ECW Heatwave 1995

In the days before a pay per view deal, ECW put on a lot of non-televised shows at the ECW Arena – some shot for release on home video. Heatwave ’95 was a compilation video, covering an assortment of stuff from the summer of 1995.

From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Your Host is Joey Styles. ECW Commissioner Tod Gordon and anti-hardcore referee Bill Alfonso brawl before things get underway.


Mikey Whipwreck v Mike Norman: Norman jumps him during the weapons pat down (Really? In ECW?), and literally slaps him around in the corner. Blind charge misses, however, and Whipwreck starts unloading slams, before dumping him to the floor for a springboard corkscrew bodyblock. Inside, Norman levels him with a lariat, and takes Whipwreck to the floor with a sloppy headscissors. Axehandle off of the apron to follow, and a shot into the post for good measure - but the crowd is giving Norman an earful about how much he sucks, and he decides to bail. Whipwreck drags him back, of course, but Norman takes over, and hits a tope. Another blind charge misses, however, and Mikey mercifully ends it with a flying rana at 6:41. Never got going, and even when it kinda did, it was really disjointed, and more about playing to the crowd than working a match. DUD

ECW World Tag Team Title Match: Raven and Stevie Richards v Don E. Allen and Broad Street Bully: They go at it for all of a minute, as the whole thing is just background for Francine (still just an unnamed Stevie Richards 'super fan' in the front row) to start flirting (and eventually making out) with him, triggering a catfight with Beulah. The champs break it up - losing by countout at 2:10. Afterwards, they beat the shit out of the challengers anyway, so The Pitbulls make the save (pissed at Raven for 'abandoning' them at Hardcore Heaven), and it turns into a huge brawl - with Raven archenemy Tommy Dreamer getting involved on the Pitbulls' side of things, and the girls tearing at each other. Just an angle, but a really good one. DUD

Big Malley v Hack Meyers: This is actually from Hardcore Heaven, and I have literally no idea why they would put it on another release, as it was by far the worst match of that show. Lots of jawing (with each other, the referee, the fans), until Meyers goes for a slam, and gets clobbered. Malley uses his size to overpower Meyers, and hits a series of avalanches, before Meyers figures out hitting the deck will slow him down. The crowd offers Malley a roll of toilet paper (nice...), but he's content to just keep throwing avalanches, but an elbowdrop misses, and Malley's like a turtle on his back, allowing Meyers to get the pin at 7:37. Brutally bad, and fuckin' Malley is hard to look at for extended periods - which didn't help. -***

Six-Man Tag Team Match: Tommy Dreamer and The Pitbulls v Raven, Snot Dudley, and Dudley Dudley: Big chaotic brawl to start, with Dreamer destroying Raven. Bill Alfonso shows up to order the match to stop because of the violence, but no one even bothers to pay attention to him, and just keep going. Clipped (?!) to the Pitbulls hitting Richards with the Superbomb, drawing Francine in to protest and give him mouth-to-mouth. That triggers another catfight with Beulah, and in the chaos the Pitbulls pin Snot with a Superbomb at 5:33 shown. I won't rate it because it was clipped, but it was just a brawl - nothing particularly notable.

Eddie Guerrero and Taz v Dean Malenko and 2 Cold Scorpio: Eddie and Dean had been trading the TV Title - with Malenko the champion coming into this (placing us in late July 1995). Taz starts with Scorpio, and gets hooked in a side-headlock, but quickly over powered. Clipped (?!) to Malenko and Guerrero trading armbars, and then clipped again to Dean dropkicking Taz's knee. He and Scorpio take turns working on it (though even that gets clipped), until Taz manages an overhead suplex to slow Scorpio down. Clipped again to Scorpio powerbombing Taz, and hitting a flying splash - but he manages the tag to Eddie. He does a fantastic criss cross with Dean (which ends with a Frogsplash for two), and we clip again to Guerrero trading off with Scorpio. Powerbomb gets Scorpio two, and we clip to Eddie hitting a rana for two. Brawl breaks out, but even that gets clipped to Eddie and Taz hitting Scorpio with an electric chair/missile dropkick double-team, then clip again to Malenko getting caught in a victory roll by Guerrero. They keep clipping to a bunch of highspots, until another big brawl ends in Taz suplexing Scorpio for the pin at 8:30 shown. Again, I won't rate a chopped up match (especially one cut this badly), but this looked like it was probably pretty good - with lots of crisp highspots, and nice psychology from Malenko/Scorpio to boot. Both Eddie and Dean would be gone by the fall - a direct result of their series against each other catching the attention of WCW.

ECW World Title Match: The Sandman v Axl Rotten: Sandman's ten minute entrance airs in full, thank God. Sandy goes right at his challenger, whipping him from post to post, and unloading shots with the Singapore cane. Rotten bails to the floor to regroup, and decides to call it a night - only to return with a barbwire wrapped baseball bat. That sends the champ running - making sure we get a full helping of the stalling they avoided at the bell. Inside, they square off - weapons in hand - and a bat shot to the nuts leaves Sandman on the mat. Rotten unloads on him, but Sandman fires back to get the bat away from him, and chokes him with a piece of loosened wire. To the floor, they keep trading weapon shots, and back in the ring they finally add some variety in the form of more weapon shots. It goes back-and-forth that way for a while, until Sandman hits a sloppy flying fameasser to retain at 10:35. Hey, this I can rate! And this was crap! -½*

Cage Match: Stevie Richards v Luna Vachon: Luna chases him around, but the cage prevents him from going anywhere (hey!), and she throws him around like a ragdoll - Richards taking several good shots into the mesh. Vachon with a cutter and a swinging neckbreaker, followed by a nice pump-splash off of the top. Chinlock (in an ECW cage match?), but Richards counters with an inverted atomic drop (hell, Luna's got bigger balls than most guys - it works), and kicks the shit out of her on the mat. Dropkick misses, however, and Luna goes back to the chinlock. Richards rakes the eyes to turn the tide, and hits a powerbomb before locking a surfboard. Vachon comes back with a DDT for two, but gets powerbombed again - getting Richards two. Front-facelock (they realize where they are, right?), and a sloppy swinging neckbreaker - but a flying splash off of the top of the cage misses, and Luna hits another neckbreaker to set up her own (sloppy) flying splash. Ball-crusher (like, she literally just grabbed a handful and started squeezing - likely why she was once known as Bam Bam Bigelow's 'main squeeze') for the submission at 7:45. The really memorable part comes after the bell, as Raven runs in to lock the cage and get revenge, but Tommy Dreamer and the Pitbulls save - all ending in Dreamer cuffing Raven's arms to the cage, and unloading an absolutely BRUTAL chair shot (which became known as 'the chair shot heard 'round the world' among fans) on his helpless rival. Match was repetitive and sloppy, but the extracurricular activities were certainly memorable. ½*

Cage Match: The Gangstas v Public Enemy: So, basically, these four can never keep it between the ropes during any of their many matches, so, solution? Lock 'em in a cage filled with weapons! Big brawl to start (sure, it happens every time, yet every time I secretly hope they just start trading wristlocks just to fuck with the crowd), which isn't really 'to start' so much as 'for the whole match.' Lots of punch-kick stuff, with various weapons and cage shots mixed in, until PE manage to get tables into the ring (not like it's hard - just whisper 'tables,' and the crowd would tear the arena apart in search of some to pelt the ring with), and set up a two-tier stack. New Jack ends up on the top of it, and Rocco Rock comes off of the top of the cage with a moonsault to put him through both of them. That takes as much out of him as Jack, however, and Johnny Grunge is apparently too stupid to cover for him, allowing Mustafa Saed the easy pin at 14:23. I'm not skimping on play-by-play there - that's literally all the action there was to cover for fourteen minutes. ¼* - though the crowd loved it, and it was a satisfying main event.

BUExperience: Some cool historical moments like the early Francine stuff, and the definitely memorable (if not completely definitive of what made ECW so captivating compared to the WWF and WCW products at the time) ‘chair shot heard ‘round the world’ – but the rest is total crap, and not worth seeking out. DUD