On February 17, 1996, Extreme Championship Wrestling continued to be ahead of the American wrestling industry with ECW CyberSlam 1996.
The show ended up being aired on ECW Hardcore TV later on. I tend to focus on the actual in-ring action when we head into the vault but Brian Pillman owned the mic on this show!
After the lights went out and Pillman appeared to takeover Joey Styles’ opening, no one else should’ve been near a mic. It was amazing.
For added humor, the crowd kept calling for ECW to “Let him piss” after he threatened to whiz in the ring.
If you want more chuckles how about Shane Douglas coming out and threatening to hold up the show until security booted the “WCW reject”. You know, like himself.
I mean, there were two WCW rejects in the ring and one was a Dynamic Dude. Let’s leave it at that and get into these matches!
Low-Tier
The show opens with six-man action featuring Bad Crew and a large scrub we’ll probably never see again taking on three other scrubs.
Most notable among the other scrubs is Dirtbike Kid—who got stomped out by The Great Sasuke in a match over in Japan.
Other than that, no one in this match was worth mentioning and the Bad Crew’s trio picked up the win. The crowd wasn’t feeling this opener at all.
Luckily, The Sandman came out and salvaged this thing by caning everyone. Here’s hoping Paul E doesn’t have to do that again.
Another match that the crowd wasn’t feeling was Spiros Gekko beating undercard favorite El Puerto Riqueno. I don’t know why Gekko is here and not in WWE. He looks like someone Vince would’ve scooped up.
On everything I love, the crowd hated this match. Jeez. I don’t blame them, it wasn’t an entertaining bout.
To quote one of my favorite movies, Boyz N The Hood, “Y’all wanna see a dead body?”
That’s what you’ll see as Taz crushes a scrub then crushes the scrubs from earlier who came out to save their fellow scrub.
Mikey Whipwreck proved harder for Taz to crush but he managed to get it done because it’s Taz. Yes, these three matches followed each other.
Oh wait, we also have Buh Big beating Mr. Hughes with assistance from Big Dick Dudley. I should bump this to mid-tier purely because it was short and we didn’t get another lengthy Mr. Hughes match.
Mid-Tier
Axl Rotten’s match against JT Smith was a fun brawl. I might have to go back and watch more Axl because his early 1996 stuff in ECW is pretty good.
Smith was a great opponent for him since the guy was well-rounded and could do a decent match of any style.
Apparently, former gold medalist and World Champion in boxing, Leon Spinks was in attendance. At this time he was three or four years removed from his wrestling career in Japan.
When Joey Styles notes that your move was ugly, your move was ugly as sin. We’re talking about The Sandman’s atrocious ass leg drop from the top.
The main event match saw The Sandman make another run at Raven’s ECW World Championship. It was a solid brawl with all the overbooked goodness.
We had a catfight between Kimona Wanalaya and Missy Hyatt—who was shmoking in 1996, Hak being sloppy at times, and interference from Raven’s Nest in a tidy brawl between the two ECW stars.
I know that the ref was meant to be knocked down by Raven’s flailing leg on that scoop slam attempt but it didn’t even look sturdy.
That slam looked like it was going to be a botch as soon as Raven was uprooted from the mat.
Exotic-Tier
After Mustafa came out to face The Headhunters alone, he was beaten up by the twins and deemed unable to compete.
Then we got some twin tag team turmoil between The Headhunters and The Bruise Brothers (The Harris Brothers).
This match was a brief, wild brawl. Chairs were thrown, the crowd got the hell out of the way, and fists were thrown like Mardi Gras beads. It was the first exciting match of the evening!
Keeping with tag team turmoil, there was a dog collar match featuring Francine and her Pitbulls against The Eliminators and Stevie Richards.
I don’t know where the hell The Blue Meanie was but this was a really good brawl that would’ve been good even without Richards and Francine but they really added to this match.
Francine was a manager/valet who wasn’t above taking bumps. She was in there, folks. After picking up the win for her team in a brutal match, she eats a Total Elimination!
Sabu and 2 Cold Scorpio had a TV title match that would’ve made for an eventful, dope main event or World title match. This should’ve been both!
These guys were hustling for half an hour throwing everything in this match and it didn’t drag. It wasn’t boring at any point. Incredible!
Cactus Jack vs. Shane Douglas was a pretty standard ECW brawl early on. Then we get towards the end when my all-time favorite referee Brian Hildebrand gave Douglas handcuffs.
If you want to see the roots of that sick Mankind vs. The Rock I Quit Match, this is it. The match didn’t start as an I Quit Match but Shane really wanted Cactus to say he quit. So many stiff chairshots.
Instead, Cactus called for Mikey Whipwreck to help him. Mikey had soured on Cactus who had gone full heel, flaunted that he was heading to WWE, cost them the ECW Tag Titles, and aligned himself with Raven’s Nest.
It’s no surprise Mikey brained Cactus Jack with the chair, giving Shane the win.
ECW CyberSlam 1996 Verdict: Mid-Tier (7/10)
Besides Pillman’s arrival and Taz murdering scrubs, the early part of the show was rough. Things really don’t pick up until the middle.
Once you make it to The Bruise Brothers vs. The Headhunters, ECW CyberSlam 1996 just continues to ramp up. The last part of the show is just hot.
Match of the show honors goes to 2 Cold Scorpio vs. Sabu hands down. It really pushed this show as close to exotic-tier as possible.
Don’t sleep on Cactus vs. Shane either!
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