Well...this is the first day of the rest of our lives, isn't it?

Let me introduce myself. My name is Bill Barnwell.

According to last week's ECW on TNN report by the since-departed Chris Palacios, Sabu is to make his ECW on TNN debut tonight. We shall see if his debut will be suicidal, homicidal, genocidal, death-defying, or even watchable. With Sabu, however, you never know.   

As we start off this week's show, our party host, Joey Styles (and Profiles) explains that there's a violent match coming up. He then introduces Joel Gertner, waiting in the ring to introduce our first match. He says that this match is for the ECW World Heavyweight Title, which brings out Mike (So) Awesome (that he hasn't spoken a word and is still the Champion?) . As Joel introduces Awesome, he does in his horrible own way, which is so miserable when you compare it to his excellent work with the Dudleys. His voice cracks several times. As he leaves, however, the music that makes you piss your pants comes on, and we see (and hear) New Jack, Biotch make his way to ringside. This could be, well, interesting, if Awesome does some nice stuff he learned in FMW. Joey puts over how fucked ECW would be if New Jack would be the World Champion; just like he did when the Sandman won the title from Shane Douglas 4 years ago. By the way...New Jack gets twice the pop that Awesome got. New Jack's music also plays during the whole match, until the end.

To start off, Awesome grabs one of New Jack's crutches, and misses and throws it violently into the crowd. I'm amazed no one got hurt by the throw, it looked intense. Jack hits Awesome with a garbage can cover. He then gets a paddle and hits Awesome. Joey makes the obvious remark that Awesome "could be up the creek without a paddle". Are we sure that Joey hasn't been secretly replaced with JR tonight? New Jack then uses the garbage can, and strangles Awesome with rope. Awesome then no-sells all this, gets up, and punches New Jack, but Jack counters with a Tyson-ish bite (speaking of Tyson, I take Tyson in 5 rounds by KO). New Jack chokes Awesome, who counters with kicks and punches. He misses a standing splash into the corner, and New Jack goes under the ropes and pulls him outside.

A headbutt by New Jack, and Joel has rejoined us in the booth. The combatants brawl some more outside the ring (hey...just like every other New Jack match anyone's ever seen before), while Gertner explains how stupid Paul E. is for booking this match. New Jack gets Awesome dazed, and then goes for Mick Foley's diving chairshot off of the apron, but misses. Maybe that move's just a Jack thing. Awesome uses some pretty weak chairshots (why? You never held back before...), then throws Jack back in the ring.

Awesome hits his ugly-ass flying clothesline, which always involves him tripping as he hits the mat after the clothesline. Kane's/Undertaker's always look much more fluid and nice. An elbow from Awesome, and several pretty good crutch shots. Awesome goes for the Vader splash (Vader bomb? Vader attack?) that Leon used as a finisher in the WWF, but it misses, and New Jack takes the advantage.

New Jack gets out his staple gun, and busts Awesome open with two blasts. Joey, who is getting ever worse, says that Awesome must never have experienced a staple gun in FMW. No, I guess not Joey. New Jack then hits a pretty shitty guitar shot. He goes up to the top, attempting to hit Awesome off of the top with a garbage can, but he drops the garbage can by accident (or at least, it looked as such). New Jack tries to dive onto Awesome anyway, but Awesome catches him with a chair. New Jack then gets thrown over the top rope, through a table, but it's not a powerbomb; it was more like the Bulldog's running powerslam, but without the actual powerslam. Awesome brings him back into the ring, a bodyslam and Awesome Splash later, it's over. (I don't do match times, I do ratings instead). DUD! Awesome's worst match so far. I'm afraid that he appears to be dogging it against anyone but Tanaka. I bet he jobs the title away at N2R to a returning Sandman. 

The opening credits roll (10 minutes into the show). No changes in the montage. I must say I like the ECW Theme remix...the technoish beat is nice.

While Joey Styles says that tonight's show is full of sex and sizzle, an excited Gertner exclaims that "We've already seen the sizzle...now it's time for the sex!" as "Back in Platinum Blond" Chris Candido along with "Back off of the Shoot Interview circuit" Tammy Lynn Sytch walk to the ring. He will be taking on Nova (who gets No 'va' entrance). Gertner gets off one of his rare good one-liners before the break: "This match is sponsored by the New Jersey chapter of the Betty Ford clinic".

We see commercials. I'm not recapping them.

Some amusing banter between Joel and Joey (of course, nowhere near as good as the PPV crew of Joey and Cyrus!):

JG: "Take a whiff of the front row, Joey, it smells like alcohol!"
JS: "Don't insult the fans Joel.."
JG: "Who's talking about the fans? I meant Tammy!"
JS: "God, enough Joel! Say something nice already!"
JG: "Ok, ok...I thought Tammy's perfume smelled nice tonight..."
JS: "Oh, really..."
JG: "Yes, until I realized it was strawberry daquiri! (laughs)...."

The match starts with the typical side headlock, knockdown, repeat, spinning headscissors, rana entrance we've seen a thousand times. Nova goes to shake Candido's hand, but gets six chops for his troubles, while Candido "whoo's" along with the crowd. A cross-corner Candido whip is reversed into a back body drop, and a flying forearm by Nova gets two. Another whip is reversed into a side Russian Legsweep. Another cross-corner whip is reversed into a backdrop over the top rope down to the floor.

All is quiet...until The Human Alliteration Machine Danny Doring, The Amish with a 'Tude (you thought that was unheard of), Roadkill, and Miss Congeniality, with clipped toenails attack Nova, like they said they would during Pulp Interview last week. However, Candido makes the save, and Tammy runs in and attacks Congeniality, which leads to, as I'm sure you knew already, a CATFIGHT! CATFIGHT!. Candido, Nova, and Tammy clear the ring of the intruders, and Nova hits a pescado onto Doring and Roadkill. Then, White Zombie goes over the PA, and it's The Sadly Mullet-Less Lance Storm (w/ Dawn Marie/Tammy Lynn Bytch/Beulah/Fake Breasts), who, by the way, is wearing his new "Canadian Superstar" shirt. While they walk down to the ring, Doring, Roadkill, and Congeniality all attack from behind. While the men hold each other down, Miss Congeniality holds Tammy in a powerbomb position while Dawn Marie gets out a paddle, pulls up Tammy's skirt to reveal, of course, a thong (duh), and then proceeds to spank her! Joel says it all: "This is my wildest fantasy coming true!". I don't think anyone else would disagree. Including me. I'll take a cold shower and be right back.

Ok...I'm back. Marie celebrates with Miss Congeniality, but when MC goes to celebrate with Lance (huh?), Dawn attacks from behind. DM gets on the mic (yes!) and says that that's "2 down, and 1 to go" (in case you haven't figured it out, she's taking out the women of ECW.) and calls out The Queen of Bulimia, Francine (w/ Tommy Dreams of Beulah); Tommy is wearing a Sabu shirt to the ring. Huh? He's now worn Reservoir Dog and Sabu shirts on TNN already. Can't you get any ring attire? Anyways..

Lance gets on the mic (no!), and actually cuts an effective promo. "Why are you holding her back, Tommy? Or, is she holding you back? She knows that I broke your back, Tommy, and now that it's not doing well, word says that you aren't of much use to her anymore". Tommy goes nuts and attacks Lance, while Francine and Dawn Marie hook it up for a catfight. However, before long, Jushin Credible joins us (unfortunately) with a Singapore Cane shot to the back of Tommy's head. Scotty the...er, Johnny..., er, Raven comes in to make the save as all heroes do, but walks away. Before he can leave the ring, however, Justin pushes him from behind; and that gets Raven's attention. He's out for himself, you see. Justin draws an imaginary line with the Incredicane, but Raven crosses it. Lance does the same, but Raven crosses it again, therefore stopping the incredible "imaginary line" defense that the Impact Players were using. As Raven is facing Lance, he faces away from Credible, who is about to hit him with the Singapore Cane, but Tommy saves Raven (awww). Raven and Dreamer both do the classic "walking backwards into each other" spot, Raven sees Dreamer and DDT's him and walks away. He cuts a promo on Dreamer while sitting there, but he doesn't have a mic, so we don't know what he said. He leaves, as we see some beautiful commercials.

When we get back, it's half-past, and Dreamer calls out Raven. Raven walks into the ring, walks across the apron, stares down Dreamer, and walks back out of the ring. We then hit some more commercials.

A blitzsports.com extreme replay joins us on our way back from commercial-land. However, all it does is replay the last fifteen minutes of the show, which I just recapped above. Morons. Joey hypes Saturday's ECW Arena show, which I will not be attending (I will, however, be at the next one in November, as well as the Trenton house show the night before, in case you weren't interested). Live event hype...and MORE commercials.

When we get back from our sojourn, Steve Corino's Rookie Rhinoceros Rhino (w/, of course, Steve Corino and Jack Victory, who's accompanied by a wheelchair) are making their way into the ring, to face David Cash (or, as he was known at N2R96, David Morton Tyler Jericho. The former SMW wrestler faced Stevie Richards; who, in a pre-match promo, created the bWo), who gets the jobber entrance (none) and the jobber naming (a minute into the match, Joey happens to mention that Rhino is wrestling the "well-traveled" David Cash. This reminds me of 1995, when Al Snow was wrestling Osamu Nishimura (who is currently battling cancer), and Styles obviously didn't know anything about Nishimura, so he said that Nishimura was being billed as a "future champion". Now, I wonder..."What else are you going to bill him as? A future jobber? A future stepping stone? At best a midcard worker? Come on! But that's enough of the sidebar. Cash hits a springboard crossbody and springboard Togoish dropkick, but it's no-sold by a Rhino spear and piledriver, which ends the match about 2 minutes in. Corino then proceeds to call out, for Rhino, that Suicidal, Homicidal, Genocidal, Death-Defying Guy who looks like he lives just next door, Sabu (w/ Bill Alfonso), making his TNN debut. Rhino attacks to start off, with kicks and punches till we get to a commercial break. Yes, ANOTHER commercial break.

When we come back, believe it or not, Rhino's punching Sabu. A cross-corner whip is met with a clothesline by Rhino, who throws Sabu out of the ring so that he can distract the ref while Corino and Victory attack Sabu. Rhino gets Sabu back, and whips him, but Sabu flips over Rhino, who was going for a backdrop. Sabu attempts a rana, but it's countered with a Rhinobomb for two. Rhino throws Sabu onto the floor for another heel manager attack. They even attack the Fonz and whip him into the guardrail. They hold Sabu in place for a Rhino pescado which misses. Sabu goes into the ring, hits a baseball slide that sends Rhino over the guardrail, and follows with a nice chair-assisted springboard plancha. Sabu busts his elbow open hardway on the way down. Sabu throws a stiff chair at Rhino's head from about five feet away, and assists the Fonz in setting up a table bridging the guardrail and apron. Rhino attacks, puts Sabu on it, and goes to the opposite turnbuckle, which signaled that he wasn't going to put Sabu through the table this time. Sabu gets up, and hits a top-rope rana on Rhino. A 2 count ensues, but before the ref can get the three, Corino comes in to break up the count. No DQ, because no DQ is extreme. Corino goes onto the top rope, but gets crotched by the Fonz, and gets a top-rope rana of his own by Sabu. Sabu pushes Corino onto the table, and tries to do a running splash through the table, but Rhino blocks with a spear (the same way Saturn used to block it when Sabu would try to put Kronus through a table in the excellent Sabu/RVD-Eliminators feud; a feud that yielded my favorite match ever, Sabu/RVD vs. Eliminators from November 2 Remember '96, a 35 minute time limit draw). 

Rhino hits kicks, and goes for a cross-corner running chairshot, but Sabu blocks it by kicking the chair into Rhino's face. Sabu goes for a Triple Jump Moonsault, but Rhino trips Sabu on the way up and it ends up looking like one of Raven's drop toeholds onto a chair; looked pretty nice, actually; good move by Rhino, which Joey puts over. Jack Victory then grabs Sabu and holds him in place so that Rhino can hit him; but Sabu, of course, ducks, and Victory takes a nice bump for an pretty old guy; off of the apron to the guardrail (of course, he's no Mae Young). Sabu dropkicks Rhino in the ankle, a legdrop, and then a half camel clutch. In case you didn't notice the first hundred fifty thousand freaking times Sabu's done that move and Joey's made this same comment, he learned that move from his uncle - the original Sheik. However, in a mark-out Kaientai spot, Corino dropkicks Sabu in the face! Now that I think of it....Corino would be a good member of an American K*DX, but it'd never happen. Alfonso complains to the ref on the apron, so Corino goes to attack him. Fonzie ducks, and hotshots Corino on the ring apron, then hits a slingshot splash~! Wow! Sabu hulks up (I don't think he'd Sabu up), places Rhino on the table, and puts him through it in a nice visual that involved Sabu hitting the side of his head and his already injured elbow on the guardrail. They both get in, and a legdrop from Sabu gets two. A snap mare and springboard leg lariat shuts down Rhino sufficiently enough so that Sabu can set up another table; this one, diagonally resting on a turnbuckle. 

Rhino hits Sabu from behind, and whips him into the turnbuckle adjacent to the table. He hits a shoulderblock, and goes up top for something, but Sabu catches him, knocks him down, goes up top, and hits a swinging DDT. He then puts Rhino through the table with Air Sabu, but that only gets a two! Match is around 15 minutes by this point. Sabu and Rhino fight over a chair in the ring, but before Rhino can pick it up, Sabu steps on his fingers. Sabu stands around awkwardly for a few seconds, then hits an X-Factor (hey...he stole JAZZ'S move!) on the chair for 2. Sabu goes upstairs with a chair, but Corino covers Rhino, not wanting any further damage to occur to his man. Sabu just decides to hit an Super Arabian Facebuster onto the back of Corino's head! Ouch! Sabu then hits an Arabian facebuster onto Rhino, and a Triple Jump Moonsault gets the duke.

Styles then hypes next week's main event: Sabu vs. Taz, and the show ends with a music video from Godsmack set to ECW highlights.

My hand hurts like a bitch from typing, so that'll be all for now. Good night. Send me feedback, too.

Bill Barnwell
Blitz Sports

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