We’re back for “Extreme Is Alive”, a special “Into the Vault” series where we look at revivals and reunions of Extreme Championship Wrestling. This time, it’s the first WWE production ECW One Night Stand.
Before the show, WWE actually did some build-up on RAW and SmackDown. WWE doesn’t run a PPV without some storyline angle. This wasn’t going to be a reunion show where you just give the fans nostalgia and it doesn’t have some marketability to it.
ECW One Night Only: The Best
This is a hard one because everything got at least silver medals from me. We’ll look at the absolute best stuff here starting with Chris Jericho against career-long friend and former Thrillseekers tag partner Lance Storm.
After several years as a tag team, the two pretty much went their own ways when Jericho reached ECW a bit before Storm. By the time Storm arrived in ECW, Jericho was already in WCW. When Storm joined WCW in 2000, Jericho was already in WWE. These two just often missed either for a match, so this bout—as short as it was—was incredible to see.
Former ECW World Champions Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka are two hard hitters with a lot of chemistry and history from both ECW and Japan’s FMW. Their matches have one formula to them: slug it out early on, there must be a powerbomb on someone from the top turnbuckle, there will be brawling on the outside, and someone must be powerbombed through a table on the outside.
This was their standard, proto-murder, death, kill style of brawl and it was fantastic as the semi-main event. The crowd was totally into this one. Another match that the crowd was totally into was the main event featuring the Dudley Boyz taking on Tommy Dreamer and The Sandman.
They were rabid throughout and the action went from being a wild brawl to being extremely violent. I love this match. The only hit it takes and it’s actually just an ECW thing you should expect is the interference.
We can’t forget the wild finish to this match with Dreamer going through a burning table. E-C-Dub indeed!
The Rest
When I started doing “Into the Vault” and other reviews with a “The Best” and “The Rest” split, often “the rest” was trash-to-mediocre matches. That was not the case with ECW One Night Stand.
These matches are only here because the above three just really stood out. Of these matches, the triple threat featuring Tajiri, Super Crazy, and Little Guido could’ve probably gone into “The Best” category.
The trio has chemistry with each other in matches with Tajiri having good chemistry with Little Guido and Super Crazy in one-on-ones. This match was going to be good. The problem here was that it could’ve been a solid 8-minute bout instead of shooting under six.
It was short like the opener—and honestly could’ve been the opener—but lacked that “This is something special” to it that would’ve warranted a minimum of ten minutes.
You knew we were getting this match because WWE had Tajiri and Little Guido. Super Crazy was going to be at this show just because there was a match there for him.
Rey Mysterio vs. Psicosis was another solid and exciting match. This had a similar vibe to Jericho vs. Storm but Psicosis just wasn’t as consistent in-ring as he used to be, so some stuff flubbed.
Mysterio was consistent as usual and they did the usual stuff they would do before. I’d say this leaned more towards their WCW speed than their rip-roaring, something to prove speed from ECW.
I enjoyed the chaotic, fast speed of Rhino vs. Sabu. The thing to know about these two is that they often had a buttery match where Sabu didn’t botch something. If you put these two against each other, Sabu wasn’t going to botch much or come off as sloppy and this was one of Sabu’s cleanest bouts.
Finally, Chris Benoit vs. Eddie Guerrero was similar to Rey vs. Psicosis. The main difference is that something was missing here. I’m going to say enthusiasm from Guerrero over the result, being in constant pain, and losing while feuding with Mysterio could all contribute—in different degrees—to a meh performance on Eddie’s part.
Verdict: Silver Medal Show (3.7/5)
As far as being an entertaining and exciting show, ECW One Night Stand hits it out of the park. This show flowed along wonderfully. As a matter of fact, it was unlike an ECW show which often sped along disjointedly.
The matches on the card were all good. Looking at the ratings I gave them, most got silver medals and three got gold. This was a good show from beginning to end—which was something you didn’t always get in WWE at this time.
There might be some stuff you liked, something you really enjoyed, and the rest is either fine or could’ve been left off. For the most part, there was nothing that I felt could’ve been left off here.
If anything, maybe Sabu vs. Rhyno and Rey Rey vs. Psicosis but even those were pretty good. Match of the Night honors go to Masato Tanaka vs. Mike Awesome with the Dudley Boyz vs. Tommy Dreamer and The Sandman main event being an extremely close runner-up.
Extreme Vibe Check: Gold Medal (4.75/5)
The crowd, exciting bouts, and the disdain for the WWE superstars led by Eric Bischoff, JBL, Edge, and Kurt Angle made this show. Paul Heyman’s passionate speech at the end was basically the New Jack speech for a WWE audience but it was still extremely good.
So, why isn’t it 5 out of 5? It was too much of a WWE production. ECW One Night Stand was just way too clean. I don’t mean from a content view but just the production on the show.
The arena lights were bright throughout the whole show for one thing. ECW’s PPVs had matches where the crowd was dimmed out for the most part but here, we see most of the crowd.
Personally, I feel the lights should be dimmed on all PPVs and during television title matches. This point is extremely minor. The bigger point was that the show flowed too well. For the “Verdict” this was a positive element but as far as the vibe check where we’re looking at something close to the genuine article, the score takes a hit.
Final Verdict: Gold Medal Show (4.19/5)
Overall, this was an amazing ECW tribute or reunion show. It was basically how the company could’ve been with a better budget and better PPV flow throughout. Some minor things took away from the raw vibe of an Extreme Championship Wrestling PPV but again, it had great matches and a white-hot crowd.
Both of those made this a blast to watch and it still holds up sixteen years later.
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