This was a FANTASTIC, BRILLIANT, UNBELIEVABLE PPV! I LOVED everything about this PPV, and I just hope McMahon does another one, one day.
Joey Styles was clearly emotional as he entered the ring at the beginning, and he shouted the famous catch phrase "Oh, My God!" The fans were shouting "Joey!" and "ECW, ECW!" Match one kicked off as Lance Storm took on 'Lionheart' not 'Y2J!' Chris Jericho in a fantastic battle. The Lance Storm and Dawn Marie partnership brought back fond memories. This was a fantastic technical battle, and that's a shame when you think about it because WWE will not allow Jericho to use this kind of wrestling in the WWE. Storm won when Justin Credible hit Jericho with a kendo stick. All perfectly legal! Next up one of the best Cruiswerweight matches I have seen in my 13 years as a wrestling fan, Yoshiro Tajiri took on Little Guido and Super Crazy in a crazy match! Highlights included Super Crazy jumping off the balcony onto Guido and The FBI! and Mikey Whipwreck took Little Guido out with a neck breaker off the top rope! Crazy won this amazing battle! Even though this was good, it featured too much interference from Mikey Whipwreck and The Sinister Minister and was 6 minutes long. Then the Smackdown! invaders which consisted of JBL, Kurt Angle, The Basham Brothers, Carlito, Matt Morgan and Orlando Jordan 'invaded' the arena. The fans shouted " You suck d*cks" and Angle shouted back " Yes I got that off your mothers!" This was brilliant and then RVD's music hit the arena as he made his way out with Bill Alfonso! RVD's mic skills were ace during this, as he said things like "Remember when I had a vocabulary?!" and " This is EC f*ckin W!" But then Rhyno ran in and gored RVD out of his boots until the fans shouted "Sabu, Sabu!" The lights went out and there he was the man himself! The match was on, Rhyno vs Sabu, this was a fantastic battle, which saw RVD getting involved despite his injured leg. He hit Rhyno with a Van Terminator, and this caused Sabu to jump on top off Rhyno on a table for the win! Brilliant! Next up Rey Mysterio battled Psycosis. It wasn't that good. It featured a sleeper hold from Psycosis which was booed and a non ECW move 619 which was also booed. Mysterio won. Then Eddie Guerrero battled Chris Benoit in a fantastic battle. Benoit won with the cross face. One funny moment during this match was when half the arena shouted "Lets go Benoit" whilst the other half shouted " Lets go Eddie!" LOL! Next up I just could not believe my luck. Mike Awesome took it to Masato Tanaka in a cracking battle. To be honest this was probably the best match of the night. Awesome flew out of the ring onto Tanaka, he powerbombed Tanaka out of the ring onto a table and powerbombed him again on a collapsed table in the ring! Awesome won, and the fans loved this match up, and so did I! This match was...... Awesome! Then the main event took place as the Dudley Boyz took on The Sandman and Tommy Dreamer in a blood filled match. The fans were all over The Sandman who whacked his head several times with beer cans! This was hardcore, bloody and damn right dangerous! They used cheese graters, kendo sticks and even put Tommy Dreamer through a FLAMMIN TABLE! for the win! Then at the end, the Raw and Smackdown! invaders got in the ring and had a BIG fight with the whole of the ECW locker room. But the story was that JBL actually beat up The Blue Meanie for real during the brawl. Then they all beat the crap out of Bischoff, and they all drank beers! Thank you Paul Heyman, Thank you Vince McMahon and thank you to all the wrestlers who made this very special.
The only real disappointments on the PPV were Mick Foley's awful commentary. Even though Joey Styles was fantastic, Foley wasn't. It reminded me of Art Donovan at King of the Ring 1994, but old Art had an excuse he was meant to be clueless. Secondly the repeated camera shots of the Raw and Smackdown! invaders and thirdly a WWE version 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin coming to the ring. But these details aside this was awesome.
A tribute video to those wrestlers who are no longer with us, was touching and upsetting, but thank you for showing this and making sure that are still not forgotten.
Overall Grade A**
