[1998-01-10-ECW-House Party] The Sandman vs Sabu (Stairway To Hell)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[soup23]

Sandman looks in shape for him and well groomed so perhaps he took this match serious. Sabu attacks at the onset and Fonzie helps set up the spots for Sabu. Sabu hits a legdrop on chair on top of Sandman's head. Sabu is doing good at going after Sandman and hitting his spots cleanly in the early going. The crowd almost breathes a collective sigh of relief when his first triple jump splash into Sandman in the crowd goes off without a hitch. Again, we get some ho hum brawling throughout the ECW arena. That has seriously become one of my least favorite things in wrestling watching more ECW. They get to the Eagle's Nest area where Sabu sets up a table. Sabu hits a legdrop through a table and Sandman. Sandman fires back and hits Sabu with a slam and elbow drop on the stage.

 

Back at the ringside area, Sandman suplexes a ladder on top of a prone Sabu and then does the ladder tetter-totter spot. Sandman has to muscle sabu up for a weird looking suplex onto two tables set up outside and then does a dangerous leg drop with Sabu's face pressed up against the table in awkward fashion. Sandman then does another nasty spot where Sabu is draped over the ladder that is connected between the ring and guardrail. His face is on top of a table and Sandman does a springboard legdrop from inside the ring to the outside. Sandman climbs the ladder and retrieves the barbed wire but then gets unceremoniously thrown from the ladder to the outside through two tables.

 

Sabu misses a triple jump holding the barbed wire and is neck first against the guardrail. The gore factor is turned up now with the barbed wire in play. Barbed wire and scissors are ingrained into Sandman's face and he bleeds a gusher. Barbed wire and chair are placed on Sandman's face and Sabu hits an Arabian dropkick onto him. Sabu misses a dive and then is chest first into the barbed wire. Sandman finds his trusty cane and Sabu gets plastered with it. Sabus is bleeding from the mouth and Fonzie helps him out to tape up his broken jaw. Sabu is one tough mofo if nothing else. The triple jump moonsault from Sabu is the worst executed spot of the match and it is time to take this one home. Sandman tees Sabu up and cracks Sabu with a big swing on the cane and pins him.

 

Joey's call of calling Sandman the "winner" of the match is a great call. This match featured innovative spots, some straight gore, and good hatred between the two. It did get a little long after Sabu broke his jaw but this feels like the quintessential ECW match to me and still feels fresh and full of gore 16 years later. (****1/4)

[Kevin Ridge]

Ladder suplex by Sandman is a great little spot. Great accuracy on that one. The leg drop on to the propped up ladder looked vicious. I thought Sandman was going to land on his head when getting dumped off the ladder to tables below. He just turned his body enough at the last moment. He is up quickly though. Sabu is a mess with his jaw. Sandman does not look good himself. As impressive as the spots were and the violence in it, the ECW fans weren’t as vocal as you would think.

[Migs]

This was an interesting comparison to Bigelow-RVD, as they cut a pretty impressive pace. This can't even be called a spotfest - there was a logical progression in the violence from their prior matches, and we've established that what these guys really want to do is hurt each other.

 

I like that they used the cane shot as a finish - it always looked devastating and it didn't always get the respect it deserved in terms of selling.

[bradhindsight]

Is this Sandman's best match ever? The brawl around the arena features a fan yelling "You're a pussy Sabu!" - which couldn't be further from the truth. The brutality is really ratcheted up here but each setup and eventual spot is really well done. The teeter-totter looks vicious but is part Sabu selling and part camera angle. Then we get to the broken jaw and barbed wire stuff as things just escalate. The broken jaw makes the finish even more devastating and logical - essentially it's a full force baseball swing to the broken face of Sabu. I don't see how these two could have a better "match" than this. ***3/4

[Migs]

Is this Sandman's best match ever? The brawl around the arena features a fan yelling "You're a pussy Sabu!" - which couldn't be further from the truth. The brutality is really ratcheted up here but each setup and eventual spot is really well done. The teeter-totter looks vicious but is part Sabu selling and part camera angle. Then we get to the broken jaw and barbed wire stuff as things just escalate. The broken jaw makes the finish even more devastating and logical - essentially it's a full force baseball swing to the broken face of Sabu. I don't see how these two could have a better "match" than this. ***3/4

 

I'm struggling to think of a Sandman match that's close. He had a couple of good ones with Mikey in the summer of '95. A couple of the Raven and Cactus brawls are okay, but Sabu's athleticism really added a dimension that those matches didn't have. I recall a couple of the late period ECW title matches he was in with Credible and Corino as being good, but those were much less due to The Sandman.

[Loss]

I tried to watch this three times, but every time I tried, my mind kept drifting away when I'd see something that took me out of the match. I think this works in the sense that it is a pretty good match to encapsulate what ECW was about, but I didn't get as much out of it. I will admit that a big part of it is that I'm so sick of seeing people dive through tables that I'm not sure I can ever like another match where it happens at this point, even if the rest of the match is great. My biggest problem with this is that they weren't going for the win nearly enough, when the idea behind a match this brutal seems like it oughta be that it's so dangerous that those involved want to get it over with quickly.

[Migs]

Adding to this that I recently saw their followup match at Living Dangerously, and while it's not nearly as good as this one, I thought it was enjoyable.

[tim]

I thought this was really damn good until Sabu breaks his jaw. It's still good after that but loses the scrappy bar-fight feel as Sabu understandably needs to take some time and probably has his range of motion limited. Up until then it really felt like a wild fight, Sandman at his best playing a drunken, barely trained brawler. His offense here -- flinging a table up into Sabu's face, a poorly position legdrop that doesn't quite go through the table, the wild ladder suplex into the crowd -- is awesome gritty offense and his selling goes right along with it. This match is profoundly unpolished and all the better for it. Even after Sabu gets hurt there's still some real good stuff, I especially liked Sabu hitting his springboard moonsault on the legs, the way Sandman sells it puts it across less as a jarring botch than as a high risk move that didn't hit as intended but still had impact. Ending felt abrupt and anticlimactic but given what Sabu was dealing with it's hard to fault it. Of course, even to the extent that Sabu's injury hurts the flow of the match a little, it adds to the brutality and intensity, if you're just considering how it affects the quality of the match.

[PeteF3]

I didn't think much of this at all, and thought it was markedly inferior to the Bigelow/RVD match. I will say that it's miles ahead of November 2 Remember and does do an effective enough job of washing the bad taste of that disaster out of everybody's mouths. For one thing, I don't get the psychology behind a Stairway to Hell Match--just as with ref bumps, what's the point of putting a weapon out of reach when weapons are all over the place in every ECW match? A lot of the spots I praised in years previous are starting to seem passe, like setting up tables outside the ring for bumps to come later. There are some impressive bumps here, but this is *way* more highspot-rest-setup-highspot-rest than the previous match was accused of being, and the spots are still hit-or-miss. Ending makes no sense--I guess Sandman was supposed to dodge the Arabian Facebuster, but he doesn't, gets hit with it, then recovers first and wins with one shot of the Singapore cane. You can't accuse these guys of not working hard but this whole style is reaching a point of diminishing returns. There are better ECW gorefests, better matches with Sabu, better matches with Sandman, and better ECW spotfests than this.

[TravJ1979]

Miles better than N2R 1997. Still I didn't like any of this pre-Sabu smashing his face into the guard rail. Sandman struck me as two parts Ian Rotten, one part Jeff the drunk from the Howard Stern show. He doesn't take bumps, he just falls down. He visibly balded on camera ... just terrible. I enjoy the blood and brutality in the finishing stretch, but the backyard style, benign 'hardcore' spots in the beginning and middle took me down too far to get back up to a level where I could enjoy this.

 

RATING: A for effort, B for blading, C for clusterfuck

[Superstar Sleeze]

Sandman vs Sabu - ECW House Party '98

 

Of all the ECW matches I've seen, I would say this and Sabu/Funk Born to be Wired are the two best. But I'm a Sabu Mark. Great straight right, love his way of selling, he always seems like he is in pain, I love the sense of danger and urgency and his of course his mystique.

 

I believe this an offshoot of the WWF (RVD & Sabu) vs ECW (Dreamer & Sandman) where Sabu used a fireball. At November 2 Remember they apparently they had the worst match ever and then turnaround and have a legitimately great match ever.

 

Insanely violent. I think the big positives are how organic this feels and the urgency and how legitimately violent this is. I am not too into overt violence and part of me wonders why I even liked this because it is disturbing two humans put themselves through it.

 

I thought it was well-segmented and flew right by. I loved Sandman's drunk staggering selling. No reasons for snap back bumps. He has been knocked loopy. Sabu was violent and urgent. He set up his spot and went no waiting to make sure Sandman was in a safe position. Even the crowd brawling wasn't bad with good Sabu punches. Would've liked more Sandman struggle and a better Sandman transition. I think a long Sandman transition was great like the table Suplex and leg drop across ladder but thought Sabu started selling too early. Still an incredible war of attrition. Perfect timing for Sandman to go for barbed wire but he takes a MASSIVE BUMP from top of ladder to floor through table. Holy shot indeed! Not to be outdone Sabu tries to leap on him and breaks his jaw on the railing! OWWWWWW! Two massive bumps!

 

Sandman has time to set up the barbed wire in corner so he goes through it. There are some stupid things like Sandman holding the barbed wire on his face and other contrived barbed wire spots. Still drop kick chair into barbed wire into the face is another OW! Sabu goes face first into barbed wire and then CANED in the face! Broken jaw! Shit! Fonzie tapes his jaw. Sabu actually gets in some more offense before a wicked cane shot to the broken jaw polishes him off.

 

I usually don't like brawls over ten minutes but this was an excellent war of attrition. This was like the Mutoh/Tenryu '01 of ECW. Sandman gets knocked loopy at the beginning and sells loopy throughout and in this case needs weapons and a major mistake by Sabu to win. Fittingly violent for these two ECW stars. Contender for best ECW match ever and great brawl. ****1/4

[Jetlag]

May very well be the greatest ECW match ever. Ladders are flung about, dudes tr y to kill eachother and it's all one merry acid fueled carnage. Sandman's drunk selling and stumbling about works way better than your usual wandering crowd „brawling“, I also liked how he would take weapon shots and the simple elbow drop adds a lot to an otherwise wild brawl as an old school move. This feels unpredictable and uncooperative through the reckless use of props and neither guy looking like he was willing to take the punishment. Sabu fighting through the broken jaw was super gritty and didn't detract from the brutal fight going on. Plenty of crazy spots and that classic barfight finish.