Rhino

 

I like going back and watching 2000-era ECW shows in no small part due to Rhino’s rise to the top that year. He began his ECW run as Steve Corino’s unpolished rookie monster, but it was not long before he came into his own as an unstable, psychotic heel capable of committing acts of incredible violence. Rhino’s feud with the Sandman was particularly brutal. He seemed to find new ways to destroy the Sandman with each encounter, driving the ECW veteran through tables with one of the best spear tackles in the business that Rhino dubbed the Gore. Rhino even tormented the Sandman by abusing his wife Lori Fullington, repeatedly Goring her through tables and even piledriving her through one at ringside during the Hardcore Heaven 2000 PPV!

Rhino’s future looked bright at ECW’s Guilty as Charged 2001 PPV. He interrupted a tag team match between Balls Mahoney & Chilly Willy vs. Simon Diamond & Johnny Swinger, destroying everyone involved with Gores. Porn star Jasmin St. Claire even felt the Man-Beast’s wrath! Rhino piledrove her through a ringside table, claiming that doing so was a bigger turn-on than a sexual encounter with the onetime gangbang queen! Rhino continued to make his presence felt after the main event, in which the Sandman won the ECW world heavyweight championship in a hard-fought three-way TLC match against Steve Corino and Justin Credible. Sandman had been through quite a battle to regain the belt; Rhino took advantage of the brand-new champion’s beaten and bloodied state to issue an impromptu challenge and win the ECW world title. Rhino was also the ECW world television champion at the time, making the Big F’n Deal the first wrestler to hold both of ECW’s singles titles simultaneously. ECW had lost their TV deal with TNN several months before Guilty as Charged, prompting Rhino to relinquish the television title belt. “We’re not even on fuckin’ TV,” the Man-Beast growled as he tossed the championship belt to the ring canvas.

Rhino never lost the ECW world heavyweight championship—Guilty as Charged was the promotion’s last PPV and ECW’s final live event took place later that week. Rhyno would then show up in the WWF, aligning himself with Edge & Christian and assisting them in defeating the Dudleys and the Hardys for the tag team titles in a memorable TLC match at WrestleMania XVII. Most of us probably had no idea that Rhyno was part of the THUG Life stable with Edge & Christian on the Canadian indie circuit years before signing with ECW. Rhyno would become a three-time WWF hardcore champion in 2001 and showed some promise in a feud with Chris Jericho, in which the Man-Beast Gored Y2J through the stage set on an August episode of SmackDown. Unfortunately, Rhyno had to undergo cervical fusion surgery for two herniated discs in his neck in November of 2001. He would be out of action for sixteen months. Rhyno returned to WWE in February of 2003, but was never taken seriously as a main event threat again.

Personally, I never really felt like Rhyno fit in very well in the WWF/WWE. His place was most definitely in ECW where he was free to rampage through the roster in a psychotic fury. Rhyno looked smaller and less formidable in the WWE rings where he was routinely dwarfed by men standing over six feet tall. I was disappointed to see Rhyno slide down the card into irrelevance when he had been positioned as a top heel in ECW just a few years prior. WWE released Rhyno from his contract after WrestleMania XXI, freeing him up to regain some of his edge in TNA. Rhino would briefly hold the NWA world heavyweight championship while in TNA, trading it with Jeff Jarrett.

When WWE opted to bring ECW back under their umbrella, Rhino went on TNA television to make an open challenge to anyone involved with ECW’s current incarnation for the world heavyweight title that he never lost. He produced the old ECW world championship hidden in a burlap sack, stating that WWE threatened him with legal action if he showed the actual belt on TV. Rhino then proceeded to toss the sack into an oil drum, setting it on fire in disgust with the direction of the new ECW. Perhaps Rhino was saying what many of us were thinking at the time.

Today in Wrestling History

 

Apparently this 1932 event was the beginning of Jim Crockett's career as a promoter. Note the casual racism expressed in the battle royal regarding the presence of "five Negroes." Apparently a local newspaper article promoting the event quoted another promoter describing main eventer Johnny Dill as "a plenty tough wop." Gotta love the state of Tennessee...?

Terry Funk

Terry Funk with the NWA world heavyweight championship in the mid ‘70s. I have always been amazed at the Funker’s ability to reinvent himself for a new generation of wrestling fans; going from the clean-cut all-American babyface look to the grizzled gunslinger that he is today. Most wrestlers find their niche and stick with it for their entire career, but Terry Funk always managed to change with the times. How many modern fans even realize that he was the NWA world champion for two years back when it was the top title in all of professional wrestling? Happy 77th birthday, Terry!

Movie Review: Rambo III (1988)

DIRECTOR: Peter MacDonald. CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Kurtwood Smith, Marc de Jonge, Sasson Gabai, Doudi Shoua, Spiros Forcas, Randy Raney, Marcus Gilbert, Alon Abutbul, Mahmoud Assadollahi, Yosef Shiloah.

This third installment finds John Rambo at peace with himself, living in a Buddhist monastery and taking on locals in stick fights to pay bills. Colonel Trautman visits him and asks that he join in a CIA-sponsored mission to aid anti-Soviet freedom fighters in Afghanistan, but Rambo says no. His war is over…until Russian troops catch Trautman on the Afghan border and imprison him. Rambo comes out of retirement to rescue the colonel and show the mujahideen how to stomp out commie scum the American way. Rambo III was the most expensive action movie ever made at one point ($62 million) and the big budget certainly helps, as it is much more entertaining than First Blood Part II.

Movie Review: Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

DIRECTOR: George P. Cosmatos. CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Steven Berkoff, Julia Nickson, Martin Kove, George Cheung, Voyo Goric. 

RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II dispenses with its predecessor’s nihilistic statements about war veterans and mental health in favor of recreating John Rambo as a beloved Reagan-era shoot-‘em-up action hero. Rambo’s superior Colonel Trautman removes him from a labor camp to send him on a top-secret mission locating POWs still held captive in Vietnam. Corrupt government officials undermine his efforts, leaving him behind in his own personal hell. Rambo then embarks on his own mission to bring our boys home and kill every enemy in sight. Russian mercenaries are also involved in this insidious plot because it is 1985 and President Reagan would not be as big a fan of this movie without a Soviet bad guy. Good brainless fun, but there are other action movies from these years that do a more satisfying job with the one-man army concept.

Rock 'n' Wrestling: Barely Legal

I was paging through a random wrestling magazine at the store one day when I came across

Ian & Axl Rotten's bloody rivalry was my introduction
to ECW.

some photos depicting an unbelievably violent spectacle. These pictures defied everything I had previously seen in professional wrestling. Two bigger guys with a vaguely punk look appeared to be in a literal fight to the death! They were beating each other to the bloodiest of bloody pulps, going far beyond simply using folding chairs to inflict punishment. I saw broken glass and all sorts of foreign objects cluttering up the ring as these lunatics bashed themselves senseless with baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire and fell through ringside tables! Who in the blue hell were these guys? Why were they doing this? How could a wrestling company allow this to happen? What was becoming of the True Sport of Kings? Furthermore, how could I see more?

Their names were Axl & Ian Rotten. This was just another match in the feud taking place in

an East Coast indie promotion aptly named Extreme Championship Wrestling.

"These are human pit bulls!" 

ECW began seeing more exposure in the magazines throughout 1995 and ’96 with the strangest roster I had ever seen. Axl & Ian appeared to be the resident ersatz punks while

New Jack represented wrestling's gangsta
rap sect effectively.

New Jack was an angry-looking black dude believably representing the gangsta rap sect. Balls Mahoney looked just like the psychopath you never wanted to encounter at a metal show. I was particularly amused upon seeing photos of a supposed ‘wrestler’ who made his arrival while puffing on cigarettes and chugging down Budweisers—an out-of-shape Philadelphia redneck named the Sandman. Gorilla Monsoon probably would have suggested that none of these misfits knew a wrist lock from a wrist watch, but a deeper look into ECW showed a different side. Shane Douglas had gone nowhere as a goody-two-shoes babyface in the WWF and WCW, but reinvented himself in ECW. Now Douglas was the Franchise, a delusional foul-mouth spewing tirades against respected legends like Ric Flair while emulating him in the ring. Steve Austin stopped by for a coffee break and found the makings of the iconic “Stone Cold” persona that brought him fame & fortune in the WWF. Virtually all of WCW’s cruiserweight roster—Rey Mysterio, Dean Malenko, Eddy Guerrero, Chris Jericho, etc.—had wowed ECW audiences before ascending to the big time! This strange little promotion was right up my alley; it had the vibe of a regional underground music scene with amazing live bands that had yet to release their first records. You had to be there to see it and you were envious of the people who could talk about it firsthand.

ECW wasn't all blood & guts, as evident by this classic encounter

between Eddy Guerrero & Dean Malenko.

Business picked up when ECW wrestlers interrupted the opening match on the WWF’s Mind Games PPV in 1996, prompting announcer Jerry Lawler to call them out on Monday Night Raw. Lawler name checked former WCW manager Paul E. Dangerously as the promotion’s owner. That was interesting, but my jaw dropped when the King revealed the promoter’s real name—Paul Heyman. I hadn’t heard that name since the ‘80s when Heyman was the editor of Wrestling Power, a magazine I read as a kid! Wrestling Power ran the bloodiest photos of any publication around, so it made perfect sense that Heyman now ran the promotion primarily known for its blood & guts approach. Paul E. Dangerously was also one of my favorite wrestling managers when he was with WCW. I missed his presence and was happy to see him back in the fold.

Paul Heyman & Jerry Lawler in a verbal joust regarding ECW's
place in the wrestling industry on Monday Night Raw.

Paul E answered Lawler’s call and before long, ECW wrestlers were actually appearing on Monday Night Raw. Not only that, but they were wrestling in the WWF ring too! These occasions were building to a momentous occasion—these crazy SOBs had actually managed to get clearance for their first PPV event! This was huge news to those of us who lived outside of the northeast and didn’t get to watch ECW.  Barely Legal took place in April of 1997 just a couple weeks after my 19^th birthday. Seeing ECW for the first time was exciting after reading about it in the magazines for the past two years. Most of the matches weren’t nearly as violent as the

articles would have had you believe, but they cut a much more blistering pace than your average WCW main event. Wrestlers who hadn’t made their mark on the Big Two promotions were shining bright on this island of misfit toys. I recognized some faces and others just looked vaguely familiar. Terry Funk was even on hand to challenge Raven for the ECW world championship—did the 52-year-old legend and former NWA champion have one more world title win in him?

ECW also drew a raucous crowd who faithfully attended each show, usually sitting in the same seats every time. They were sarcastic assholes like us, demanding more from their wrestling—more violence, more bloodshed, and more death-defying moves performed at a faster pace. Lots of them subscribed to insider newsletters like the Wrestling Observer and traded videos, so they knew their stuff—they’d seen all the grapplers and high-fliers imported from Japan and Mexico long before they made their mark on American soil. ECW fans voiced their opinions loudly. They even laughingly jeered wrestlers for occasionally screwing up in the ring, chanting “YOU FUCKED UP!” at the top of their lungs. Imagine being the wrestler

Fans like "Faith No More Guy" and "Hat Guy" were longtime
Philadelphia wrestling attendees that were often caught on
camera at both WWF & WCW live events.

on the receiving end of that cascade! Although they came off as insensitive, bloodthirsty maniacs, many ECW showgoers were actually longtime Philadelphia wrestling attendees that WWF and WCW cameras often picked up at live events. Both of the Big Two promotions had engaged in a territorial war over Philadelphia since the ‘80s and they took those fans’ opinions seriously—whether they admitted it or not. These die-hard fans slowly influenced crowds all over the country to be more boisterous and interactive, compelling both the WWF and WCW to alter their approach to professional wrestling’s presentation.

TV ad for Barely Legal's video release.

Although ECW was certainly a different product, Barely Legal took me aback by how familiar it all seemed. I soon remembered watching wrestling as a little kid when the shows usually took place in a TV studio or smaller arenas, noting that this actually wasn’t much different from that old school approach. ECW was simply ‘70s and ‘80s studio wrestling filtered through a ‘90s grunge and gangsta rap perspective. Hit songs from the likes of WHITE ZOMBIE, METALLICA, the OFFSPRING, ALICE IN CHAINS, and DR. DRE all supplied ECW’s soundtrack and it worked like a charm—similar to when the WWF began raiding the pop charts during their (ahem) Rock ‘n’ Wrestling era. I wasn’t a fan of most of the bands they used, but I did appreciate that ECW at least attempted to reach fans like me. Much better than WCW’s horrible stock music covers of NIRVANA and PEARL JAM introducing the likes of Diamond Dallas Page and Chris Jericho!

ECW's use of contemporary music was never better than when

the Sandman made his entrance to (what else) "Enter Sandman."

Sometimes I watch an old ECW show and think about those days; it boggles my mind that this ragtag Philadelphia indie promotion took on a wrestling industry backed by billionaires and changed it for good with a motley crew of workers and 1500 angry fans. I didn’t care when WCW folded in 2001, but ECW going under left me with a feeling similar to that of when my favorite bands broke up or local music venues suddenly shut down. Many promotions since then have emulated ECW to varying extents, but none of them will ever come close to filling that void. That was a time and a place that I do not think today’s environment can (or should) duplicate.