Mikey Whipwreck

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[PeteF3]

Right now, as I'm sitting in mid-'95 in my Yearbook-viewing Mikey is my favorite ECW worker, and I strongly think he'll end up being ECW's best "homegrown" product. Terrific bumper and seller, naturally, but the timing of when to get in his offense has been superb as well. I don't know if it's enough to get him in the list, as he is sort of a one-note poor man's Kikuchi, but he and Richards are the two guys I perk up the most when an ECW segment comes along.

[Dylan Waco]

I am toying with idea of him as my number 100. Yes I could probably find 100 guys who I think were better, but I have a soft spot for Mikey in large part because I think he embodied ECW. He basically had a reluctant backyarder gimmick, and somehow was able to make it work for over six years straight, with some variations here or there, but still keeping a lot of the standards (sloppy offense that actually fit his character, crazy bumping, way better than normal selling for ECW, et). A lot of his best matches are lesser known, and/or fancams, but he had singles matches with Sabu, Richards, and Candido that I absolutely loved, and some really good tag performances too.

[dawho5]

I enjoyed his tag team with Tajiri in 99 a lot. Two of the best ever guys to spend any amount of time in ECW working as a tag team? Yes, please. I liked how they varied their double teams as well, not just sticking to the same ones but throwing a bunch of variations on the same beginning over 3 or 4 matches. More teams need to do that.

[TravJ1979]

I have nothing against Mikey. He was able to make the best out of a Paul Heyman underdog gimmick and gain acceptance with the fans. However, he has no shot at my top 100. He has nothing notable outside of ECW as his brief WCW run was a flop and his sporadic appearances for ROH and other indies left something to be desired. Eventually, he became overweight and seemed to stop caring.

 

He fits in somewhere, but the scope of this project is way too broad for it to be on a list like this. If the parameters were like Best of ECW or Best of a certain year, then yeah.

[NotJayTabb]

Always liked Mikey, was watching a "best of" comp the other day, and it reminded me how good he was in his role. Just took some fun ragdoll bumps, had suitably weak offence in his early days and realistically progressed into being an actual credible performer. Oddly, I think one of my favourite Mikey matches is his bout with Kidman from Uncensored 99. He seemed to relish being the larger, more physically imposing wrestler for a change, and just bullied Kidman, including a nasty bump into the steel railings. Dick Cruiserweight Bully Mikey Whipwreck feels like yet another missed opportunity in WCW. If I was submitting my top 100 now, he'd probably make the cut, but there's a lot of guys I need to do due diligence on that'll probably see him drop off.

[Clayton Jones]

Mikey is on my rough draft but towards the bottom and I'd really liked to be firmly convinced one way or another by 2026 if he deserves a spot. What do people think his best singles match was, VS Sabu? My first batch of viewing was pretty entertaining but didn't really sway me one way or another, except that it made me think that old Mikey was just washed up and fat is misleading. He was definitely broken down after WCW but I watched him VS CW Anderson from 2005 where he worked around his limitations pretty well and then by 2014 w/Tajiri VS AR Fox/Rich Swann he was actively good again. That match was a treat. I'll revisit more of this later stuff but I don't think it's devoid of good performances. Then I watched two WCW matches, VS Hak and VS Villano V, very different matches and Mikey looked very good in both. Maybe great VS Sandman. And then I went back to an ECW match I didn't remember, VS Awesome on TNN, and that was a great vintage Whipwreck performance hanging in there but making the Champ look like a world beater. Mikey is a Champion of Random Match Theory, I'll gladly watch him VS anyone and I'll rarely be disappointed. He knew his craft extremely well, and he had a deceptively deep toolbox that he used to match up well with a wide variety of opponents. But I don't know if the body of work is there to hold onto a spot at the bottom of my ballot with so many great wrestlers nipping at his heels.