Review for ECW Unreleased Volume Three

EC Dub

EC Dub

EC Dub

Anytime anyone goes through a table, or gets busted open or something absolutely crazy happens that chant can be heard throughout any arena in the world. It is a three letter chant that no company could ever compete with. Considering ECW was closed in 2001 and technically was only in existence for less than a decade, its legacy is immense in the wrestling business.

Hosted by Joey Styles, Stevie Richards and The Blue Meanie, ECW Unreleased Volume Three is another look at some highlights from the ECW Archive. Now, unlike most sets like this where you see a drop in quality, thankfully that is not the case with ECW. No matter what you thought of the violence, the outlandish characters or the way it was produced, when that bell rang you were treated to some of the best action from any company at the time.

Now, I should start by saying that though there are no matches that I would skip you may find yourself hovering over the Forward Button during the inbetween vignettes. Styles/Richards and Meanie are funny the first few times, but after awhile I got tired of the bad attempts at comedy. I don't know whether this is just bad writing or bad acting or a mixture of the two, but I found myself skipping through most of what they said to get to the next match. What's worse is that when they did try to get serious with Styles asking the two how they got in the business and Richards' Main Event push I was already lost and they needed to choose either silly or serious, not both.

There are multiple matches throughout which are fantastic and you are a fan of a particular ECW wrestler then you will see them at some point. The Dudleyz, Raven, Sabu, Taz, Shane Douglas, Dean Malenko, Rod Van Dam, Chris Jericho, Sandman, Cactus Jack, Tommy Dreamer, Terry Funk and many more. All are featured and not just in matches, there are some excellent promos (which is what ECW was more famous for) included which are all fabulous.

Highlights include 2 Cold Scorpio vs. Dean Malenko, Shane Douglas vs. Ron Simmons, Public Enemy vs. Sabu and Taz, Cactus Jack vs. Sabu in an insane ECW Death Match and a great match between Raven and Tommy Dreamer from Japan. This showed that even though they could not quite break America in regards to audiences, across the world they had a huge following and the arena appears to be jam packed.

There is also a fantastic Three-Way Dance between Sandman, Raven and Stevie Richards with the winner going on to face ECW Champion Terry Funk. The final match on the set was a Double Jeopardy match between Steve Corino, Justin Credible, Jerry Lynn and Sandman. This was a match that was so complicated in rules it is not surprising that no one has ever done one again!!??

ECW Unreleased Volume Three is not an awful set and the matches on offer are great. My problem is that very few are memorable and probably why they are on this one rather than Volume One or Two. I would have preferred if they had done this by year and released Best of 1995, 1996 etc. However, this is still a great set with some amazing matches and promos. It is highly likely that if/when they release Volume Four and Volume Five it will still have great stuff to watch.