Review: TNA Hardcore Justice

I had my doubts; I thought that Hardcore Justice was probably going to be a Botchamania special. I thought you’d have a bunch of washed-up guys trying to recapture something that had long evaporated... but shit me, I was wrong.

I was never into ECW in the 90s. I was introduced to it by Socko writer That Clown from Outta Town in October 2000. We had some crazy times back then, and watching this PPV brought back a lot of long forgotten memories of kicking the shit with a great friend. Back then I firmly believed that wrestling was fake... all of it. I believed that it was all bullshit, but then Clown played me some of his ECW tapes. Crazy shit with Sandman, Rhino and Kid Kash stick in my head. I’d never seen anything like it – it opened my eyes. Clown’s room smelt of wet dog, we made bongs out of Pringles tubes, ate our bodyweights in microwave popcorn, debated whether Fred Durst was a complete cunt or an absolute cunt, lived days by the whim of a dice-roll and played the Brake Fast Bends level on Micro Machines until our thumbs bled. Fuck, we didn’t know how lucky we were to have that time on our hands. This PPV was meant to be a piece of nostalgia, and God damn it, it worked.

With the event opening we had ECW, sorry, EV2.0 (?!) announcer Stephen DeAngelis introduce the human suplex machine Taz – this guy can still wrestle on the mic, let me tell thee.

We’re living in an age when history is someone’s intellectual property. Can you imagine if Germany were to sue Britain every time someone mentioned Adolph Hitler or the Nazi Party? Or maybe if the French sued whenever the word Napoleon came up on a history show? ECW occurred, and it is part of history... the changing of names, and letters is so fucking redundant... but I digress...

So the first match was a six-man tag match: Full Blooded Italians versus Kid Kash, Johnny Swinger & Simon Diamond. This was pretty entertaining, it had a dance off in the middle, but at least the crowd were chanting ‘where’s my pizza’. Tracy Smothers looked incredibly droopy. If you can imagine a latter-day Terry Funk being sucked into a vertical wind tunnel, you might just get the look. Simon Diamond has also, ahem, put on a few pounds – even Taz remarked that he’d been ‘blown up’. The match wasn’t great, but it was entertaining. The dance off confused the fuck out of me, but Kid Kash did a crazy-ass dive onto the floor and Guido got the win with a Killswitch (I’m pretty sure it was, there was some debate).

Next up we had some crazy-ass promo with some old ECW people who couldn’t be arsed to be there. One such person was the Blue Meanie, who for some reason, they replaced in the actual show with some random fat guy. What the fuck? The backstage sequence with the (semi-fake) bWo and Al Snow saying "You can't even use the shirts! We're so sued..." nearly made me poo my pants off.

The we had some bullshit ‘I remember’ segments from TNA stars who were, like, totally into ECW, but never really got to see it, because they were, like, five years old. Saying that, knowing that Madison Rayne and Angelina Love really liked ECW gives me a nice warm feeling... Rayne was thirteen when ECW folded...

The second match of the night was CW Anderson versus Too Cold Scorpio. I’ll be honest, I have no fucking idea who CW Anderson was or is... I’m sure Clown will enlighten me (maybe even mark out) but I really didn’t know/remember this guy at all. He looked something like Arn/Mr/Ole Anderson, but that was it... Scorpio botched a few spots, but the match was pretty decent. A couple of superkicks and a moonsault-legdrop combo by Scorpio for the win. Not a bad match, but not great... still better than what WWE are doing these days.

Next up was Stevie Richards (accompanied by the fake Blue Meanie and Hollywood Nova) versus Justin Credible. This match took a bit to get going, but we did get Richards posting Justin... ouch! There’s a few suplexes, a few powerbombs, nothing too extreme. Then Stevie comes out with ‘enough of this shit’ and gets a Steviekick in for the win. Richards and Credible were out of sync throughout and the match was nothing to write home about. After losing, Credible started hitting Stevie with a kendo stick. In true Sting fashion, the lights went out and came back on to reveal the Sandman with a cane.

Back in the day there is no fucking way that the next match would been on a PPV: Spike Dudley versus Al Snow (with Head) versus Rhino in a three-way dance. Earlier on Snow had made some comments to (Doctor) Stevie Richards, asking if he knew a therapist, hilarious stuff. All I could think throughout this match was about how shit Al Snow is and how he’s the butt of every other joke in Foley’s first autobiography. The match itself was pretty shit, luckily it only lasted about 6 minutes. A lot of brawling, a nice Sliced Bread by Spike and Rhino got the win with a Gore.

Next up was Balls Mahoney & Axl Rotten versus Team 3D. 3D were accompanied to the ring by Joel Gertner who probably got the biggest crowd reaction of the night with his poetic reference to Lady Gaga. Funny shit. With the Dudley’s back in their old ring-gear they declared that it would be a street fight (I thought this was already meant to be extreme?) Most of this match was pretty poor, throughout most of it they had this fucking annoying split-screen thing going on. Directors take note: split screen is shit. In fact, not only was the split screen shit, the graphics for the whole show looked really amateurish. Once the match went to one screen it was pretty funny. There was a hilarious bit with toy light sabres which I am sure smark fans will hate, but I thought it was hilarious. The match culminated with the Dudley’s doing a Wassup Drop to get the pin. They then get a table, set it on fire and Powerbomb Balls through it. Classic Dudleys. On the whole, this was a bad match which was saved by a lot of old school references, comedy bits and after the match... New Jack! The Gangstas came in and interrupted 3D’s celebration with an impromptu match. Bins, staple guns, hockey sticks, and crutches all came into play. Gertner got smacked by a guitar... then there’s a stare-down... and a hug. How lovely.

Next up was Tommy Dreamer versus Raven with Mick Foley as special referee. This was a long match (about 17 minutes). In the most part, it wasn’t great but there were some awesome moments, mainly to do with creative use of barbed-wire: a cross-face using the stuff and Mr Socko wrapped in the stuff (even though Socko never appeared in ECW). Holy shit, there was some juice flowing in this one. The match ended with Raven getting the win with his Raven Effect DDT onto a chair.

There was a backstage vignette with the Gangstas, JB and SoCal Val. Mustafa grabbed Val by the hair and drags her off screen, what the fuck? Is the insinuation rape here? Is this what ECW was about. New Jack then scares JB. Pretty lame.

Finally, we have the main event RVD (with Fonzie) versus Sabu (with Fonzie). Sabu was bald and looked a bit like a Victorian strong-man, very odd. I have to say I really enjoyed this match, though I think Fonzie put on the best performances of the night, this guy’s great. The match was pretty much a best of Sabu versus RVD with them doing all of their best spots. Arabian Facebuster, Rolling Thunder with a steel chair, Van Assassin, and crazy dives over the guard rail were all in here. It was a bit sloppy around the edges, but the fact that these two guys can go like this says a lot. I was also reminded how good RVD can be when he can be arsed. RVD won with the Five Star Frog Splash and they hugged at the end.

At the end Dreamer and the rest of the ECW guys came out to thank the crowd (Dreamer now sporting a rather nasty looking black-eye). Dixie was brought into the ring and it was all lovely. Then the chants of ‘fuck you Vince’ finished it off nicely.

Joel Gertner and Fonzie proved something which I have thought for a good while: there are no decent wrestling managers anymore. TNA need some good managers to big up wrestlers who might not be the best on the mic but are awesome in the ring. This was attempted with Amazing Red and Dom West, but Red was pushed aside, ooh, around January time.

So, it didn’t quite look right being in the Impact Zone, and didn’t sound without Joey Styles on the announce table, and TNA couldn’t use the letters ECW in the order I’ve just written them, oh, and some of the names were a bit wrong... but fuck it, it was it was, and they put on a great show. Smarks will no doubt piss all over this because from a pure wrestling standpoint they weren’t great matches, but that wasn’t the fucking point. E C fuckin’ W.