In watching ECW Anarchy Rulz 1999, I’m reminded of how much I enjoyed Balls Mahoney in the company. His gimmick was just that of the hardcore, chair-swinging freak who wore heavy metal t-shirts, shredded jorts, and looked like the kind of person you wouldn’t want to take a punch from at all.
Let’s find out if there was actual singles potential in Balls Mahoney during his ECW run.
ECW Run
Balls arrived in ECW in 1997 as part of the Hardcore Chair Swingin’ Freaks with Axl Rotten. Mind you, that’s just what they became known as since they both looked like freaks and could scramble their opponents’ brains with ridiculously stiff chairshots.
Surprisingly, they never took the ECW World Tag Team titles which were held by the super dominant Dudley Boyz. He would claim his first Tag Team title in the company with new partner Masato Tanaka at November to Remember 1998.
Two more Tag Team title reigns came at Heat Wave 1999 and on an August 1999 episode of ECW on TNN when he teamed with Spike Dudley to defeat the Dudley Boyz in raucous bouts.
Then we get to Anarchy Rulz and his match against RVD for the ECW Television title. Now, I enjoyed this match a lot because it showed that Mahoney at least had the fundamentals down to where he could go almost 20 minutes against “The Whole F’N Show.” That’s when I began thinking “Maybe this guy could do more singles stuff?”
While that wasn’t the case exactly, we did get a few more singles matches with Balls Mahoney when the company was on its last legs. When ECW closed, Balls had been in a new team with newcomer Chilly Willy.
Salvaging Balls Mahoney as a Singles
This is a bit different as normally, we try to salvage a wrestler into being a World title contender. However, we’re going the easier route of just making Balls a singles star. He more or less dabbled in the singles pool in ECW for the majority of his run.
First, the point where it should’ve started was after Rob Van Dam defeated him to retain his Television title.
The guy could’ve been that tough-as-nails opponent that champions or singles stars up the card ran into by unfortunate booking or at random. He was great for the impromptu wild brawls and could’ve done this as a singles. Balls could also hold it down in a brief straight-up match in TV title defense or title contender matches.
ECW was big on mixing it up and throwing Balls Mahoney—not known to be a top-tier threat in ECW—into the mix would really mix it up.
At best, I could see him holding the Television title once or twice for extremely brief reigns—not even a month—while delivering some of the most violent failed title shots in the company.
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