ECW November to Remember ‘97
November 30, 1997
Monaca, PA

Shane Douglas was the man Paul Heyman was putting his top heel money on. Douglas was…an okay choice. They could have been a lot worse (I assume he really wanted to use Raven). Douglas had some time in the WWF and WCW, so him as the top heel was a legitimate draw for ECW’s level at that point.

Top face? You got me. Taz wasn’t ready quite yet, but he was clearly the one they would go with. Terry Funk was a nice nostalgia run. Sabu will always be an attraction (and I think was heel at this point anyway). Rob Van Dam was still coming along (and was still heel here too). The short term answer? Bam Bam Bigelow was still a name in wrestling, only two and a half years removed from main eventing Wrestlemania. I’ll hand it to Paul Heyman, big name wise, these two seem to be the right guys for the main event.

As for the rest of the card, there is a mix of making new stars (RVD, Taz), just putting current ones wherever (Sandman, Dreamer, Sabu) or a lot of what the hell is going on (we’ll get there).

But hey, wrestling was getting hot, to be fair ECW was pretty hot at this time as well. This is ECW’s 3rd PPV, let’s see how it goes.

The Card

Largest crowd in ECW history. My research says 4,600 fans. I think that’s not bad?

Chris Candido vs. Tommy Rogers

I’ll admit, I don’t even know who Tommy Rogers is.

He’s Bobby Eaton’s old partner. I did know that, weird I didn’t make that connections.

I was thinking this match was boring…then we got a “boring” chant.

Tommy Rogers looks like he’s running at 80% speed.

Rogers suplexing Candido to the floor looked cool.

Seriously match is boring. It’s not even bad, it’s just a bunch of spots.

Lance Storm is out here and he attacks Tommy Rogers.

Now Jerry Lynn is here. And we have a tag match?

Ref makes it a tag match. Sure why not. The singles match sucked.

Hey, at least it got more exciting when Lynn and Storm got added.

Rogers does the nicest Unprettier I’ve ever seen.

Chris Candido and Lance Storm win when Candido pins Rogers in 16:42. Northern Lights Suplex wins it. Match picked up when it became a tag for sure. Storm and Candido would continue the Triple Threat storyline and even win the Tag Belts in the future.

We get images of Mikey Whipwreck beating Steve Austin and Justin Credible beating the Great Sasuke. Take that WWF!

Justin Credible vs. Mikey Whipwreck

Mikey Whipwreck: the only ECW Triple Crown Winner in ECW history. In all honesty, a stat like that is what was wrong with ECW (I also thought Sabu had done this).

My best memory of Credible’s manager Jason is Jazz crushing his balls at Heatwave ’99 (we’ll get there).

Credible was doing his X-Pac (or Syxx at this time) impression at this point. I think Credible was a little underrated at this point.

Sunset flip powerbomb was nice.

Mikey Whipwreck pins Justin Credible in 7:15. Whippersnapper for the win! Jason gets involved, but Whipwreck counters and actually uses Jason to get in position for the Whippersnapper. I will say that the result makes no sense whatsoever though. Credible was supposed to be pushed as a top ECW guy, no? I mean Whipwreck sure as hell wasn’t.

Joey Styles says that in the locker room Al Snow is getting Head. A lot funnier in 1997, and if I was 15, I guess. Snow makes the segment work though, and it’s pretty cutting edge to be fair, which Snow saying things like “get this guy over, and get this guy over” and doing the “J-O-B”.

Joey Styles is hilarious sometimes.

Sandman-Sabu promo…nope. Weird technical difficulties I guess.

ECW Television Championship
Taz© vs. Pitbull #2

Pitbulls turned heel at some point. The Pitbulls were two guys who just couldn’t do anything but brawl, and on PPV there just couldn’t be that much of ECW style brawling.

Paul E. Dangerously is in the commentary booth…and they take shots at RAW.

Pitbull #2 has Pitbull #1 and Mr. Wright at ringside.

Pitbull #2 totally misses a spinning heel kick that Taz sells.

Well, that was quick.

Taz makes Pitbull #2 submit in 1:29. A few suplexes, then the Tazmission ends it. Makes sense. Taz looked like a killer in his run up to the ECW World Title.

Taz calls out Brakkus, who is at ringside. Good thing that was never on PPV.

Taz makes fun of a security guard, who gets in Taz’s face. Taz bitchslaps him then chokes him out. Weird. Paul E was worried about lawsuits and calls for something else. Somehow he did this stuff better than Russo.

We get highlights of Bam Bam throwing Spike Dudley into the crowd. One of the things that made me an ECW fan for the record. I wrote about this in an earlier review.

Now we get highlights of Bigelow winning the World Title from Shane Douglas in New York a few weeks ago.

ECW World Tag Team Championship
The FBI© vs. The Gangstanantors vs. The Dudley Boyz vs. The Chair Swinging Freaks

We get some racist remarks from Tommy Rich to D-Von Dudley.

Joel Gertner is pretty incredible.

The Chair Swinging Freaks just come in and hit everyone with chairs. New Jack and Kronus have yet to show up.

Here comes New Jack! Only took 4 minutes.

Just how many times did New Jack do the run in and weapons thing? Jeez.

The Gangstanators is the result of Perry Saturn going to WCW…and Mustafa doing…something.

I don’t know what the hell is going on…although it looks like Jack and Kronus got killed here.

Big Dick Dudley misses a big moonsault…but he chokeslams Kronus anyway.

Kronus 450s Big Dick and tries to pin him, but he’s not in the match. I’m shocked the ref has still kept track.

Bubba Ray Dudley over the top rope plancha was not something I expected to see. Wow.

Tommy Rich takes a guitar to the head from an off the top rope New Jack!

Bubba eliminates Kronus with a Bubba Cutter. Fans aren’t happy.

Bubba Ray throws Little Guido into the top turnbuckle in a pretty sick way. Wow. That was better than Nash and Mysterio.

What the fuck? They did the powder in the eyes and Bubba 3Ds D-Von by accident spot. I thought that was just something stupid TNA came up with in that Fish Market Match. Dudleys are gone.

Evil referee! Evil referee! What else will this match have?

The FBI retain when Guido pins Mahoney in 14:32. Judge Jeff Jones kicks Mahoney low, and Guido rolls up Mahoney. Fast count and its over! Wow. I feel like I just watched 4 matches in one or something. I can’t remember a overbooked clusterfuck quite like that…but…I admit I was quite entertained and enjoyed it. It was fun, even if it was all over the place.

Rob Van Dam vs. Tommy Dreamer

RVD was still pro-WWF here. Amazing how he did this as a heel gimmick and still became the most popular wrestler in ECW history.

This is a flag match. How about that.

Bill Alfonso is the Vice President of Senior Affairs for the WWF or something. At least that was the gimmick.

1997 was a huge year for RVD. He looked a bit sloppy at Barely Legal. Here, he’s nearly the Whole Fuckin’ Show.

Not sure if he was the first, but the way RVD would jump on guardrails and do kicks and stuff (this one, Alfonso held a chair near Dreamer’s face and RVD double jumped on the guardrail and superkicked it) was just breathtaking at the time.

Nice DDT counter from RVD.

RVD does a split on the top rope as a tauntlike counter…but Dreamer sees it and kicks RVD in the middle, and then DDTs him off the top! Only 2!

Dreamer with the most obvious Van Daminator counter…he hits RVD with the chair.

Jeff Jones again! Horrible Dreamer Van Dreaminator there.

We get a referee match in the middle of this, but Beulah low blows Jones and the two refs DDT Jones. Fonzie takes out the refs, Beulah takes out Fonize.

RVD’s famous selling of Dreamer’s piledriver by popping up 4 feet (seriously) in the air.

Doug Furnas and Phil Lafon are out here! Then Stevie Richards comes back! Short WCW stint there.

Five Star Frog Splash on the garbage can!

No Contest in 14:32. Not sure how 14:32 was the original time, as we don’t get a real finish. Dreamer is out from the Furnas, Lafon, Richards, RVD beatdown. We have no more refs. This was a pretty good match actually, but the finish hurt it a lot, really because we didn’t have one.

We got Dreamer on a table and Sabu is out here. They wrap Dreamer in the WWF flag..but Sabu comes off the top and punches Beulah in the face! Wow I didn’t see that coming! Here comes the Sandman!

Tables and Ladders Match
The Sandman vs. Sabu

I like how Sandman just takes his time here with his normal entrance despite the fact that Dreamer was in trouble.

Sabu dives into Sandman’s kidney through the ropes. That seemed dangerous.

Sandman throws a ladder at Sabu’s head that could easily have hit a fan. Looked great though.

Sandman pretty much legdrops himself through a table on the floor but kinda gets Sabu. Really sloppy match, but it looks sick when the spots actually hit.

The match is literally spot after spot. It’s like a rehearsal.

Sabu and Sandman fall over on one spot, which leads to Sandman comically rolling over the ladder.

Fans aren’t buying it.

If I were to guess by that somersault senton through the table, I’d say Sandman is drunk.

We get a screwed up fireball by Sabu.

Sabu pinned The Sandman in 20:55. Atomic Arabian Facebuster with a Ladder for the win. Pretty horrible, but not the worst match of all time. They didn’t even try. It was literally set up spot, do spot, maybe hit spot. At least some of the spots look cool, like the javelin ladder. And we got some violence. Crowd seemed to hate it though. Or not care.

Taz is here for commentary! Actually he just challenges Bigelow to a match at Living Dangerously…4 months from now.

ECW World Championship
Bam Bam Bigelow© vs. Shane Douglas

Random personal thing: I always disliked Bigelow’s grey color scheme, I just thought the orange and red flames were better.

We are near Douglas’ hometown, so he gets the cheers. Bigelow though was kinda a bad ass face, so it works anyway. He doesn’t care.

This is all Bigelow. While Bigelow’s offense looks good, Douglas as the hometown face in peril, considering his character at the time, just doesn’t work.

Douglas tries an over the top rope hurricanrana and gets powerbombed through a table. That was real believable.

The Triple Threat run down, even though they are banned, and Bigelow tosses Douglas over the top rope and wipes them out. Bigelow is putting on a typical Bigelow performance here, and that’s not a bad thing.

Shane Douglas wins the ECW Title in 25:02. Douglas gets a belly to belly through a half table propped up by a chair (the hell?) and gets the three. Douglas just doesn’t cut it as hometown face in peril and the match suffers greatly. This is the kind of match Bam Bam and Bret Hart would have owned with four years prior. Crowd popped huge. I’ll call it decent.

Second ECW PPV in a row where Douglas wins the World Title. He would hold it through 1999 because of injuries, allowing ECW to become the Taz and RVD show.

Nothing on this show barring Sabu and Sandman is horrible. I’d even go as far to say I liked the show. But we aren’t getting into B territory with the crap finishes to the tag title and Dreamer-RVD match. Nevermind Sabu vs. Sandman’s blatant spotfest.

Historically, well, Taz and RVD looked great, no?

Final Grade: C+