes are. Because we are officially now into the phase of the match where furniture is now fair game for destruction, and Ikeas everywhere are effectively worried. It’s worth noting that in the modern era, thriftier promotions have moved on cheap, hollow bedroom doors for people to smash each other through, as they’re about a third the price of a folding table.

Then Johnny Grunge produces a bowling pin from cartoon hammerspace, and bops Pitbull Gary with it. Then someone hands him what appears to be a whip made from a broken jumprope, and that’s when things start to get kinky again, especially given the crowd cheering Pitbull Gary getting whipped. Do you people not even realize what you’re cheering, given what you’ve been shouting this whole time?

Joey Styles assures us, despite the bad angle, that Rocko Rock took a run at Stevie Richards, and Pitbull Tony cut him off and pulled him into the crowd. Escalation then jumps up a defcon level, as we see that they’re now at the base of the bleachers, beneath the elevated broadcast position, and Pitbull Tony just upended a set-up folding table. As Flyboy Rocko climbs the ladder to the broadcast position, we see an alarmingly young child looking on at this large man about to ready himself in attack position, to launch himself on a sweaty, bloody, bald man. Except that Pitbull Tony simply pulls on the chain and yanks him off the platform, to his own doom, as Rocko Rock then demonstrates more fat man agility by somersaulting off the balcony into a senton that sends them both clattering into the precariously extended legs of the upended table. That could have ended so much worse than it did, though they still nearly crushed a fan.

Back in the ring, Johnny Grunge is whipping Pitbull Gary with the jumpwhip. There is a momentary cutaway to Rocko Rock picking up a chair and lightly splattering a vaguely off camera Pitbull Tony with it. It didn’t look like it hurt, but it was kinda funny. More whipping, and then Johnny Grunge begins choking Pitbull Gary with the jumpwhip, while screaming his bloody face into the camera. There we go, there’s the stuff that upset senators all over the place.

Back at the broadcast position, Rocko Rock has reset the table, and then bafflingly decides to just climb the ladder and leave it there. Pitbull Tony tries to pursue him, and after getting momentarily knocked off and looking like he’s about to load himself on the table for a spot, he instead climbs back up the ladder, sinches Rocko into suplex position, and puts him down vertically onto the table, obliterating it and provoking well deserved uproar. Kudos to whoever built that platform, it didn’t even budge.

Back in the ring, Johnny Grunge is doing the over the shoulder, across the back garotte hold with Pitbull Gary and the chain, essentially trying to assassinate him like he’s Agent 47. As their tag team partners continue their back and forth brawl on the outside, Pitbull Gary escapes and reverses momentum from this violent garotte strangling with… a few punches. Pro wrestling logic is fucking awesome sometimes. Pitbull Gary stacks Johnny Grunge, and then the camera cuts back to the outside, where Pitbull Tony swings a trashcan lid, a chair and a plastic tyrannosaurus at Rocko Rock. There’s no bump from the ring, so assumedly nothing big happened off the top.

Public Enemy momentarily disabled, the Pitbulls set up another table in the center of the ring. With very little delay, they set up Rocko Rock for a powerbomb off the second rope, through the table, and the crowd goes crazy, despite the fact the Pitbulls are supposed to be the heels. Like the moonsault before, this is a moment where I’m actually somewhat surprised that neither participant got hung up on the chain, they really did give themselves enough line to work with. As Stevie Richards does a happy dance on the outside, Pitbull Gary goes for a pin, and gets the cover broken up by Johnny Grunge. Pitbull Tony knocks Johnny Grunge into the grip of Stevie Richards, who has climbed onto the ring apron. The Pitbulls form a clothesline with their chain, take a running start, and then hit Stevie with it, as Johnny Ducks. Stevie then takes a bump to the to the outside through another table that somehow got set up and, well, maybe you could have sold that for longer, Stevie. Just a few seconds longer than not at all. Whatever, you were basically a baby at this point in your career, spilled milk, et cetera.

Not to mention, he doesn’t exactly have a lot of time to work with, as the Pitbulls proceed into the finishing sequence: Pitbull Gary stacks Johnny Grunge on the top rope of the close right-hand side corner, and hits a well-done superplex directly into the center of the ring. It’s at this moment that I notice how little give there is in this early ECW ring, as the ring at later events was significantly more liberally sprung it seems, far more generous with bounce than this one. Guys keep splatting against this mat, and it’s disconcerting.

Anyway, across the ring, in the opposite corner, Pitbull Tony goes for a belly to back superplex on Rocko Rock, potentially trying to sledgehammer him into the fallen Johnny Grunge, like this was a particularly homicidal game of No Mercy. I’m sorry, I just let on more about my own gaming habits than I was ready to. Anyway, Rocko Rock displays one more showing of fat man agility, countering the suplex by barrel rolling his body and transitioning it into a splash, a move that could have conceivably been done cleaner, but also was damn impressive coming from a 300lb dude that probably had to improvise his jumping motion off a tightrope. Pitbull Tony took this like a champ, too, given that I cannot conceive of falling like that with a dude like Rocko Rock atop him, hitting a wrestling mat, and still being in a state of mind to feign trying to frantically kick out of a pin attempt. Again, wrestlers are really tough, as evidenced by the guy who just did the equivalent of the Nestea Plunge off his kitchen counter onto a ring made out of planks and a little foam rubber, with a dude built like a club doorman using his body as a toboggan, and then proceeded to act in response to all that.

As Rocko Rock pulls himself onto Pitbull Tony and the ref moves in for the pin, Pitbull Gary strikes the sparks in his brain to pin Johnny Grunge after his superplex. As the referee counts three, Pitbull Tony kicks out at three point one, and Pitbull Gary celebrates like they won the titles. Stevie Richards gets in the ring and also celebrates like he also won the titles, somehow. They do not seem to think that Rocko Rock got the cover first and the ref counted it instead. Even when the belts are brought into the ring, they snatch them away and celebrate with them, because these guys apparently aren’t as clever as actual pitbulls.

Of course, here is your winners, and still ECW Tag Team Champions, the Public Enemy. And as someone in the front row hangs a crazy-homophobic sign over the guardrails- stay classy, ECW fans -the stunned, breathless and still-downed Public Enemy get their stipulation: five minutes alone with Steve Richards.

Under a blanketing din of jeers, Mulletlord Ken Doll Steve Richards and the Pitbulls beat down the fallen Public Enemy, putting the boots to them, medium style, while occasional errant garbage gets thrown at the ring. Picking up the earlier aforementioned toy tyrannosaurus as a weapon, Stevie gets a mic, and reveals himself to be none other than a highly fit Rorshach, stating:

“It looks more like I’ve got five minutes with you!”

Joey Styles can’t argue with that, so he doesn’t. With the Pitbulls ejected from the ring, Stevie unleashes bare midriff stomps to the Public Enemy like a man playing a Whac-a-Mole game configured like the giant keyboard from Big. He sort of looks like a homicidal labradoodle. This momentum ends when Public Enemy a Meeting of the Minds- I doubt how effective that would be -and they reverse it into a double clothesline, chunking Stevie into the canvas. The crowd begins to literally chant for blood, but Rocko Rock has other ideas. Standing behind the fallen Stevie Richards, now on hands and knees, he begins to furiously pelvic thrust while crotch chopping at the far-side audience, signalling to a chorus of rioting cheers, that they are going to fuck this man. The crowd is immensely behind this, sending astonishing mixed messages once again. Do you people even know what you like?

This is when the schmozz parade of weekly television begins, which is one of the things that ECW was known for, and thus became a hallmark of the Attitude Era when the WWF stole every aspect of it for their own televised product. Think of what happens next as a means of compressing the talent roster and their ongoing storylines into a milieux, in order to make sure everyone gets time on camera, and storylines are moved forward even on shows where they don’t have matches or even scheduled appearances. Done correctly, it’s like clockwork: it’s a bunch of complex machinery and moving parts, but it does work. Done incorrectly, it becomes a pipebomb of nonsense throwing fragments all over the place, featuring faces you don’t recognize, storylines you don’t care about, confused people at the commentator table, and about 22 Natural Born Thrillers running all over the goddamned place.

This is a case of the former, not the latter, at least in my opinion. That said, it’s kind of baffling to have this element of the segment slam in like a freight train in a project that’s attempting to describe a single match in pro wrestling. So I’m going to summarize: before the Public Enemy can hit their team finisher, the Driveby, which was at this time a reverse DDT into a Senton Bomb- Johnny Grunge, with his opponent locked up from behind with one arm over his neck, drops Stevie down backwards, guillotining him to the mat. Then, as Rocko Rock goes to do a cool flip with all of his mass onto Stevie’s body, Raven interjects himself into the match, a grunge-gothic character that’s frequently cast as a cult leader or something adjacent. To picture Raven if you don’t know what he looks like, picture Kurt Cobain with curlier hair and an action figure physique. Basically if Kurt Cobain was a Drednok, from GI Joe. Raven sweeps Rocko’s legs out from under him off the top rope, and big man go splat. Raven then hockey brawls with Johnny Grunge, and are joined by the Pitbulls.

Various after-match assaultery occurs, all of this designed to rile up the crowd that wanted a fair and just two on one beatdown, and are instead getting an incredibly evil 4 on 2 beatdown. As Public Enemy roll out of the ring, the Pitbulls follow and continue to brawl with them on the outside, while Stevie does his little dog happy dance toward the big dog named Raven, who smirks at him like the Sphynx, like he’s frequently wont to do. That’s when the crowd roars and a man in a black t-shirt and purple lycra shorts appears in the ring, proceeding to give Steve Richards a spinal adjustment with a steel chair. This is Tommy Dreamer, the one of the pillars of ECW in this day, a colossal babyface in the eyes of the East Coast audience because of his tenure with the company. Since ECW’s folding, he went on to have WWE, TNA and indie runs to varying degrees of success, before expressing some really bad takes in a public forum and turning into the physical sequel to Steven Segal, effectively shedding his fans like spent fuel tanks from aircraft hardpoints.

Hey, folks deserve to know…

Dreamer and Raven begin to hockey brawl to a roaring crowd, giving Stevie several seconds to recover and pick up the chair that Tommy dropped after hitting him. Because nobody in this company practices fucking weapon retention. Steven then hits Dreamer with the chair from behind, flattening his momentum, then throwing the chair down with a clang. Because nobody in this company practices fucking weapon retention. Raven picks up the chair and begins to clout Dreamer across the back with it, finally practicing some fucking weapon retention. This is when Dreamer’s then-wife and current ally to Raven, Beulah McGillicutty, stands on the apron. Yeah that’s her name.

McGillicutty.

Beulah literally just stands there and watches, and she’s still getting a modicum of cheers just for being there and not being a big sweaty man, even though she’s 1. A heel and 2. A woman. Raven DDTs Dreamer and hits his crucifixion taunt. Dreamer starts to climb Raven like he’s a cat tree and feigns like he’s going to feed his head for another DDT, only to punch Raven in the face. Yes, this is a few seconds later, but also, man folks do not sell in ECW, just fuck your finisher! Fuck it! After a bunch of downed chairshots, no less!

As Dreamer makes his own ring, Luna Vachon hits the ring. To picture Luna, picture a genuinely pretty woman hellbent on making herself the most buggy-eyed monster person you can imagine, an individual who styled her entire look around the most deranged facial expressions she could make into a mirror, and she had a very animated face. In this particular incarnation, she looks like a blonde entity made out of dazzle camo has hit the ring, who then begins to beat fuck from Stevie Richards, ensuring to dig her enormous press-on nails into his back and rake him like a zen garden. The crowd loves this, including Joey Styles. Luna sends Stevie packing, which is when Beulah starts demonstrating all the self-preservation instinct of a bugged out Elder Scrolls NPC and just sorta stands there while Dreamer advances on her and drags her into the ring. At Luna’s behest, and after demonstrating to the crowd that panties are a garment that exist, Tommy Dreamer applies a non-sexual piledriver to his wife, bouncing her like a superball off the mat. Dreamer and Luna then pose over her obliterated form like action figures, while the crowd showers them with applause. This was all to tell us that, after the show? The Public Enemy will be then feuding with the Gangstas, because uh? This was all resolved, somehow? I mean I guess that was the Pitbull’s chance at the titles? I guess. Pound sand big dogs, it’s time for two other storylines to take over.

Wrestling is fucking weird. It’s also pretty great, too, though.

There’s a lot of folks right now that might be asking why, of all segments, did I describe these ones for my first episode. The answer is what I said in the intro: I want to describe wrestling as it was, should you have just turned your TV on in a previous decade and found some already in progress. So I found some ECW, and I picked at random, just to see what someone tuning into ECW during its hot period would have seen. For the day, this ultraviolent chaos was incredibly innovative. It’s not the highest technical workrate, but it’s also big men smashing each other through the scenery in a televised worked sport that, in ages past, consisted of some light grappling, worked strikes, crowd appealing and like, one suplex. To contrast, in an age when WWF and WCW were handing the people neon, glitz, gimmicks and not a lot of innovation beyond notable outlier names, ECW was unleashing raw, unrefined Hell energy like this. Night after night, they made a name for themselves by being the sort of game lunatics that would do a moonsault into a heated steel crucible for a big enough pop. Sometimes it was razor-edged technicians brutalizing each other with a stiffness that was uncommonly seen in the US in these days, and sometimes it was a blunt force fireworks display like in this instance. Whatever it was, it drew eyes and created a buzz that made people pay attention, whether they liked what they were seeing or not- it was a loaded rogue howitzer battery, guns in the distance, and it was skirting the edge of the pro wrestling establishment, looking to see what they could shell out from under the bigger games in town. While the unfortunate fate of this company is that it would be headhunted and mismanaged into a hurricane of bankruptcy and unpaid talent, a solvent ECW with Paul Heyman in charge, booking people into stars like most people assemble jigsaw puzzles, is something that’s incredible to see in action, as long as you’ve got the stomach to deal with the violence and the grotesquery that’s being offered up as the product.

And if you don’t? There’s the Described Wrestling Project.