ECW Barely Legal results, live retro blog: This is the dance!

It's probably the middle of a three-day weekend for you and you have nothing to do. No football until next week. Baseball's probably not interesting you. And the fall TV season hasn't quite started yet. Don't worry; Cageside Seats has got your back with another live retro blog. All you need's a working broadband Internet connection (seeing as you're on this site, you already have one) and WWE Network (which is free for a month if you're a new subscriber--may not apply in Canada and select countries), and you're in.

This week, the live retro blog returns with ECW's first foray into PPV, Barely Legal, taking place on April 13, 1997 from the ECW Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with 1,170 in attendance and about 100,000 homes watching on PPV. It was the PPV that almost never was; the show was pulled from PPV altogether following word of the Mass Transit incident got to PPV companies. Evenutally, a massive letter-writing campaign convinced one PPV outlet, Premiere, to carry the show; Request later changed their mind, but only under certain conditions, including starting at 9pm instead of 7pm and no excessive blood.

As for the card, in the featured bout, Raven would defend the ECW World Heavyweight Championship against one of three challengers: The Sandman, Stevie Richards, or Terry Funk (a match will determine which of the three get the title shot). Also on the card, the Dudley Boyz defend the ECW tag titles against the Eliminators, Shane Douglas defends the television title against Pitbull #2, and a match over a year in the making will finally come to fruition, as Taz takes on Sabu.

The live retro blog begins at 8pm ET (that's 7pm central, 5pm pacific, and 2pm Hawaiian. And 1am in Britian. Everywhere else, do the math.) Live retro blog rules apply, meaning no pics and no GIFs. So spend your Sunday evening with the best wrestling community in the galaxy and watch some live retro extreme wrestling.

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Eddie Mac here. Here's the card.

CONFIRMED MATCHES:

• ECW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Raven vs. TBD
• #1 CONTENDER'S MATCH FOR THE ECW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP (Winner to face Raven for the title later in the night): The Sandman vs. Stevie Richards vs. Terry Funk
• FIRST TIME EVER: Taz vs. Sabu
• ECW WORLD TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP: The Dudley Boyz vs. The Eliminators
• ECW WORLD TELEVISION CHAMPIONSHIP: Shane Douglas vs. Pitbull #2

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RESULTS

• The Eliminators defeated The Dudley Boyz in 6:11 to win the ECW World Tag Team Championship.
• Rob Van Dam, replacing Chris Candido, defeated Lance Storm in 10:10.
• The Great Sasuke, Gran Hamada, and Masato Yakushiji (replacing Gran Naniwa) defeated bWo Japan (Taka Michinoku, Terry Boy, and Dick Togo) in 16:55.
• Shane Douglas defeated Pitbull #2 in 20:43 to retain the ECW World Television Championship.
• Taz defeated Sabu via submission in 17:49.
• Terry Funk defeated The Sandman and Stevie Richards in a three-way dance in 19:10 to earn an ECW World Heavyweight Championship match.
• Terry Funk defeated Raven in 7:20 to win the ECW World Heavyweight Championship.

EDDIE MAC'S QUICK REVIEW

It wasn't ECW in the truest sense due to the restrictions placed on the show, but it may have actually worked in their favor. The bloodletting was kept to a minimum, and the two big matches on the show delivered, although Taz vs. Sabu didn't quite feel like the blood feud match it should have been. Maybe they're stretching it out a bit. The TV title match went WAY too long. WAY, WAY too long. Loved the tag opener, but it did leave me wondering what could have been had Bubba Ray Dudley not been injured prior to the event. The six-man tag ended up getting two of the men on another PPV, Canadian Stampede, about three months later. The whole Taz-Sabu-RVD-Bill Alfonso swerve, while brilliant, felt a little out of place on this show. Probably could have been saved for Hardcore TV.

There were only seven matches on the show, and only the opener and main event felt short (and for totally different reasons). Good show, not great show. I still recommend watching if you got about three hours to kill. So I'll split the middle, leaning up with a solid 3 stars out of 5.