[1994-02-05-ECW-The Night The Line Was Crossed] Shane Douglas and Terry Funk

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Terry Funk does an awesome, bloody, tear-filled promo putting over the 60-minute draw and throwing in shots at the WWF and WCW, which is bullshit, but effective and emotional bullshit. Funk is proud to be ECW champ -- he's an old man, but he's making his stand. All the other organizations can go to hell.

 

Paul E. and Sabu are next at the "press conference" and Sabu can't be controlled, of course. Heyman isn't as overcome with emotion as Funk, going into a tirade (which is delivered weirdly) about how Sabu was robbed of a rightful victory.

 

Finally, Douglas and Sherri are here. I LOVE this Douglas promo. It may be the best thing I've ever seen from him. This was in the early stages of this gimmick before he became so long-winded, I guess. Funk interrupts him to try to be a voice of reason, and takes offense to Douglas calling him an old man. Things get heated and a brawl breaks out. This is officially one of my favorite ECW moments ever. Douglas was seriously perfect here. Absolutely perfect. I have never seen him so good.

[El-P]

Amazing promos and angle. I agree this is probably Douglas best promo ever. Fantastic angle.

[Kevin Ridge]

I probably didn't need to watch a single minute of the match before to appreciate these promos. Loved Terry's promo. He just came off so emotional. That still being champion meant so much to him. Douglas was really good too even with his potty mouth. Sherri didn't feel right here to me but she was really just off to the side anyways.

[Exposer]

Terry Funk was at his game here. Douglas was at his game here. Paul E. talked in his "normal" voice which was odd. The brawl was fun. Great segment.

[soup23]

Funk and Duglas was great and I think seeing this promo may have helped build the legend of the shit match because they really conveyed it as an epic battle without going into hyperbole like Joey Styles was.

[PeteF3]

Man, if you could ditch the match itself and just go by the post-match promo, this WOULD seem like a classic. Funk spells out the ideal ECW philosophy and the point of difference between it and the Big Two. Paul E. and Sabu follow up, and Paul E. points out that the "referee was out for too long." No fucking shit. Paul E.'s final line is LOL-worthy--"Thank you very much, members of the media, you can all go to hell," delivered matter-of-factly. Douglas shows up and says "ass" a lot while Styles and Gordon make bad faces. This would be a good promo but the repeated swearing reeks of desperation, even if it seemed fresh at the time. Sabu actually seems fresh now, while Douglas' act doesn't. Funk comes back and puts him in his place, and the match is made for a one-on-one contest. Good back-and-forth here that didn't feel like guys reciting lines--both were reacting to each other.

[garretta]

The contrast between this Terry Funk and the raving madman that we're seeing concurrently in SMW is one of the most startling things I've seen in wrestling. But I'll be damned if it isn't just as good. He was the best promo out of the three by a mile here because he felt and sounded authentic, while Douglas in particular was still a hundred percent in character, which isn't a good thing where he's concerned.

 

"The Franchise" was a good idea on paper, but Shane took way too much advantage of ECW's supposedly lax restrictions on language and such, forgetting that most of the profanities he used still had to be bleeped in order for the show to be worthy of broadcast. A man isn't a good talker when half of his promo is "BLEEEEEEP!" Corny, who's an artist when it comes to blasphemy and profanity, managed to keep his promos clean, without even so much as "hell" or "damn", which by 1994 were acceptable even in the Bible Belt. Douglas knew better than to go off like he did most of the time, and Heyman knew better than to let him, which makes it a mystery to me how ECW had even regional television for close to nine years, let alone national cable and syndication.

 

Speaking of Paul, he obviously had a good time telling the "media" to go to hell, which seemed to be his only purpose. Why even bring Sabu out, since he can't talk? I guess to do the stupid "Don't show him the table!" routine.

 

I have yet to see the match, so I'll probably have more to say in that thread once I do.

[TheDuke]

I thought this was really cool. I am watching the WWE Network version of the entire show. It's kind of funny that here they bleep out the swear words from Shane Douglas, but during the actual match when Terry Funk stole the commentary headset they didn't bleep out his swearing. I wonder if the press conference and the match in the WWE version are pasted together from two different sources because of the quality issues during parts of the footage. Also I wonder since they call it a press conference if there were actually reporters or photographers there from different magazines or newsletters. With WWF I would assume anytime they have some kind of press conference it would be phoney, but I wonder if ECW would have wanted actual exposure. Also, Terry Funk is a big star in Japan and Japanese wrestling magazines I believe were still big in the 90s so I wonder if a Japanese photographer might have been there to capture it.