Reviewing 1996 Extreme Championship Wrestling was a bit of an endeavor since there were no actual PPVs and plenty of supercards. However, 1997 is an important year for the company as we get its first pay-per-view in ECW Barely Legal 1997.
After trouble scoring PPV the year before in part because of the company’s content and also the Mass Transit incident from November 1996, ECW managed to strike up things up with Request TV—granted the provider was given a script for the show, the start time was pushed back, and the show wasn’t a bloodbath.
ECW Barely Legal 1997: The Best
RVD taking on Lance Storm was a good bout following the opener. PPV really benefited Rob Van Dam matches because the man could go for twenty, thirty, or sixty minutes at the time.
Since supercards were more flexible time-wise, RVD often went balls to the wall in his matches and they could run a little longer than necessary. This match was tight and Storm did some good work here.
That said, Storm’s chair shots weren’t anything to write home about—which is weird to say in 2021 where I’m more hesitant to enjoy chair shots to the head. Twelve-year-old me would’ve been more annoyed by them.
Outside of that, this was a good, condensed version of both men’s best that respected the time restrictions of PPV. Speaking of balls to the wall, the Michinoku Pro offer match was damn good.
bWo Japan—or Kaientai DX—featured TAKA Michinoku, Terry Boy (MEN’s Teioh), and Dick Togo. Across the ring was The Great Sasuke, Gran Hamada, and Masato Yakushiji.
This was a great bout that introduced lucharesu—lucha libre-inspired Japanese wrestling—to a large Western audience. Mind you, this wasn’t the first M-Pro bout in ECW and we’ll cover it in another column.
You’d think fans would’ve been burned out after seeing beads of sweat-producing, breath-stealing, edge of your seat thrill ride of the Barely Legal preview match but they ate this one up as well.
This was best match on the show, hands down. Some of the matches on this show had rooted stories behind them—Sabu versus Taz is the deepest-rooted bout on Barely Legal 1997.
Former tag partners, Taz and Sabu always had a rivalry in ECW. The showdown between the two was presented as a heated epic fight and it worked! Hell, Sabu was even pretty damn clean in this match as far as few expected botches.
As for Taz, he was superb as usual in this one. The semi-main event was a contender’s bout—yes, another one in the spring of 1997—featuring Terry Funk, The Sandman, and Stevie Richards.
I always liked how ECW triple threat matches had eliminations. In title bouts, it forces the champion to really be a champion and at least not be the first person out. It does make it seem like “Well this could’ve just been a one-on-one match” but sometimes things just shake out to where you have two top contenders.
In this case, there were three contenders next up and Barely Legal 1997 doubled as a “Thank you” to Funk who was the company’s first big star and gave them the hardcore mantra.
Funk picked up the win in a match that admittedly when from a good, even brawl with high stakes into a bout that went a little too long and became a bit of a mess as it went on. Still, it was one of the best matches on the PPV.
The Rest
WCW and ECW had a similar mindset in starting off an event that folks paid to watch on television with an exciting, hot match. The Dudley Boyz defending their ECW World Tag Team titles against The Eliminators—Perry Saturn and John Kronus—was a brief, exciting start to the show.
It was equal parts brawl and spotfest and I really dug it! With the spotty elements of the match being pronounced, ECW made the right call in keeping this thing brief and somewhat controllable.
These kinds of matches have a way of really running free and running a little on the long side but this was just right.
The Television title match saw champion Shane Douglas defend the title against Pitbull #2. Pitbull #1 was out with a neck injury and couldn’t compete for the belt.
Douglas spent a lot of the match attempting to disable #2’s neck. You could see that there was supposed to be a path and story here but the match had several strikes against it.
The most egregious is that it went far too long. Almost twenty-one minutes and it just seemed like one of those matches that meandered forever. Also, it aspired to be an extreme epic—at least at over 20-minutes that should’ve been the goal—but only had one of the players to make it possible.
Douglas can only do so much on his own, folks. Another thing is that it was placed questionably. If this was the end result or the possible end result, it should’ve been placed after the opener.
When you have the worst match sandwiched between six bouts that really got the crowd percolating with five of those being dope as hell, that’s not good.
That’s a match to cool down the crowd and ECW was a company that would exhaust the crowd with tons of action. However, you don’t need twenty-one minutes to cool everyone down.
The main event was a short, hot bout and the most important one on the PPV. Actually, it was more of an angle because Raven mud-stomped an exhausted, broken down, old Funk for the bulk of it.
What boosts this match is the story told and the work of both Raven and Funk. Another PPV would be months down the line so if this story was going to be told for the world to see, it had to be done at the end of Barely Legal.
As a match, it’s not good or great but as a piece of important storytelling and for the significance to ECW lore, this was the peak of the show—without mentioning Sabu vs. Taz.
ECW Barely Legal 1997 Verdict: Bronze Medal (2.8/5)
An uncharacteristically well-structured ECW event—outside of Hardcore TV—where time was well-used for the most part. Some matches went a little longer but didn’t kill enthusiasm for the match itself while one match went roughly ten more minutes than it deserved.
The Douglas-Pitbull #2 match honestly could’ve been ten minutes and the other ten could be split between the opening Tag Team title match and RVD vs. Lance Storm.
Match of the Night honors goes to the Michinoku Pro-Wrestling six-man tag match with Sabu vs. Taz being second up followed by the three-way dance with Funk, Richards, and The Sandman.
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