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September 28, 2006 He's Hardcore! 20 years ago Dr. Death Steve Williams became somewhat legendary for receiving 108 stitches above his eye and saying, “Sew me up, doc, I've got a match tonight.” See, most wrestlers aren't pussies. If they get mangled or maimed in the course of a match, by and large they still keep going, finish the match, and entertain the people who paid to see them. Hardcore Holly is sure as hell no pussy. He's a bona fide bad ass. After what happened to Holly on ECW this week, he makes Dr. Death look like Dominic Guerrero-Mysterio. Holly and Rob Van Dam put on probably the best match of the new ECW so far, beating the living hell out of each other for our amusement. Their match wasn't so much amusing as disturbing and cringe-inducing. It even started out a little boring until RVD set up a table at ringside and that lunatic Holly decided to suplex both of them into the table.
The hard metal frame of the table snapped off and ripped right into Holly's back, creating a gruesome, sickening 15 inch gash that gushed blood.
Instead of calling for the finish, Holly and Van Dam kept going for another ten minutes and beat the crap out of each other. RVD didn't take it easy on Holly's bloody, lacerated back. According to wrestling psychology, if your opponent has an injured body part, you go after it. RVD did just that, mercilessly suplexing Holly's bleeding, slashed-up back right onto a steel chair. Nor did Holly hold back on RVD, at one point dropping him throat first onto the very same chair, and later throwing the chair right in Van Dam's face as he plummeted toward Holly for a five star frog splash. Holly actually wore the chair around his arm in the corner after Van Dam kicked it in his face. Van Dam's final frog splash on Holly mercifully ended the match and Holly sold it like his insides caved in. In a match like this there are no losers. Well, sure, one guy technically lost and will be forever scarred from the match, but the live crowd properly applauded and appreciated Hardcore Holly's efforts, as did most anyone watching at home. (Van Dam did a hell of a job too but he's not gonna be permanently scarred.)
I don't recall ever liking Hardcore Holly very much in the 13+ years he's been in WWE. He came in during the crappy New Generation era as Thurman Plugg, a Nascar racer whose friends called him “ Sparky .” Thurman, as we called him, really pissed Jeff off at the 1994 Royal Rumble when it took forever to get him eliminated. (“What the fuck?! Sparky Plugg is still in the ring!”) Sometime later his name changed to Bob “Spark Plugg” Holly and he hung around until 1999, when he shaved and bleached his head, and started calling himself Hardcore Holly. He took on a now-deceased cousin Crash Holly, called himself “The Big Shot” and feuded with the Big Show. Then Kurt Angle broke his arm with an errant moonsault and Holly drifted in and out of storylines over the years, recently surviving a life-threatening staph infection before making his comeback this summer in ECW. It sounds like I'm eulogizing Hardcore Holly. He's not dead. He won't be wrestling for a while until that scar on his back heals, but he's more vital now in ECW than he has been in years. He needed 24 stitches to close that gash. The cut went all the way down to the fatty tissue above the muscle.
Tuesday night, Hardcore Holly took his first step towards Sabu-level physical deformity, all in the same of being Extreme. That bald, mean son of a bitch earned his "hardcore" moniker. The cool thing about Holly and Van Dam's performance this week is that their match wasn't even on a pay per view. It wasn't even the main event of this week's ECW. It wasn't even all that interesting when it was announced they'd face each other. And yet they laid it all on the line and tried to kill each other on basic cable. Without fanfare, Holly and RVD had a potential match of the year. The kind of match that people will talk about in reverential awe for a long time. Hardcore Holly's testicular fortitude stands right up there with Sabus and Terry Funks and Tommy Dreamers and Cactus Jacks of ECW's legendary hardcore past. That's what ECW is supposed to be all about. Don't tell me wrestling ain't ‘real'. |
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