What a night it was in the Lost Battalion Hall for Extreme Championship Wrestling’s Heatwave 1997 supershow Queens, New York a few short nights ago! Did Rick Rude’s master plan work, or is Sabu still our ECW Heavyweight Champion? And as the four men did battle to the hot streets of Queens and back for the ECW Tag Team Championship, what team ended up on top? What is the status of Taz, Saturn, and the ECW Television Championship? Find out all this and much more tonight, as ECW Resurgence comes to you from Yonkers, New York!
1. Opening segment: Joey Styles welcomed the rambunctious New York crowd to the show and quickly recapped what happened at Heatwave. After the brief intro, he announced that the owner of Extreme Championship Wrestling had a matter to address and that he planned to not waste anymore time before he do so. Out came Paul E. following behind Todd Gordon. After an applause, Todd Gordon was the first one to speak. “As the owner of ECW, I have to announce here publicly, that a lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Extreme Championship Wrestling against the office of World Championship Wrestling. This suit was filed for not only their blatant misconduct of a legal, documented ECW contract, but their shoddy business practices that attempted to unlawfully undermine our wrestling promotion! Sometimes in this business, you have to fight fire with fire, and since WCW loves suing people, we at ECW figured it was high time they got a taste of their own medicine… To see how smooth it goes down. With that said, at this time, I would also like to announce that moving forward, just so I am able to focus on ripping Eric Bischoff and Ted Turner a new one, Mr. Paul E. Dangerously as the new day-to-day operator of ECW! He will be taking up the reigns as I step away to fight our fight on another front.” Paul E. accepted the mic from Gordon and spoke on his behalf. “To the most loyal fans on the face of this planet, I promise you, ECW will not stand for the despicable position Rick Rude and The Sandman has put it in. We will fight, scratch, and dig ourselves out of this mess and when we do, the ones who put us there will live to regret it! ECW also requires that both “Ravishing” Rick Rude and The Sandman fulfill the rest of their scheduled dates for ECW, as agreed upon in both of their contracts. Not complying with such would be a breach of contractual obligations that would result in individual cases being filed on them as well! So that means, your ours for the time being… And with the type of locker room we have, I’d be looking over my shoulder pretty often if I were you gentlemen!”
2. Commercial break + Heatwave highlights.
3. Triple Threat Segment: “The Head Cheerleader” Francine walked behind “The Franchise” as he made his way to the ring to address the crowd. Douglas mocked the new Triple Threat as three guys that obviously leached off him, which he proved at Heatwave. Without him, those three men weren’t able to get the job done. He also quickly mentioned how Francine even got the better of them! Bam Bam, Storm, and Awesome made their way slowly towards the ring before stopping. They huddled, spoke, and shockingly backed off. Seemingly changing their mind, though, they rushed the ring and began beating Douglas down. Coming to Douglas’ aid was Chris Chetti and “No Gimmicks Needed” Chris Candido! After chasing The Triple Threat off with Francine, Douglas realized and thanked both. Candido grabbed the mic and demanded a six-man match!
4. The team of Candido, Chetti, and Douglas took on Awesome, Storm, and Bigelow in what ended up being a pretty one-sided battle. With an already beaten down Douglas, Chetti and Candido hung on as long as they could before falling victim to the numbers game and an Awesome Bomb each.
5. Commercial break.
6. Gangstas Promo: The Gangstas stand in the dark streets somewhere as they speak to the camera. They addressed that after dividing and conquering the former champs, they became the ECW Tag Team Champions. They say that if “Killer” Kronus or “Prime Time” Lee still want some, to come get some and that there is plenty more a**-whooping where that came from!
7. Mikey Whipwreck defeated the young AJ Fatal, and new-comer PG-187 in a three-way dance match to further welcome them to ECW. Fatal would be the first one to go at the hands of PG-187, before Whipwreck defeated him with a Whippersnapper. The three men shook hands following the match, proving that the young talent in ECW is in full bloom.
8. Commercial break + Merchandising info.
9. Taz Segment: Coming back from commercial break saw “The Human Suplex Machine” Taz already fired up in the ring with a microphone in his hand, behind him an angry Bill Alfonso. “Saturn. Saturn, you son of a b****! Let me tell you this right now… Even though you were declared the winner at Heatwave, even though you made the impossible possible, and even though you took my championship away from me, I will never respect you! That was not my match, so I chose to end it. It took everything you had, and yet you still had to resort to leaving the ring to beat me. That’s right, Saturn. You didn’t beat me in this ring, straight-up for the ECW Television Championship. I don’t care what the record books show, I refuse to recognize you as the Television champ and I promise you it isn’t sour grapes. I’m out here stating facts, son. Plain and simple. You want my respect? You should’ve done business the right way, you coward!” After hearing enough from Taz, Saturn ran down to ringside and the two picked up right where Heatwave left off. They brawled without being pulled apart until the production crew was forced to cut to the next portion of the show.
10. Rude and Sandman Segment: “Ravishing” Rick Rude entered with the new ECW Heavyweight Champion, The Sandman. Rude explained that he and his client had no problem with filling out their contracted dates, as a paycheck was a paycheck. They’d collect their chump-change before gladly going on to make the big bucks! Rude also explained that according to The Sandman’s contract, should he have won any championship before he left, he was only required to defend the belt once, on the latest date available and that that date wasn’t for another few weeks. Thus, he and Sandman had nothing to worry about. They were only here tonight to fulfill one of those left dates and planned to leave just as “The Innovator of Violence” Tommy Dreamer came to the ring with a referee. Tommy grabbed a mic and said that even though it wouldn’t be for the title, he’d be glad to kick his a** for what he and Rude were pulling on ECW!
11. Tommy Dreamer defeated The Sandman in a non-title bout. The two fought in a glorified fistfight, with plenty of weapons and stiff shots peppered in. Tommy’s hometown crowd of fans rallied in an ECW chant after Dreamer hit a double DDT on Rude and Sandman. The final shot of the show saw Tommy standing tall and slapping the hands of the fans around ringside earning a victory for them.