[1993-09-18-ECW-Ultra Clash] J.T. Smith vs Dark Patriot (Scaffold)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Smith takes a quick, crazy bump knee-first off the scaffold.

 

Dark Patriot continues to beat him up for several minutes afterward all over the arena. Kind of a precursor to the style ECW would become known for.

[Kevin Ridge]

Styles on voiceover. They are right up against the ceiling of the building. NWA Scaffold matches had guys hanging on and looking terrified up so high. It is a brief clip but they are walking around on scaffold like is is nothing. Does not do a good job of selling the height. Then Smith takes a crazy bump off the scaffold into the ring.

[PeteF3]

Is that really Joey Styles? That New England accent is WAY more pronounced at this point. JT Smith almost Cornettes his knee bumping off the scaffold, and Styles (or whoever it is) sells this monumental event by making a "fallen and I can't get up" MedicAlert crack. Oh joy--it's either Joey Styles or a New Englander Craig Johnson. Patriot beats up Smith through the crowd while Styles ridiculously oversells all this. "CALL THE NATIONAL GUARD!" Oh, shut the fuck up.

[soup23]

Joey Styles proves to be annoying right out of the gate as in the post match beatdown he is screaming for help and for someone to call 911 as Patriot gives a mundane beating to Smith. The bump Smith took off the scaffold looked like a torn ACL waiting to happen.

[garretta]

What we see here is an extended beatdown from Doug on J.T. Smith. It's not particularly violent compared to what we later saw from ECW, but the promotion hadn't truly hit its stride yet, so it may have looked scarier than it would have during the promotion's heyday three or four years later.

 

I thought guys would know better than to take the bump off the scaffold in a way that practically guarantees a completely blown knee. Then again, is there really such a thing as a safe bump off of a scaffold?

 

I'm honestly not sure if it's Joey on commentary. He doesn't sound much like he would in later years, that's for sure. On the other hand, he's an immediate improvement by several hundred leaps and bounds over Jay Sulli, even if he sounds like he's having a meltdown here. One thing, though: Can the overly cute allusions during a crisis. Saying that "Jazzy" J.T. Smith was "singing the blues" did nothing whatsoever to enhance the drama of the situation, and in fact detracted from it by making the audience wonder why the hell he would say something like that about a guy who was being beaten half to death.

 

The "fallen and can't get up" stuff was understandable, considering that Smith had fallen and couldn't​ get up, at least at that moment. I'm not even sure Joey was thinking about the commercial when he said it.