The wrestling PPV year kicks off with ECW Guilty as Charged 2000! It takes place in my native Birmingham, Alabama at the historic Boutwell Auditorium. It’s a smaller venue and ECW managed to draw about 4,700 for Mike Awesome vs. Spike Dudley.
ECW Guilty as Charged 2000 is a tidy seven-match card, so let’s dive in!
The Best
Tajiri & Super Crazy taking on Jerry Lynn & Little Guido was everything that you’d expect. It was flashy as hell, crisp, fast-paced, and exciting. When Paul Heyman penciled this match in, he had to smirk to himself because he knew he had guaranteed sauce. This was the sauce match!
It was going to be good when you heard it announced.
That was the floor but the sky was the limit for these four. Of course, it fell a ways below what it could’ve been but that was down to the ending mostly. I’d also say that the placing could’ve been better. This match would’ve made for a raucous opening match or a great pick-me-up deeper into the show.
While the main event of Mike Awesome vs. Spike Dudley turned out well enough, if it didn’t RVD defending his Television title against best friend, tag partner and rival Sabu would’ve been a dope main event.
The placing of this match was really good as it comes after a blah match and before a match that wasn’t going to top it. I mean, that Tag Team title match better be pretty damn sturdy because it’s in the worst spot on the show.
As for this match, there were some blown spots and a little meandering between spots—as you’d in an RVD and/or Sabu match—but it was a good match.
Sabu was just kind of going through the spots since most of his were hit cleanly. It was more of a Sabu match than a super athletic RVD display but the match worked.
It also gets high marks for having the right amount of room to groove. This match could’ve easily gone 20 or 30 minutes but it was kept just under 15. Fabulous.
The semi-main event saw Tommy Dreamer and Raven fail in defending their World Tag Team titles against the Impact Players. Everyone was on board for this match with the Impact Players being particularly hungry and aggressive and Dreamer fighting as if ECW’s honor was on the line.
That’s all Tommy Dreamer has to do. He just has to be the embodiment of what “hardcore” really is.
Now, the match was nothing special in-ring, it was nothing you hadn’t seen for these teams already. It also suffered from what many ECW matches suffered from—too much outside interference and hoopla.
With that said, it was a solid match that was really entertaining for the bulk of it. It’s just the dangly bits that ruins it.
The main event saw Mike Awesome defend his ECW World title against Spike Dudley who was really here for revenge for his girlfriend. The title is merely a nice bonus in this feud. Awesome’s entrance gave LSD time to set up the tables outside—only to get put through said tables early into the match.
This was 100-percent a 14-minute squash match with tons of Awesome offense and big Spike Dudley hope spots and kick outs. Awesome did the basic job of a dominant big man who can do it all. He’s Cell from Dragon Ball Z.
However, Spike Dudley’s performance here was the bold sauce. It wasn’t Ricky Morton-level but it was as close as ECW would get. He was battered and broken physically but the kid’s hardcore. He’s got too much fighting spirit and Awesome has to crush that out entirely to beat the kid.
It was as if ECW dubbed 90s New Japan and changed the names and storylines but made a good movie. I enjoyed this match a lot and it was just Awesome hitting his sh** and Spike selling like near-death. Violent but simple
The Rest
The opener wasn’t really anything you’d be missing with a skip. At this point, I was a big Mikey Whipwreck fan and just saw nothing in C.W Anderson. Of course, years later I appreciate his tag team work post-ECW. It really took seeing him in a different setting to see how good Anderson is.
However, in ECW, the man just stuck out to me for bad reasons. It was in a “Why are you here?” sense. Anyway, this match was decent but just a really blah opening match for the kick-off to the year.
After the opener we had one of those extremely messy matches that will pique your interest and hold it throughout. On the one hand, this is good in that it’s entertaining in a way and keeps eyes on the TV. It’s great if the match prior was boring—and the opening wasn’t exciting me at all.
On the other hand, you want some order to the match. This was the kind of match people think of when they hear “ECW” for the first time.
Just a chaotic, Olympic gymnast-level flexible, messy-ass match. We’ve got refs doing suicide dives, managerial interference, and people putting a quarter in the cabinet and then joining the match midway.
It’s a wild-ass match that actually went longer than it should’ve. I enjoyed it.
Another match in New Jack’s unending war against the Baldies. It felt like it ran for three or four minutes longer than it should’ve but we did get a New Jack dive. Sometimes, that’s all you want from a New Jack bout. That’s the money shot. It makes the other how-many minutes worth sitting through to a degree.
I think the other thing is that the Baldies were just…generic boring thugs. There was nothing there.
ECW Guilty as Charged 2000 Verdict: Silver Medal (6.25/10)
Guilty as Charged 2000 was a well-paced, tidy PPV. Particularly tidy when looking back at the ECW shows we’ve covered in “Into the Vault” over the years. Was there some weak sh** on this show? That’s almost every wrestling PPV, ECW is no different.
However, what is good here is really good. It really pops. I’d say it’s like getting a poorly made Taco Bell burrito where the bulk of the filling is one end of the burrito. Or even eating a Hot Pocket but a part of it is brick cold.
The first half of the PPV is mid as hell then the show becomes really eventful post-New Jack vs. Angel. If anything, I’d say that Guilty as Charged 2000 could’ve done with two good matches in the first half and the rest in the second half of the show.
Distribute these matches evenly or something. The first half of the show wasn’t a slog because we had that dope Lynn & Guido vs. Tajiri & Super Crazy match but it could’ve been better.
Speaking of that match, it’s my pick for match of the show with the main event between Mike Awesome and Spike Dudley being the runner-up.
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