ecw 12 29 1995

The New York City debut at Lost Battalion Hall in the Rego Park section of Queens on 12/29 drew a reported sellout 1,140 fans which was a legit turnaway crowd. With tickets priced at $35 and $20, the gate was said to be close to $30,000 would be by far the all-time record for the company. ECW will return to the same building on 2/3 and is already talking about moving to a larger building, the Roseland Concert Hall in Manhattan in March. The main negative from what we heard were the building had no elevated seating so it was difficult to see, and even worse when they brawled outside the ring. The crowd was really heated overall and the show had a lot of blood. Paul Heyman opened the show cussing out WWF, WCW and Steve Austin, who was scheduled in the main event title match against Sandman and missed the show. Heyman said that the tirade was part work and part shoot. He wasn't at all mad at Austin, who he knew was very ill with a strep throat and couldn't work the date. But he said the tirade against WWF was both to heat the crowd up, and also as a receipt for the WWF telling him that Tom Prichard couldn't work the show because he was booked on the WWF tour of California before Heyman booked the Heavenly Bodies for the weekend in early December. As it turned out, Prichard didn't even work the WWF California tour and had never been announced in California for those shows. Heyman was aware of the Heavenly Bodies being unavailable at least in enough time to book The Gangstas to take their place against Public Enemy on the show. They ended up with a Raven vs. Tommy Dreamer match in which the winner (Raven) would get the title shot at Sandman (which Sandman won). In addition, Mikey Whipwreck won both the TV title and the tag team title from Too Cold Scorpio in a singles match with both belts at stake. Cactus Jack interfered in the finish and Whipwreck picked Jack to be his new partner. Jack most likely will start with WWF on its TV leading up to Wrestlemania (after the February PPV show) but until that time they are doing an angle where Jack tries to bring Whipwreck into Raven's group but Raven doesn't want him, Whipwreck doesn't want to join, and Jack is caught in the middle by both. Gangstas beat Public Enemy in their match and after the match, with the crowd chanting "Please don't go" at Public Enemy, Johnny Grunge flicked his fingers as to indicate it's all about making money and the crowd turned on him big-time with chants like "You sold out," "Get the F*** out" and the like. So much for understanding that a guy like Ted Petty, who is 43, has been in this business forever without ever having a chance to make serious money and begrudging him for his one last chance after the guy cut his head off and did dangerous stunt work for two years to get the chance. The main event was Sabu vs. Cactus Jack. Ref Pee Wee Moore from Japan was in with Sabu since New Japan is off right now, he told the fans that Cactus Jack wanted an NCAA rules match with points for takedowns. 911 came out and chokeslammed Moore and reffed the match, but he was slow in getting down for the near falls and it hurt the match. Fans were upset since it was advertised as a death match but ended with the first pinfall, although the bout itself was really wild. Missy Hiatt also debuted on this show doing a gimmick where she was being really nice to Steve Richards supposedly because she wants to date Raven.