[1994-07-16-ECW-Heatwave] Public Enemy vs Dory & Terry Funk (Barbed Wire)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Pretty decent match in terms of playing up the gimmick, but that's really the nicest thing I can say about it. Famous for fans throwing in their chairs. Everyone is having a good time until the announcer gets on the mic and asks everyone to stop.

[Kevin Ridge]

Terry Funk is wearing suspenders with sweatpants. Joey is pretending to be hiding under a desk while doing commentary. Didn’t really care much for this outside of the times when guys got caught up in the barbwire. The chair tossing occurs and it is funny to see some of the fans getting angry at each other for throwing the chairs. Funk loses his sweatpants at some point. He gets wrapped up pretty good in the barbwire at the end.

[Exposer]

I found this to be really entertaining. It wasn't a great match by any stretch but the barbed wire spots, chair throwing, and Terry Funk kept me invested. Lots of fun.

[soup23]

More of a spectacle than a good match but what it was trying to accomplish, it did a good job in creating some memorable scenes with the chair throwing and Funk being wrapped in barbed wire. Kind of amazing to see Terry do this type of match two days before the BATB.

[PeteF3]

This is the second ECW Arena show in a row that features guys climbing into the Eagle's Nest and Styles having to ineffectively pretend to be hiding down below to account for him not being visible. The sea of chairs is of course an iconic moment, and the fans doing a mass exit to watch Funk and Rocco go at it in the parking lot was cool, but I thought most everything else was horrible. Feeble brawling and shockingly little sustained heat. And I actually liked how this match was built to, booking-wise. This gets a little better once the chairs enter the ring as the strikes actually have some zing behind them and PE sort of effectively puts Funk away by lashing him to a trash can with barbed wire and dogpiling him. Even Dory showed some intensity, eventually. Definitely fits in on a Yearbook but a pretty lousy match involving a truly lousy tag team. PE have to be the worst workers ever to be widely perceived as being good at one point.

[Mattsdmf]

I love a good spectacle and this was that. Not a good match per say but it was very watchable. Another iconic ECW moment with Terry towards the end asking for a chair and the entire crowd threw their chairs into the ring.

 

I did like that they did tease the barbed wire spots at first but PE are not Onita and can't emote at all so the spots that did come didn't have much of an impact. At least the Funks brought some intensity. The visual of Terry totally wrapped up in barbed wire and still going nuts was incredible and only outdone in his barbed wire match against Sabu.

[DR Ackermann]

I enjoyed this but I wouldn't call it good. I think it's a case of having extremely low expectations and worshipping Terry Funk. There are some great visuals and ideas with the barbed wire in the latter parts of the match. But most of the work is soft and underwhelming. Public Enemy are the Bruiser Brody's of ECW.

On 5/8/2014 at 4:11 PM, PeteF3 said:

PE have to be the worst workers ever to be widely perceived as being good at one point.

I've never seen them have a good match in ECW but I like some of their WCW stuff in 96. Being forced to work a more traditional style benefitted them cause they really weren't good at the fmw-lite brawls and they have some decent kamikaze/double team spots.