[2000-01-09-ECW-Guilty as Charged] Mike Awesome vs Spike Dudley

[soup23]

Spike arranges furniture on each side of the ring during his entrance. Awesome rushes in and immediately press slams Spike into one of the tables on the outside. Spike comes back in and gets thrown through two other tables on the outside. Joey doing his “Stop the match” JR impression is pretty awful. Awesome dives over the guardrail and into the row of fans with a crossbody onto Spike. Spike gets a rana to Mike and hits the Acid Drop on the guard rail. We then get a slammed chair shot onto Awesome’s back along with a head chair shot. Spike goes for a tope but gets caught into the ropes and luckily Awesome sort of catches him or he would have splated on the concrete. Awesome does a springboard dive to the outside and slips like crazy on the floor. Spike is busted open and of course we get a dig at Hogan on commentary. Spike is able to hit the Acid Drop from the ring apron to a table on the outside and the crowd wakes up with a big ECW chant as Awesome is in trouble for the first time. Spike goes for another Acid Drop inside the ring and Awesome is able to elevate him again through a table in relatively reckless fashion. Awesome asks for another table. Spike gets Awesome Bomb’d through the table from the top rope and that is all of the match. I like both of these guys and I understand the story, but this didn’t feel like a PPV title match and the table spots became repetitive after a while. **1/2

[Superstar Sleeze]

ECW World Heavyweight Champion Mike Awesome vs Spike Dudley - ECW Guilty As Charged 2000

 

As expected great David vs Goliath match. Thought Spike really gave an inspired performance both as ragdoll for Awesome to throw around and someone with a lot of fighting spirit. I loved how he threw himself into every spot whether it be a bump or offense. You felt he needed every a pound of body weight to contend with Awesome when he hurl his body at him or tackle him. Great use of chair as equalizer. Awesome as a Goliath offensively was great throwing Spike through tables at will, steamrolling him with clotheslines. I wish he was a better heel. Like a really despicable bully there are still to many times where he is trying to get himself over with his cool spots which detracts from that emotional impact of the match. Finish was great loved the Acid Drop counter through a table on the outside and nasty chair shot from top rope to floor. You actually kinda believe Spike has a chance. Goes for the Acid Drop but is FLYING THROUGH A TABLE!!! Great spot1 They give Spike one more hope spot before THE MOTHER OF ALL AWESOME BOMBS FROM THE TOP ROPE THROUGH A TABLE!!! I liked this better than any Tanaka stuff because Spike made for a lot better babyface still Awesome needed someone to teach him how to be a heel. ***3/4

[Loss]

I liked parts of this, but I think both guys have offense that's way too repetitive. Spike is worse than Randy Orton about going for his finisher way, way, way too often in the course of a match. As a match to establish Mike Awesome as a killer champion, this was a great piece of a business. As a match, it seemed like they ran out of ideas after three minutes or so, so they just kept repeating them.

[goc]

I liked parts of this but as a whole it didn't do a lot for me. I do appreciate the setting up of the tables before the match instead of grinding the match to a halt to do it while the match is ongoing. But yea I would agree that this didn't feel like a PPV worthy World TItle match and that it started to get repetitive. Probably would have benefited from being a few minutes shorter. I will give them credit for handling Spike's fuck up on the dive pretty well and just going with it instead of trying to somehow force Spike staying on offense like it seemed he would have.

 

My biggest question coming out of this match though is what exactly does Judge Jeff Jones add to this act? The gimmick just seems so low rent with the robe and the gavel that it feels like it's actively detracting from Mike Awesome seeming like a bad ass to have that goof coming out with him.

[GSR]

Spike gets a ring crew member to help him put some tables up around ringside, although that backfires early as Awesome presses him overhead and throws him through the first of these. He crawls back in the ring but Awesome tosses him straight back out the other side and through two tables that had been stacked on one another. He whips Spike into the guard rail and he goes flying over it and into the crowd. Awesome then with a running dive over the rail onto him. Back in the ring and the beating continues until Spike reverses a powerbomb into a huracanrana over the ropes to the floor. Spike catches his legs on a tope, but Awesome is able to catch him in time and prevent him from landing head first on the concrete. Spike with a rana off the top and Awesome responds with a killer looking clothesline. He tosses him over the guard rail again, nails him with a chair and comes off with an impressive springboard clothesline from inside the ring and over the rail to Spike. Unfortunately on landing he loses his footing on the wet concrete floor and takes a nasty looking fall himself. Awesome sets up for a powerbomb from the apron through a table on the floor, but Spike blocks it and hits the Acid Drop instead. Acid Drop attempt inside the ring, but this time it’s Awesome who blocks it and tosses Spike over the top rope and through another table. Jeff Jones sets a table up in the ring, and after some back and forth action and with Awesome sat on the turnbuckle, he puts Spike over his shoulder, climbs to the top and comes off with an almighty Awesome Bomb through the table for the win.

 

This match was tailor made for its audience, and while I can’t fault the effort of either man, it was sloppy, a tad repetitive and wasn’t for me (although I imagine me in 2000 would have lapped this up). The brawling on the outside and into the fans, the chair shots, the table breaking, it was exactly what this crowd wanted; so on that score they’re to be applauded. Spike took a right beating here although I found his selling infuriating as he’d be on death’s door one minute and perfectly fine the next. Feels more like a TV main event as opposed to a PPV main event.

[Kronos]

This match was all about Spike standing up for his girlfriend (very OTT attack on Hardcore TV). And despite Spike's sometimes entertaining pinball performance, he fails.

 

So do we consider for the next PPV that Spike enlists someone more Awesome's speed to do his fighting? Is anyone in ECW capable of matching him for size and look, besides Tanaka? I'm interested to see if they continue this feud.

 

Once again, Awesome takes a nasty unprotected chair shot. It's like watching Dynamite do those diving headbutts. Not cool.

[Stiva]

I'm a bigger fan of Spike than most, I think and I really enjoy matches where he gets to bump around so I definitely enjoyed this, even if it's status as a PPV main event meant that it went longer than it had any right to. I liked all the table spots, with Spike bumping huge on that first one and the repeated attempts at the Acid Drop didn't bother me in this context since it really felt like a guy who knew he had the one killer right hook and knew he needed to go for it ASAP to win the match. With a few minutes shaved off and positioned as a TV main event, this would have done a great job in establishing Awesome as a killer champ and elevating Spike in defeat. As it stands, it strikes me as a strange match to headline a PPV, even if they did have the crowd with them all the way.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

This was the first time I had watched this since it aired on PPV. I was a huge fan of Spike as a kid and still enjoy watching him bump like a maniac and go through tables. Certainly nothing special as a match but it entertained me as a fan who enjoys both guys, warts and all.

[Matt Franklin]

ECW has not aged well for me. The whole presentation just doesnt connect with me the same as it did when I was a teenager. I thought the match was ok, but it just didnt match up with my current tastes in wrestling. Awesome was KILLING Spike with those clotheslines, they looked more brutal than most of the table spots. I liked how Spike fought for his hope spots, but he just didnt seem like a credible challenger for a PPV main event, though to be fair Im not sure who the best fit for the show would have been at this time, Tanaka had been done to death, it was a little too early for Rhino, RVD was TV champ (perhaps Sabu on his way out?)

 

I remember really liking this as a teenager, but I doubt Id bother to watch it again.

 

**1/4

[Chess Knight]

This was maybe 50% great match and 50% evidence that even 15 minute matches can be too long. Awesome is known for putting people through tables so Spike sets up a bunch of tables before Awesome's entrance, to show he doesn't have fear. He gets thrown through more than a couple before the bell rings. If the bell rung at all? I honestly don't know if it did. There was a great theme here of Spike being half-killed but hopeful and stubborn. The issue is the structure; they just kept going back to the well of Spike getting a big move (commonly involving a table), people think he's in the game, but no Awesome gets a big move (commonly involving a table) and the game is his again. Like it's different to hope spots because the spots actually happened and were big enough to change the tide, but they didn't. Some excellent moments though. Spike's first rage-filled offense period was great, and it ends with him botching a tope after holding his knee in agony. A real "oh no!" of a transition. He later blocks a powerbomb on the apron by grabbing Awesome's leg and swinging at his nuts, then hitting the acid drop through a table. Awesome's clothesline look amazing when sold by a guy so small. If they packed all of the greatness of this into a 9 minute match and left out the overkill, I'd be marking out and asking why the hell nobody's told me to watch it before.

[Zero]

Felt like I was stuck in a time loop at certain points. They could've cut this match in half. 

[DMJ]

I'd never seen this before and enjoyed it.

As I wrote in my (not yet published) blog review, I wondered, as others seemed to do above, why this match would go on last when you had two viable main events - Sabu vs. RVD and Dreamer & Raven vs. The Impact Players - right before. I mean, its not like the ECW World Championship always closed the show. 

But watching it, I think I get it.

This match is a sugar-filled, too sweet dessert. It has little to no nutritional value. (Though, there's actually some surprisingly smart choices made - from Spike basically setting up an obstacle course right from the start ala Schwarzeneggar at the end of Predator to the fact that, as repetitive as it is, Spike recognizing that the only two things he can really do to Awesome are hit him with chairs and the move that put down other giants in the past, the Acid Drop). 

And like a decadent dessert, there's really no way to top it when you're planning out a meal. Its the last bite and it leaves you with a smile on your face - or at least it did for me. What can I say? There's still some visceral enjoyment that I get watching one big monster guy toss a 150-pound cruiserweight through countless tables. And when you think they've gone through all the tables, well, here's another one. The gratuitousness becomes part of why it works (like the Mr. Show sketch "The Story of Everest"). The first couple times we got Suplex City out of Brock, I had a similar feeling. At first, I wondered, "So, is this all there is?," but then, by the end, I was almost giddy watching Spike Dudley get put through yet another table. 

"Giddy" is not an emotion that one often gets watching a wrestling match, but this hit that same button as watching one of those YouTube compilations of guys getting thrown through windows from the original Walker Texas Ranger series.

Its an undeniably one-note match - to the point of absurdity even - but it was just so fun...aside from, y'know, seeing Mike Awesome take some stiff chair shots to the head and recognizing that the CTE he probably suffered from may have played a role in his death. But aside from that, I enjoyed this match like chocolate lava cake a la mode.