by Brandon Truitt

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Light intro tonight because I'm tired.

On the DVD front this week, I've picked up Lost in Translation, JFK: Special Edition, and Brotherhood of the Wolf. William Helmick (aka Helmet, Goodhelmet, my tape pimp, etc.) and O.R. Polk have been on my ass about watching that last one, as they also were about Japanese imports Shaolin Soccer and Battle Royale. I got around to watching those, too.

Shaolin Soccer is a fun, goofy CGI Kung Fu movie in which a bunch of Shaolin-trained martial artists who are down on their luck decide that the best way to promote the virtues of Shaolin Kung Fu is to form a soccer team and defeat the Evil Team in the national soccer tournament for the big cash prize.

Battle Royale, on the other hand, is a far more serious film even though it has some funny moments in there. I can't really do it justice in the time I have, so I'll just link O.R. Polk's review of it.


Neither are available as US releases and Shaolin Soccer is getting increasingly harder to obtain because Disney owns the US rights, released a butchered version of it, and doesn't want anyone getting the REAL version from Hong Kong. Battle Royale, on the other hand, is unlikely for release here because of the controversial subject matter and a bit of the old ultraviolence.

If you want Shaolin Soccer, try E-Bay, where you should be able to pick it up shipped for about $12. Battle Royale is available through legitimate Hong Kong DVD import/export companies such as HK Flix, but the title is MUCH more expensive then Shaolin Soccer because it is only available in deluxe editions which have many special features that are not subtitled into English.


As always, you can feel free to Drop me an e-mail, read the archives, buy me stuff, or buy yourself stuff at Highspots.com.


Sandman Shoot Interview (circa April 1, 2001)


This is the second Sandman interview but I do not have the first one and it only covers his career up until 1997. This one is more appropriate because it covers 1997 on, including ECW going national, his stint in WCW, and the WCW sale to the WWF including Sandman’s predictions on the future of the WWF after the sale.



The show starts with a hand-cam of a typical Sandman entrance to face down the Impact Players (Justin Credible and Lance Storm), Jack Victory, Steve Corino, Rhyno, and others. Sandman’s appears to be making the save for Tommy Dreamer and Raven.


Barely Legal 1997- His typical PPV weekend involved him being up about 72 straight hours from Friday until showtime on Sunday night. Some people have their routines, such as Sabu pacing back and forth, so this is just his. Everybody was really pumped that night because very few of the guys there had even done live TV before, let alone PPV. He then goes on to talk about the heavily hyped Sabu vs. Tazz match, which had been in the making for about a year and a half at that point. He knew there was no way that the guys could ever live up to the expectations the crowd had after the buildup of he match and that it was going to get even uglier because Paul Heyman was taking an easy way out with the finish. Paul E. didn’t want either Tazz or Sabu to job, so he had Tazz’s manager, Bill Alfonso, turn on Tazz and join Sabu. Because that finish got shit on, Sandman and Terry Funk decided to steal the show in their three-way #1 Contender’s match with Stevie Richards as Big Stevie Cool. They succeeded, as the polls after the show revealed that 47% of respondants chose it as the best match of the show.

Matches with Raven before Raven left for WCW in 1997- Raven had taught him how to read a crowd and how to come up with spots to manipulate them. He recounts stories of how Raven used to come up to him with random papers, such as napkins from Burger King and toilet paper, covered in notes for spots because Raven would always be thinking and just write down anything that came into his head. He explains that the reason so many of Raven’s notes were on toilet paper was that Raven was on so many drugs that screwed up his system that it would take forever for him to go to the bathroom, so he’d just brainstorm and take notes while waiting for something to happen. “The guy’s a fucking genius.” Every time he wrestled him, it was a blast.

Did he think he was going to follow Raven to WCW? No, at the time he thought he was going to stay in ECW forever.

Jerry Lawler- His first match against him was years ago, early in his career, and they were in separate locker rooms before the match. Lawler’s broken so many guys into the business that he has a good feel for how to bring rookies along, such as taking it slow and letting them build some confidence. Lawler’s greatest asset would have to be his promo ability as “he has a silver fucking tongue.”

His views on pre-match planning- He thinks that many guys spend WAY too much time constructing their matches beforehand, such as making a step-by-step plan of what they want to do. The problem is that they have trouble adapting if the crowd shits all over it, if they blow a spot, or if they do something out of order. He prefers to go into the match with a few solid ideas of what he’ll do and have it so that all the plans are independent and can be done at any time instead of being done only in a specified order.

His match with Tommy Dreamer against Jerry Lawler and Brian Christopher- It didn’t go well at first because he thinks Lawler and Christopher were convinced he was going to shoot on them. He says that shooting is the last thing on his mind because it looks like crap to anyone watching and that it eliminates the possibility of doing further business down the road with them.

Brian Christopher- He wrestled Brian in Brian’s first Mid-South Coliseum match and he feels that’s what got him over with Lawler. Lawler would never watch the other matches before the show but Sandman noticed Lawler heading up the stairs to the second level when he was walking out to face Brian, so he made sure he had his working shoes on that night. Brian was fine for the most part that night, although he was a bit stiff at times.

The WWF-ECW angle- He didn’t know about anything that happened until the afternoon that it happened. He got called by Paul E. at 2:00 in the afternoon and was told that they were going to the Philadelphia Spectrum to do something at the WWF’s “In Your House: Mind Games” PPV. He had no clue that he was going to be on the front row but he ended up firing the first shot in the “invasion” by spitting beer in Savio Vega’s face. In the pre-PPV meeting they had in the parking lot, Perry Saturn and Tazz thought that what was happening was going to be a shoot instead of a worked angle and thought it was going to end up in a huge brawl.

Cactus Jack- Cactus went into Tod Gordon’s office and refused to work with Sandman because Sandman was too stiff and drunk. The next week when they faced each other, he made sure to cut a promo before he match saying that somebody refused to face him unless he was sober, then pulled out a beer, drank it, and smashed the can against his head.

Random story- One night, he took acid before a six-man match and was so out of it that Tommy Dreamer told him during the match to just go sit down, so he sat in the lap of a fat lady in the front row.


Shane Douglas- Shane actually crawled under the ring and out the other side one night because he thought Sandman was trying to shoot on him.

Another problem he has with Shane deals with one night when Brian Lee (Underfaker, Chainz of DOA) and the late Anthony Durante of the Pitbulls had a match where they did a spot that destroyed the merchandise table. The problem was that Shane was the promoter of the town they were in and was LIVID that they cost him money by doing that during the opening match of the night and yelled about how they should be fired. Since Sandman was friends with both Lee and Durante, he told them what Shane said which resulted in them scaring the shit out of Shane.

Sandman also told Tracy Smothers about it, which pissed Tracy off, as Tracy had let Shane stay in his house, rent-free, when he trying to break into the business. It also didn’t help that the first night Smothers was in ECW, Shane noticed Smothers was wearing a Pittsburgh shirt of some kind and made a smartass comment asking if Smothers was trying to kiss up to him by wearing it. Anyway, Shane came running out of the locker room that Lee has pulled him into and then started yelling questions about who stooged him out to Lee. Before Sandman could take credit for it, Smothers tackled Shane and started beating the crap out of him. The fight was broken up by Durante, which Sandman found ironic considering that Shane trying to get Durante and Lee fired started the whole mess.

The next Shane Douglas story- There was a big eight-man match and, because Sandman was hurt, he made it absolutely clear to everyone that he was going to drop his Singapore cane, roll out of the ring, then grab the cane and that no one was to touch it. When the match started, Shane picked up the cane, looked at it, then dropped it. When Shane came to the back, Sandman confronted him about it, saying that it would be one thing if Shane had beaten the crap out of someone with it but that picking it up and dropping it was him “trying to fuck with me.” He told Shane that if he ever did it again, he’d gouge his eyes out in the ring. At that point, he walked out of the locker room and started standing around with Tod Gordon and Fonzie. Shane then came storming down the hall and, before he could get to Sandman, Fonzie jumped Shane and took a swing at him. Sandman then cleared out a locker room and dared Shane to come in and face him, but Shane didn’t do it because Francine held him back. “You can tell how much he wanted to come in there” because of who held him back.

He actually feels that Shane’s a great guy, as they’ve made up since then. He also made up with Cactus Jack by the time he left ECW, as he realized that many of his arguments with Cactus were wrong, as in one case Sandman was too drunk and pissed off to listen to what Cactus was saying and told him “Fuck you, fuck your wife, and fuck your kid.” He says that he ended up learning a lot from Cactus and realized it by the time Cactus left ECW in early 1996.


Matches with Sabu- “I fuckin’ loved working with Sabu.” While it took him and Tommy Dreamer about ten matches to get a feel for how each other worked, that kind of chemistry came immediately with him and Sabu, as well as him and Cactus Jack. Sabu’s “flying triple-Lindy shit” offense was great and that it was much better than the usual punch-kick stuff, although the one thing that pissed him off was that Sabu hated to lose. He respects him a lot.

The proposed match between him and Onita- Onita lost a lot of face in Japan because he was going to come out of retirement to fight a Gaijin instead of a Japanese wrestler. On top of that, Paul E. couldn’t afford to send him over to Japan to wrestle him.

Wrestling the Dudley Boyz- He stiffed Bubba Ray Dudley with the ladder by accident one night. When Sandman stood up, he turned around to see Bubba right before Bubba “bitchslapped me and knocked me the fuck out.” He kept going in the match once he got back up and was capable of doing spots, but he was so out of it that he didn’t even realize that he was supposed to stay down for the finish.

Rob Van Dam- RVD’s knocked him out at least five times by kicking him. It’s all cool, though, because Sandman liked everything to look as real as possible and, because he got too close, kept getting concussions. He says RVD’s the best athlete in the business because he’s multi-talented and could win if a bunch of wrestlers were put into a Decathlon of some kind.

His match with Sabu at November to Remember- They had three ladders and the medium-sized ladder, which they planned on using for all of their spots, broke during the first spot. Because of that, they had to use the tall ladder because the short ladder was too thick. It also didn’t help that a lot of the tables they used that night were pre-broken and would give way when he put Sabu on one of them.

Stairway to Hell match with Sabu- He got knocked out taking a fall from a ten-foot ladder into the ring into two tables at ringside.

Were there ever plans to do a program with Tazz? No, partially because Tazz was too intense for him.

Tazz and Rob Van Dam- Tazz was pissed off because RVD kicked too hard and started talking shit, so RVD came up and told Tazz “Pick a hand” and then slapped the crap out of him. Tazz learned to stop talking trash about guys after that.

Chair shots- Despite what many people believe, there are some things that you can’t fake in wrestling. Putting someone through a table is one of them and bending a chair over someone’s head is another.

Were there any plans for a second feud between him and Dreamer? He thinks that the only way it would have worked is if Dreamer had turned heel.

Pitbull Anthony Durante- They don’t get along. He really gets along with the other Pitbull, Gary Wolfe, though.

Matches with Rod Price and Nicole Bass- Nicole Bass is clueless. Rod Price is a trip though.

Leaving for WCW- He knew going into a PPV that he was going to have a meeting with Eric Bischoff about a job in WCW the next week, but he didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to risk getting fired by ECW if WCW didn’t want him.

Justin Credible- Great friend of his. Very nice guy.

His relationship with Paul E. at the time he left and why did he leave? He got upset because Paul E. paid Sabu more than him for their November to Remember match and that Paul E. wouldn’t admit it. The only people Paul E. told him were paid higher for the show were Shane Douglas and Bam Bam Bigelow, both of which promoted the town for ECW.

He got to be good friends with Diamond Dallas Page over the years, partially because of the concern they both had for Raven due to his rampant drug use.

Why did he change the Sandman character in WCW? Bischoff told him that he couldn’t drink or smoke on the air and that they didn’t have anything for him at the moment. He was getting paid $10,000 a week for about six months before he was ever used and was mostly filming vignettes with Raven until Kevin Nash became booker. Once Nash took over, Sandman was booked for the next night’s Nitro and was told that the gimmick he was doing with Raven wasn’t going anywhere so he was going to do something similar to being the Sandman, except he couldn’t drink or smoke.

Initial impressions of Eric Bischoff- When he came to the WCW office to negotiate, Bischoff took him out to lunch within minutes of meeting him and had a contract drawn up by the time they got back to the office.

How was he treated in the locker room? Like anyone else. He, Bam Bam Bigelow, Scott Norton, Scott Riggs, Brian Adams, etc. all knew each other beforehand. He mainly sat around playing cards and being quiet because he didn’t want a target put on his head. He never drank or smoked pot the whole time he was in WCW.

The WCW schedule- It was brutal. One thing he didn’t like was that they had to be at the building for 1PM Eastern time and he never went on until 9PM Eastern time because they always put him on head-to-head with the opening promo on RAW. It also didn’t help if he wrestled tough guys like Brian Knobbs.

Chastity- Raven got her into WCW but Kevin Sullivan wanted her paired with Sandman instead. She was great as she’d never miss a spot. She’d also sit in on the pre-match meetings and listen to everything just in case the planned spot to trigger her interference in the match doesn’t happen like it’s supposed to. She doesn’t care if she did a porno because it’s all how someone treats her and she treated him great.

Matches with Bam Bam Bigelow and Raven- He only worked with Bigelow once or twice in ECW but worked with him a lot in WCW. It was always easy to work with him.

Mikey Whipwreck- The only spot Mikey ever called out in the ring was “OK, what do we do next?” Mikey learned to be a leader in the ring at that time. He explains the philosophy behind that, as that there are workers, leaders, and followers. Workers can have a good match but if they can’t lead or follow, they’re pretty useless. Followers do what they’re told and can have good matches if they’re with a stronger opponents. Leaders can get in the ring with a total idiot and have a match that tells a coherent story. Some people only have some of those traits, as workers who can follow will be fine as long as they’ve got someone to lead them.

Most overrated worker in the business- Lex Luger would have to be it because he’s worked against the top workers for fifteen years but still sucks. He then recounts how much money was put into Luger throughout various pushes and that they all bombed. He’s confident that Lex will be unemployed shortly because the WWF just bought WCW and that they won’t put up with his shit, even though he forgets that Lex has an additional strike against him by quitting the WWF with very little notice to be on the first Nitro. Sandman could see Vince McMahon signing DDP, but feels that Kevin Nash, Hulk Hogan, and Scott Hall will only come in as a group.

Politics in WCW- There were a lot of them but he wasn’t involved because he was a peon there. In the WWF, the plan for the night would be posted by 1:00 the afternoon of the show. In WCW, the plan wouldn’t be posted until 7:00 and even then it would be changed about four times before showtime at 8:00.

Bischoff- It was Bischoff’s idea for him to do a lot of the stuff he did, such as the Junkyard match. Bischoff would usually tell him that he wanted to do something on the show that night then let him come up with a good idea for something to do. He would do something like calling Tod Gordon and discussing ideas, which is how he came up with the plan for ignoring both JJ Dillon and security chief Doug Dillinger so that Bischoff would have to be involved.

Ric Flair- Shane Douglas told him all about Flair. Flair’s into passive resistance for one. Flair would see you ten times and act like he’s never met you before but, if you put him over in some way, he’d always remember you from then on.

Junkyard match- It was one of the funniest things he’s ever been involved in. His back was screwed up at the time so he couldn’t do too much there. He cut a promo for it on the Nitro before the PPV so that it appeared he was pirating TBS to make the announcement for the match but threw out his back by the time he got home, so he couldn’t be on Thunder to promote the match some more. Because he was hurt, he didn’t go over in the match but he didn’t care because he was happy enough to have the match. Because of the half-assed WCW filming of the match, he and Mikey Whipwreck didn’t really get on camera much. He also asks the interviewer for a copy of the match because he’s considering a lawsuit over poor working conditions due to the horrible lighting of the junkyard. When he finally got into the pit, he had El Dandy moonsault him. Hugh Morrus and other big guys were supposed to help catch Dandy since he was doing his jump from twenty feet in the air, but none of the other guys did it and Sandman took the full force of it, blowing out his shoulder.

He also mentions that he did something special for Tod Gordon by having the hood of one of the cars read “Happy birthday, Charlie”, as it was Tod’s son’s birthday.

When he went to the hospital after the match, he was told that he’d broken his C4 vertebrae. He knew he hadn’t broken his neck so he went in for all kinds of tests before finding out that he’d actually broken his C4 and C5 vertebrae in 1996 and just worked through it. Sandman’s convinced it happened in a match with Cactus Jack (presumably the one where Cactus accidentally clobbered him with a cast-iron skillet instead of a cheap aluminum one like most of the pots and pans at the ECW arena).

He ended up getting released after the match when they did their first big release of 30 guys. The reason behind it was that the company thought he was faking his injuries since he didn’t go over in the Junkyard match, as was the original plan before it was changed to Fit Finlay.

His won-loss record- He says that the only times he’s ever won matches were when he won the ECW title and that it was never intended, such as Raven going into rehab and the company needing a champion on short notice. He also talks about how Dusty Rhodes would help him out a lot by getting him whatever information he asked for, such as the subject of his promos five minutes before he was supposed to be on TV.

Working against Goldberg on Nitro- He met Goldberg when he went to hang out with Raven after a WCW show in 1998. He bought Goldberg a beer and, once Goldberg realized who he was, he came over and said “I should have been buying you a beer.” He and Goldberg got along fine in the ring because Sandman was willing to work the match in a way that wouldn’t aggravate Goldberg’s numerous football injuries. (Sandman wanted to do something, Goldberg told him he’d love to do it if he wasn’t so messed up, so Sandman changed it to doing some cane shots then ending the match.)

Ken Shamrock- Sandman was getting ready to introduce himself to Shamrock when Shamrock said “Hey, Sandman, I love your work.” It shocked the hell out of him.

Vince Russo- He was injured when Russo came in, so he never got to do anything and ended up getting released.

Who made the first contact after the WCW release, him or Paul E? JJ Dillon told him he was getting released and getting 3 months severance pay. He says that within 5 minutes, he had a job lined up in ECW. He’d been negotiating with Paul through Tod Gordon. There was never any true heat between him and Paul over him leaving with no notice, so it wasn’t a big deal.

Dropping all his weight when he got back in ECW- He ate right and worked out. He says that he weighed 290 in WCW because he was on growth hormones, decabolin, and several other drugs. After a few months on the road, he went down to 230, went back up to 260 after he was injured, and is now in the best shape of his like today (about April 2001).

Was he surprised at the reaction he got? He was so hyped up the first night he was back that he didn’t really hear it. He enjoyed it more the next show when he was more relaxed.

Did he have any problems putting Justin Credible over? No, it was his idea. He has no problems putting anyone over. He jokes that he and Dreamer, whenever they’d team up, would always argue over who would get to job that night because they’d both want to get pinned.

He also gives his philosophy about jobbing and putting people over, as that he considers the term “job” to refer to stuff like Andre the Giant squashing Johny Rodz, which doesn’t tend to happen much anymore. As for putting people over, he feels that it’s the responsibility of the top guy because it makes their opponents seem that much better when you finally beat them to blow off a feud. It does you a lot more good to beat a guy who’s seen as a serious challenge than a guy who’s considered a joke.

Rhyno- He loves Rhyno. He brings up that Rhyno and Spike Dudley recently debuted on RAW as a part of a double-switch of the tag titles involving the Dudley Boyz, the Hardy Boyz, and Edge and Christian. He also talks about Rhyno goring Spike through a table, which is the same spot he had Rhyno do to him before.

How different was ECW without Tazz? Same old, same old. People were always coming in and out.

His program with Steve Corino- He’s got a great attitude, “fucking fantastic worker”, knew his place, etc. Corino had heat with Bubba Ray Dudley for a while because Corino had worked the indy circuit using an anti-hardcore gimmick.

The eight-man tag match in Pensacola- He was so fucked up that he doesn’t remember it, although he knows he got naked that night. He does remember going to a Tommy LaSorda restaurant with Mikey Whipwreck, Fonzie, and others and drinking about half a gallon of vodka, which explains what happened.

His fight with New Jack- They’re good friends and he feels that you only know how much of a friend someone is after you’ve had a big fight with them. He says that New Jack is militantly pro-black and that he’d always egg New Jack on by saying stuff like “If you were white, she’d probably have given you a soda.”

Teaming with Dusty Rhodes- He loved it because he and Dusty always got along and Dusty’s a living legend.

Tajiri- Always got along with him but doesn’t respect him much because he’ll take advantage of people in the ring. Tajiri would be stiff while kicking guys like Little Guido (James Maritano) but knew better than to do it to him. Also, Tajiri would kayfabe how much English he understood. At one point, Sandman was so pissed at Tajiri’s no-selling that when he’d see Tajiri get out of the shower, he’d yell “Hey, Tajiri, did you sell for the hot water?” One night when he and Tajiri were tagging together, Sandman told Tommy Dreamer, who was the day-to-day booker at the time, that if Tajiri pulled any of his shit, he’d beat the crap out of him with the cane no matter what the finish was supposed to be.

Scott Hall- Down to earth guy. One of the boys.

When did he realize ECW was in trouble? When he was in WCW in 2000. In the last 6 months before ECW went under, he kept setting up all kinds of businesses because he knew ECW wouldn’t last. He says that Paul E was paying to show their TV show in every market it was in, which was costing $75,000 a week. On top of that, you’ve got $15,000 in travel and Paul E. had already sold off the merchandising of the company to Tommy Dreamer and other parts of the company to Acclaim and others, so he was in WAY too deep to get out.

Was Paul honest with everyone? As much as he could have been. Paul was trying to sell out but that no one was interested considering that most of the profit centers for the company were already sold off.

The feeling at the last PPV- Morale wasn’t bad “because we were getting paid that night” and nobody wanted to believe that the company was going under.

Should Paul have come to the last shows the company had, which were in Arkansas? No, because Paul probably thought that he could have kept the company going longer than that. Sandman takes credit for pulling everyone into the ring after the Pine Bluff, Arkansas, show because he figured it was the last show for the company.

Life after ECW- He’s been on the road on weekends, but has been running his other business during the week. He’s partners in a bar called Hak’s which has a restaurant inside called the Sandman Café.

The big changes in the wrestling landscape over the past six months- He says that if he’d told people in early 2000 that the wrestling business was going to be down to one big company by early 2001, they’d have thought he was crazy. He compares it to somebody predicting in the 70s that people would actually pay for bottled water. Neither company going under really shocked him, although the change in his income from $5000 a week down to $2000 a week was a bigger shock.

Are there any plans for him to go to Japan? Yeah, he’s talked to an editor of one of the Japanese wrestling magazines about getting work there. He doubts it will happen though because the US economy is going into the crapper, as the Dow’s gone down 1000 points in the last month alone and that the Yen has gone from about 100:1 to 160:1 and that they won’t want to pay US dollars to a US wrestler if they don’t have to. He explains that the whole problem started with the Dot Com companies getting in trouble, which caused problems for the people who sold to them, and so forth which is snowballing. “The Dow will probably be down to 7500 in the next six months.” (While this didn’t quite happen, the Dow did hit the 8000 range in the wake of September 11, 2001 but had almost recovered to 10,000 by November 2001.)

Biggest misconception about the Sandman- That he’s a drunk, which is wrong because he only drinks and smokes when he wrestles. He’s a businessman, not a drunk, and he’s made more money outside of wrestling than at any time during his wrestling career besides his short stint in WCW.

Does he think his big run is over? He has no clue if he’ll end up in the WWF. “It’s March 2001. In March 2000, Vince was pulling 8.5 and now he’s pulling 5.5.” He says that the lack of competition will make the top WWF guys like Undertaker, Steve Austin, The Rock, and Kurt Angle get stale and cause his ratings to erode further. By September, he’ll be into the 4s because he can’t switch up his product enough. (The ratings for both crashed in about mid-May, coinciding with the Judgment Day 2001 and the end of the dead Austin vs. Undertaker and Triple H vs. Kane feuds.) He doesn’t see himself getting signed due to some of his past actions because he doesn’t think Vince McMahon wants to take the chance of him getting naked on a live RAW. He feels that the only way he’ll get signed is if Paul Heyman becomes the top booker.

Where does he see himself in five years- Hopefully running his own federation and TV show. He also wants to do other things outside of wrestling, such as politics, so he wants to get a law degree.

If Paul E had to give him a reference, what would he say? Good worker, got over very quickly, but had a lot of problems.

If he had to give Paul a reference, what would he say? Just let him book, don’t let him manager the company’s business.

The greatest match he was ever in- He can’t pick just one but many stick out, such as his Cactus Jack, Sabu, Raven, etc. matches.

Anything else? He wants to thank all of his fans for helping him live his dream.


Sandman vs. Rhyno with Steve Corino and Jack Victory- Shitty hand-cam match which keeps shifting around. The match goes to a no-contest after Justin Credible does a run-in and canes Sandman. Tommy Dreamer makes the save, gets beaten down, then Raven makes the real save. Sandman starts caning the shit out of Raven but Dreamer has to hold him off.

Justin Credible, Rhyno, and Lance Storm with Dawn Marie vs. Tommy Dreamer, Sandman, and Raven with Beulah McGillicuddy. I also have to say that Sandman’s entrance is like a Triple H promo in that it takes WAY too long for what it does, except that it’s actually over. We also get the traditional Dawn vs. Beulah catfight, complete with gratuitous g-string shots. Dreamer and Raven pick up the win by dogpiling on Storm for the three count after Dremer performs an Angle Slam-like suplex on Storm.


For those who’ve never seen Sandman’s entrance, it goes like this: Enter Sandman by Metallica hits on the PA, Sandman appears in the crowd, lights and smokes a cigarette, chugs a beer, bashes the can against his head, then proceeds to kick ass. It takes the length of the song to do and if he only did it during pre-match introductions, it would be okay. The problem is that he would do this for RUN INS as well. I’m surprised ECW never had a match where he was running in to make the save and someone rolled up the guy for the three by the time Sandman had finished his pre-match beer.



Back to the matches…


Tommy Dreamer, Raven and Sandman vs. Jack Victory, Steve Corino, and Rhyno- The match goes to a no-contest when Corino’s team flees the ring after Sandman beats the living shit out of all of them with the cane.

Tommy Dreamer vs. Da Baldies- Dreamer takes an ass-whipping from all three Baldies until Sandman makes the save. After that, it becomes a Tables, Ladders, Chairs, Canes, and Fire Extinguishers match because all are used on the chrome-domes by Dreamer and Sandman.

Justin Credible vs. Sandman- Christ, I’m surprised Metallica hasn’t sued the company that produced this for using Enter Sandman so many times by showing Sandman’s entrance. I’m not sure who has the bigger backlash from online users… Metallica or RF Video. Back to the match, it’s the standard ECW brawl until the American Dream Dusty Rhodes waddles down to the ring to attempt the three-count. Dusty gets jumped by Dawn Marie on two then is attacked by Steve Corino and Jack Victory, who are taken out by the standard Dusty offense, last seen on a national level when Bubba Ray Dudley got a singles push. Then the entire goddamn ECW locker room gets involved, two at a time, before making their way back to the locker room. Credible finally wins with the That’s Incredible tombstone piledriver, at which point Rhyno drags Sandman’s carcass out of the ring and beats on it while Dreamer and Jazz run in to attack Justin Credible, complete with a piledriver onto barbed wire.

Sandman vs. Some Bald Guy- This is from Jersey All Pro Wrestling and appears to be from early 2001. This match gets interrupted by a run-in by more bald guys, who jump both Sandman and his opponent, then the match is rebooked to be a tag match featuring Sandman and his original opponent vs. the new bald guys. Don’t know what happened, don’t care.

Terry Funk, Sandman, Tommy Dreamer, Bubba Ray Dudley, and D-Von Dudley vs. Gladiator (Mike Awesome), Masato Tanaka, and three random Japanese guys. This is from FMW, the pioneering garbage federation run by Japanese Diet (Parliament) member Onita. Highlights include Sandman taking a piledriver on a table that doesn’t break, Bubba Ray Dudley doing a plancha onto five guys, Mike Awesome powerbombing Dreamer through a table, Awesome giving D-Von a running crucifix powerbomb (like Razor Ramon’s “Razor’s Edge” powerbomb) , and Terry Funk small-packaging one of the random Japanese guys for the win.

Sandman vs. Sabu with Fonzie- This is from FMW. Sabu wins with a modified Arabian Facebuster from the top rope, using a ladder instead of the standard chair.

Sandman vs. Steve Corino with Jack Victory- This is for the ECW Title that Sandman had stolen from Corino in an angle not see here. There’s a nice spot in which Corino takes a superplex onto a guardrail which is being held horizontal in the center of the ring by eight chairs. The finish is completely messed up, as both Corino and Sandman are down for the referee’s ten-count, Sandman gets up first but is decked by Victory while Corino distracts the referee, then Corino makes it to his feet and is declared the winner. Corino wins but Sandman keeps the belt because Justin Credible runs in just long enough to kick the shit out of Victory and Corino, leaving Corino out on the mat while Sandman walks off with the belt again.

Sandman vs. Rhyno- Rhyno wins with a piledriver to retain his ECW Unified Championship. (This must be from the Arkansas shows because there were VERY few shows after Rhyno won the ECW title from Sandman on PPV.)


Thoughts- The interview is surprisingly good considering Sandman’s reputation as an incoherent drunk. He has some good observations about the past of the business as well as some decent predictions about the future of the business, many of which have come to pass. The only down part of the video is that the interview was a little shorter than I’d hoped and the bad matches made up a majority of the tape, but I can forgive that. Strong Recommendation.

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