RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Monday, March 24

12-Pack Review: ECW 05/03/98

BEER ONE: I’m drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade tonight. That doesn’t make me gay, does it? Last year, my wife was drinking this lemonade shit and telling me how good it was, and I was all old school, and like, “fuck all that, all I need is an ice cold mother fuckin’ goddamn beer, woman.” But this year, for some reason, as the temp is cracking 95 in the first week of June, these damned things taste good. When I bought them at the Food Lion, the checkout lady asked me, “Do they taste like lemonade?” And then I pretty much told her what I just told you; that’s actually where I thought of that crap. Stupid life. Anyways, I’ve drank five of these things already, so one is actually six, but the tape machine wasn’t running, therefore David Crockett deems it inadmissible. Of course, we start off with Joey Styles. In retrospect, I hate that little fucker, but I guess he made Taz seem taller. Big Jon Burr is somewhere in the crowd, I hope he’s that fat bald guy in the front row with the green t-shirt. Of course, he’s not though. At this point in time, I lived in a trailer park, and would ride to my mom’s house to get the ECW pay-per-views with my sister Corinne. At the trailer, all we had was an antennae, and all it picked up was ABC out of Richmond, which meant pretty much all I watched was the View at three in the morning all drunked up. You would not be happy with how many times I masturbated to Meredith Viera. To this day, those brunette Lifetime channel hosts type ladies like her make me horny. We start off with the Full Blooded Italians. There is not a more wrestling in ’98 thing than the Italian flag with Tommy Rich’s mug airbrushed onto the middle of it. Guido and Smothers, damn, that’s a fine tag team. Their opponents are Nova, still in his comic book nerd stage, dressing like a blue version of the Green Lantern, and the Blue Meanie, still fat and in the shake his belly doing the raise the roof to DJ Kool stage of his career. Listening to Tommy Rich threaten the crowd, and looking at his alcoholism-ridden blade-gouged face, I think back on that thing I wrote about “What Would Tommy Rich Do?” Sometimes, I don’t know what I write, and I become a mouthpiece for something else. That Tommy Rich thing is such an incident. I will drink to my mysterious drunken muse. There’s some kid in the second row, maybe 13, being a fake Hat Guy, complete with Hawaiian shirt. Fuck that kid, and fuck the Hat Guy. Wrestling nerds are just below Armenians and just above Honda Civic with Japanese letter vinyl drag racers on the God-thinks-you-deserve-his-benevolence scale. A dance contest. The ref dances. As the Blue Meanie raises the ref’s hand, Smothers double axhandles from behind. This is ECW, friends, once Paul Heyman ran out of shit to steal from Memphis that he cross-bred with the 3-way concept.

BEER TWO: I finished my beer in honor of the airbrushed t-shirt Meanie is wearing. The airbrushed t-shirt has gone the way of iron-on letters down the side of your trunks. The Cauliflower Alley Club needs to be more concerned about things like that. Wouldn’t a Russian legsweep by Guido actually be an Italian legsweep? If I ran a wrestling school, lesson one would be, “If you’re a bad guy tag team and you’re doing some dastardly double team move to cheat and beat down your opponents, and you throw one guy into the ropes and hold hands and come at him with a clothesline, make ultra-sure you hold your arms low enough to actually clothesline him. Because if you don’t, he’ll just bounce back off the far side ropes and then double clothesline you. Trust me, boys. I’ve seen it happen more times than I care to remember.” The Meaniesault is broke up by Rich, NO! But the Meaniesault misses. Nova does his Novacaine, which is basically a fall backwards hug onto your shoulder which wouldn’t hurt a crying two-year-old if you were a shitty babysitter doing the move. According to ’98 Joey Styles, both Justin Credible and Mikey Whipwreck are 23. That would make, today, Whipwreck a half-crippled 27-year-old, and Justin Credible a bald, dorky 27-year-old. I thought only Mexicans could be washed-up as wrestlers by age 27. The first ECW title match I ever saw on TV was at a bar when Whipwreck beat the Sandman in that ladder match. Him training under the Public Enemy by climbing a ladder to get Johnny Grunge beers hanging from a tree in Central Park, that’s quality TV memories right there, boy. Some guy in the front row has a Diamond D sign, I hope to fuck that was Jon Burr. Chastity is hot in a too-drunk-to-not-recognize-you’re-fuckin’-a-whore-with-a-panther-tattoo-on-her-ass type way. Shit, Chastity just looked like Lucille Ball’s slut granddaughter. I’ll drink to that. Mikey Whipwreck rocks. There is nothing about ECW Whipwreck before he jobbed in WCW that you should not like as a wrestling fan. Nothing, motherfuckers. Credible flipped over the rail and crushed a kid. The longhair guy behind the kid leans over and yells “E-C-W”. This is why America rocks. You can’t find shit like this anywhere else on Earth, except Mexico, which is basically America with less rules and everybody’s got a tan, even the doctors and lawyers. You know the type of quality information you get with me? One time, I remember hearing an ECW hotline hype job where they said Nicole Bass wasn’t the only member of Jason’s crew that starred in a porn movie. I figured it was Jason, and it was gay porn, so ever since then I’ve explained to people how Jason used to star in gay porn. Of course, Chastity did some porn flicks for a while, long enough to become obsolete like all porn hookers do. But I still spout that Jason knowledge. Why? Because fuck the truth, speculation is just as fun. Anything you read by me is part-truth, part-possibility, and all-good. Shit, Whipwreck is actually wrestling Jerry Lynn during this match. But what do you know? You don’t care. You just want me to say something stupid that makes you laugh. Fuck you. Jerry Lynn nails a Van Daminator on Whipwreck with the chair, DDTs him, and goes for the pin, but Whipwreck kicks out. The crowd is chanting stuff to make themselves feel better about their pitiful lives. ECW fans were known to do this, even in Georgia.

BEER THREE: Somewhere, I wasn’t paying attention and started another beer. Lucky for me, I brought four in here when I came and this one is warm. That’s a benefit to drinking hard lemonade, because it doesn’t taste like the shit that a warm beer tastes like. Somebody is holding up a “Mid-Day Express” sign. Wrestling fans are so clever. They should write comic books. I never understood why Justin Credible wore black long johns underneath his cut-off shorts when he wrestled. It’s like he came in from sleigh-riding or some shit. Chastity takes a top rope Whippersnapper from Mikey, because the good guys always beat on women in ECW. How gay do you think Paul E. is? How many times do you think he and Tommy Dreamer sixty-nined? Credible wins and I don’t care. I want blood. The slow-motion replay of Whipwreck forcing Credible through a table even though he attempted to break the move twice, that’s great. Ahh, Axl Rotten and Balls Mahoney come out. That’s two great bar drunks there. Balls Mahoney is one of my all-time favorite wrestlers, no shit. When I was taping ECW and living at my mom’s house, my dad usually wasn’t allowed to come over, but once in a while he’d sneak by to see my sisters when my mom was off or some shit. One day, I sat him down while I was watching the tape to make him see the Balls vs. Sandman match when Balls was first getting pushed, where he said he’d offered a thousand dollars but nobody would fight him, so he pulled out a can of Budweiser from his leather jacket, and the Sandman came out and they fought for the Bud, the ref even held it in their faces like a title belt. My dad thought that was some good new-fangled wrestling right there. In fact, he hates the Dudley Boyz to this day for breaking up that match with their interference. Rest in peace, Big Dick Dudley. I hope your tombstone says “Big Dick” somewhere on it. That’s all any white man could hope for. At this point in my drinking of alcohol-laden lemonade, my stomach lining apparently is revolting against myself. I have indigestion of the small intestine. That’s okay though. When you drink too much, things like this happen. It’s all mind over matter. Fuck my organs, they’re not more powerful than my brain or MY HEART! Lance Storm and Chris Candido come out. Even as disagreeable partners, they were always my favorite ECW tag team, well, second favorite, just behind Kronus and Saturn in their shiny brief trunks prime. Candido’s promos, wearing the title belt around his neck, he is a positive role model for aspiring cokehead wrestlers everywhere that are told their drug addiction will kill their career. Lance Storm is the king of geometrically homosexual wrestling trunks. The great thing about this Cobb County Civic Center is it looks like it’s two in the afternoon, plus all the house lights are on. Balls seems like a good guy to drink muscle relaxers with and rape schoolgirls.

BEER FOUR: It is carbonated, it has alcohol, it’s flavored with lemons, and I’m drinking it. Axl Rotten looks like he does lawbreaking types of things; and I don’t mean the cool things. He seems a little too Anti-It for my tastes. Plus, he lives in Maryland. Only fuckin’ retards and people who are on parole in Delaware live in Maryland. Axl Rotten has done two armbars in this match already. That is not the equation that equals me drinking beer. Incredibly enough, Candido does his long hold-up-in-the-air suplex on Axl. ECW ref shirts look like a rugby jersey. As hard as Candido is trying, this match sort of sucks. Axl needs to have a heart attack and let the other three go to it. I always loved the fact Balls had that one big tattooed arm, and nothing on the other arm. It takes a man who loves his mother to do some weird shit like that. Tammy Sytch is straight up white trash hooker in the ring, complete with white tank top and white sandals. I don’t give a fuck what anybody says, Tammy Sytch is hot. She is my weakness in wrestling’s whore pantheon. Her and Sunshine, Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin’s first valet. Actually, Precious is better; I just wanted to say Sunshine so I could show you what an old school smart I was. I’m a fuckin’ dumbass. I’m gonna try and bash one of these bottles on my head. Three tries and it didn’t break. But now I have a headache and I feel like a pussy because I can’t break a lemonade bottle over my head. Hey, it’s legends remembory going on. The Junkyard Dog! His last major appearance before dying.

BEER FIVE: Of course, I drank it down. That cat JYD got down and boogied, motherfuckers. He is one of us. He played Spades with the jokers still in the deck and put hard-boiled eggs in his potato salad. JYD has a pierced lip. Out comes Dick Slater. He is a Southern wrestling legend. Drunk, old, fat, still with ponytail and a jacket with fringe hanging off the arms. God bless him. The Masked Superstar! Man, I love America that a guy could wear a suit and a shiny mask with a star on it and be famous. Bullet Bob Armstrong. I never was much of an Armstrong fan, being the anti-hero subversive I always have been. I root for heels. But think about the Bullet and his family. This guy was running around the southeast, wearing a weird mask, all thick in the chest, and being a good guy. He was never at home, though. I’m sure ol’ Bob had more than his fair share of rats and hotel room drunken smashings. And his boys back home in Marietta – Brad, Scott, Steve, Tim Horner, Road Dogg – all they wanted was their father’s approval. So they got into wrestling. And they tried and tried, but they could never become the Bullet. There is no thing more needing of a sociological study that the abundance of masked wrestlers in Alabama that everybody knew who they were. Well, Bob’s boys got in the business as well, looking for Dad’s love that was never at home. I guess the only that really got it was Brad. And poor Road Dogg Armstrong, getting hooked on all sorts of drugs, selling his soul for WWF fame, what did it get him? Nothing. He’s a loser who lives in Florida because he knows too many people in Alabama or Georgia would ask him about his daddy in that subtle way that only rednecks can do that makes you aware of all that you’ve done wrong with the person they’re asking about. Props to Bill Eadie for wearing his mask. I wish Jerry Stubbs would come out and hit Bob Armstrong in the old knees. Then Dick Slater could run off the other two legends, and maybe Doug Gilbert could come out and throw a fireball in honor of his dead brother. Styles is hyping up all the broken bones that Shane Douglas is gonna wrestle with tonight. Back acne is a sign of steroids abuse. When Shane Douglas cut his ponytail off, he lost any chance of being cool with me. A guy with tassles on his boots and no matching ponytail is pure fuckin’ dumbass. The lights go down and out comes Taz. I hate UFC shit, but I’d like to see Tito Ortiz and Taz in a chicken wire cage in my backyard, with the loser getting shot four times in the knees. Short, muscular guys with lots of upper arm tattoos usually bounce at trendy bars and talk a lot of shit about how many drug connections they’ve got. Taz and Shane talk shit, with the eventual outcome being Taz throwing the Casa Aunt Jemima on Douglas. Then Bam Bam comes out, with grey flames, which makes me think of watching the Creature from the Black Lagoon with those 3-D glasses as a kid. Or even better was The Mask, where whenever the dude put on the mask, you were supposed to put on your 3-D glasses. That was some tight shit to watch while you did bong hits with your boy, although when you only had one pair of 3-D glasses, there was some negotiating to be done. Fake cops are throwing Taz into a fake cop car, where he kicks the shit out of the window in the back, with the cops sitting there long enough for the camera to get a good shot of Taz’s feet sticking through broken window. Bam Bam Bigelow has his head tattooed. That makes me drink, regardless.

BEER SIX: I pulled a ligament in my right knee, and they prescribed motrin, and I think the combo of motrin and alcoholic lemonade is making my small intestine rot, but hey, two peas in a bucket, mother fuck fuck it. New Jack smashes a Godzilla doll with ECW spray-painted on its chest with a hockey stick against Bam Bam’s balls. Lou Thesz and Bruno Sammartino would be proud. New Jack is bloody and wearing a Tupac shirt. New Jack is all fucked-up, climbing the stairs, which means Bam Bam has to hang out looking around forever. It ends up with NJ dropping from the rail and hitting BB with a powder-dusted guitar. Very lame. Bam Bam is bleeding from the back of his head, though. That’s good. Double juice equals beer in my belly. “I was in the belly of the beast, now the beast is in my belly,” said Kool G. Rap in my memory bank, which he and DJ Polo were robbing while I waited in the drive-thru. I have an account with my memory bank, which is nice, because I can cash my fake paychecks in the drive-thru rather than having to go inside. I still hate that rule, though. Now they’ve got slow motion highlights of Tommy Dreamer and some acoustic guitar heavy music, kind of like the type of thing that any good hard metal band would put as an interlude on their LP, to show they were musicians. Hey, the Dudley Boyz are in the ring, four dead guys. Big Dick is dead literally, Buh-Buh and D-Von are dead spiritually, and Sign Guy is dead career-wise. When the Sandman’s music kicks in, Big Dick takes off his fake glasses and tucks them in his pocket. I will go on the porch and drink beer because of that. Okay, here’s what I don’t understand. When I lean down with my face facing down, my head hurts like I just took a milk crate shot against it. But when I stand straight up, face forward, nothing hurts at all. Best I can figure is too much drunk man’s lemonade gives you the Soul of a Weeble Wobble. Ahh, the blood, sweat, and beers t-shirt, plus Beulah. Beulah was hot for a weird-looking bitch, kind of like Precious. Beulah didn’t spray mist though, she let The Sandman pour beer down her shirt. That’s what 15 years of evolution means in pro wrestling. The great thing about the Sandman is that he actually drinks most of those beers. Most gimmicks are just smoke and mirrors, with the announcer covering the flaws. Like Dreamer drinking beer off of Beulah’s tits. Tommy Dreamer is the Mike Piazza of wrasslin’. The Sandman must’ve poured half a beer on a wigger’s face, then he grimaced as he got off the chair, selling the angle. Bless you, Jim Fullington, bless you. D-Von is my fourth favorite all-time Dudley, just behind Little Spike Dudley, Dances with Wolves Dudley, and Dudley Dudley.

BEER SEVEN: At this point, I am very drunk, counting the pre-PPV beers. But I can’t quit, or I’m a pussy. Except I’m misspelling every other word. My stupid fingers won’t work right. If I fell asleep right now, this second, I could sleep for four hours before I had to get up for work. I just now slept with my forehead balanced upon a bottle. Two things about that. I must be fucked-up enough to sleep so easily. And two, why would you keep people awake with horns and changle-changlerers and shit. It’s a game. I can appreciate it, but goddamn, I’m not gonna overthrow the govt. over the men’s world cup team. Fuck, I’m tired. And drunk. And I’m off to the see the wizard.

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