Check out some of CJ's favorite pics from Cyberslam 2000 weekend!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This classic edition of Breaking Kayfabe, one that I ironically have yet to get around to archiving on my own homepage, is a piece of history. A year and a week ago this week, ScoopsWrestling.com sent me to cover ECW's Cyberslam 2000, an event that unfortunately ended up being their last convention under their current ownership.

Now for the article itself. The contents of this particular column came directly from journal entries I made that weekend. These are not unlike the journal entries I often make for myself, however for both the original edition of this column and this reissued version,, I have either altered sentences slightly to make them clearer, or left out statements that were not meant for public consumption. For this edition, I also restored in a couple of things that I accidentally left out of the original manuscript and made a couple of minor corrections. Also, there's a quite a few things on here from the entries that aren't related to the event but still are relevant to what else happened on that weekend. Enjoy! -- CJM

4.20.00 Breaking Kayfabe HQ (i.e. Home!) 12:17 AM. All packed, prepared, and ready to get to Philly. I told myself that this year I wanted to get to at least one ECW TV taping, one ECW Arena show, and one ECW PPV show. This weekend, I will be fulfilling at least two of those goals. I'm psyched. With the main event they have planned at the ECW Arena show (Taz vs. Tommy Dreamer), plus what's going down with Tajiri and the network (already I'm smelling a default face turn for Tajiri, but you never know with ECW!), we're already in for some serious history.

Since I've referred to the ECW Arena as Mecca so many times in conversation and past columns, I was thinking about the part in The Autobiography Of Malcolm X where he went on his hajj to Mecca, the trip that changed his life. I wonder how I'll feel after this trip, besides tired of course.

Tomorrow I have to get up at 8:00 and be ready for my ride, a limo hired from a family friend's company, to arrive here at 11. Yes, I'm being driven. No way I'm getting tired just from driving. I'd better get some sleep now because I don't know how much I'll get over the next 48 hours!

4.21.00 12:54 PM. In transit to Philadelphia. In the limo, just got off the Pennsylvania Turnpike about 20 minutes ago. We are on the Schuylkill Expressway, aka 'the biggest parking lot in the city,' according to Bob, the former PA state cop turned charming limo driver. Bob says we're about 5 minutes from the exit -- that's if there isn't a traffic jam. Been on the road since just before 11 AM, good trip so far. It's been raining hella [a lot] all day; so much for spring.

This limo has a CD player in the back, so I listened to The Minutemen's 3-Way Tie (For Last), Frank Sinatra's Sinatra's Sinatra, and REM's Reckoning on the way. Brought a full folder full of CD's [I like to have a wide selection handy when I travel], plus some self-made mix CD's in the CD player's carry case itself. I turned on Power 99 FM when we got off the turnpike, mainly so that I wouldn't have to scramble with my bag (which I took right into the limo rather than leave it in the trunk and have nothing to pass the time while traveling) when I got to the hotel. Also, it's the only time to date when I can listen to that station in a car without having static make every song sound like Korn or Godsmack. Aaliyah's new single is playing. It's good except that [her producer] Timbaland needs to shut up and let Aaliyah sing. Man, just play the keyboards, set the faders and the EQ, and let her handle the vocals already!

We're at the hotel already -- just pulled up. Excuse me.

Later, in the hotel, 2:26 PM. All settled in. Checked in at 1, had lunch, grabbed some iced teas and a big bottle of water, hanging out here in the hotel room killing some time until I have to go down and meet the bus to Allentown. I brought a little set of speakers to go with my Discman; a mix CD is on now, Chilli of TLC singing 'I Miss You So Much'. Every tune on the 77 minute CD, mastered and compiled last night, reminds me of my part-time wife and full-time girlfriend/lover, Frances. Sonic Youth's 'Starpower' playing now, with the key line 'She knows how to make love to you.' She certainly does. Too bad we weren't going out before this trip was planned!

The room layout at the Holiday Inn Philadelphia Stadium for those of you that have not been there: One double bed, two end tables, desk, combination TV cabinet and bureau, two chairs, small table, floor lamp. TV has PPV movies (including Man On The Moon and a ton of porno). Almost reminds me of the room I was in when I had to stay over in Toronto on 7.31.99. [Note to readers: When I first published this article at Scoops, I was going to detail that incident in a column specifically meant for my homepage at the time. Unfortunately, a) I never got to finish that article, and b) the computer that held that file on its hard drive is now an ex-computer, as it died on 7.31.00, so it is lost until I can find someone to retrieve all of the files off of the old hard drive.]

Just saw on CNN that some environmentalist riding a jet-ski in order to disrupt a Maori whale hunt, was run over by an inflatable Coast Guard motorcraft. The protestor got thrown into the water and suffered a shoulder injury, but she did get to disrupt the whale hunt so badly that the Maori tribe didn't catch shit. Good for the jetskiier and the whales, fuck the Coast Guard. Judi Bari would be proud.

It's Good Friday, so CNN is covering all the rituals going on in Jerusalem and Vatican City. Two priests had to help Pope John Paul II up the stairs to the altar. Poor guy. Supposedly he's planning another pilgrimage somewhere this year. [Update: He did, but he couldn't. - CJ]

When the limo pulled up to the hotel there was a black Jeep with vanity plates marked ECW NEWS. I assume that Jeep belongs to one of the crew of that site. ECWNews.com are the ones that run the Q&A Session for Cyberslam and help organize the whole event as far as getting tickets out to fans. Saw where the Legends bar is when I went down for the tea.

Another CNN story: Some jibrone ripped off a jewelry store in Ohio for a $17,000 diamond tennis bracelet. When the cops found him, the bracelet was nowhere on him. He had swallowed it whole -- nine and a half carats of diamonds mounted in 14-karat gold. I find that one hard to stomach. (BADA-BING!)

This room on the seventh floor has a good view of Veteran's Stadium, the Spectrum and First Union Center. If you were a hardcore sports fan, you could have flown down here earlier in the week, caught the Smackdown taping at the First Union Center (complete with Taz holding the ECW world title and working a match against Triple H, with Tommy Dreamer interfering), maybe a Phillies, Flyers or Sixers game in-between, and then enjoyed Cyberslam weekend.

When I get back to the room after the Bethlehem house show, I'm going to order in pizza or Chinese food from one of the places near here, since Bethlehem is an hour and a half plus from here. They should take a cue from the Delta Chelsea hotel in Toronto, Canada (the one where I got held over), where they have 24-hour room service. I'm not going to bring my digital camera to the show tonight; I'm going to save it for the Q&A session and ECW Arena show for obvious reasons. I'd better put this pen down before my CPT starts to act up in my right hand. Bye for now, loyal journal.

4.22.00 12:45 am. Just got back from the Stabler Arena where the house show took place. Great show. I've been to the Stabler twice before, once on Thanksgiving Eve 1984 to see Cyndi Lauper and again in August of 1987 to see The Monkees. Mikey Whipwreck and Jim Mitchell (aka the Sinister Minister to most ECW fans and as the Irreverend James Vandenburg in my ECW ON TNN recaps) were checking in when we arrived, and Balls Mahoney was hanging out in the lobby.

Speaking of arrivals, I'm waiting for my Chinese takeaway. I opened the door to put up my breakfast order slip on the doorknob, and Mikey Whipwreck was coming out of the room right across from me. He said he thought I was nuts for having breakfast delivered, but that's his opinion. He travels every weekend; I don't (at least not since I was in a shitty bar band), so I guess he's speaking from experience. (Trust me folks, you don't want to see The Webmaster Of Extreme in public until he's had at least one pot of coffee in the morning -- without the blood of the almighty coffee god in the AM, I make Vandenburg look like one of the hosts of The Worship Network.) Amish Roadkill is a few doors down from me.

Playing Sonic Youth's Sister album now. Why that album? Because I think Confusion Is Sex or Bad Moon Rising would have been too much for this time of the night.

The house show itself: Before the match, a small contingent from New York arrived at the show and started chanting a bunch of shit against Philadelphia. One fan a couple rows ahead of me took a marker and drew on the back of one of his signs, 'N.Y.C. SUCKS'. Every time he held it up, before the show and between matches, he got huge pops for it from the other 99% of the audience.

Judge Jeff Jones came out with his new protégé, Johnny Swinger. Chilly Willy was his opponent and came out to Q-Tip's 'Vibrant Thing' single. Yes, Mr. Willy's hometown was given as Bethlehem, PA. Swinger and Jones got a lot of heat and there were a lot of 'Awesome sucks' chants. The betrayal of Michael Alfonso, a man who once called himself The Gladiator in FMW, is still a sore subject in the minds and hearts of many ECW fans despite the redeeming events of 4.13.00. Chilly Willy won the match, forgot how though. Swinger and Jeff teased a breakup but swerved and hugged each other.

Danny Doring and Roadkill fought the FBI. This dude from England named Dean made two signs in the lobby when we were all waiting for the bus, one said 'I flew 4000 miles to see Roadkill' and the other was directed at Big Sal E. Graziano: 'Who Ate All The Pies?'. Of course, Guido and Sal got 'Where's my pizza?' chants and Doring took the mike and said all the pizzas were in Sal E.'s belly (pronounced to fully rhyme with Sal's name). Part of the guardrail broke when Sal collided with it during the match. Doring and Roadkill won, and Roadkill got a monster face pop since he's from 'Lancaster County, PA'. It's amazing how several months ago they were heels and from just after the time they started with Elektra and even more so now, they're over as faces.

Ricky Banderas fought another Latin wrestler in a Shogun Warrior mask. (Remember those toys?) The fans weren't into this match at all. Banderas almost broke his damn neck during one spot but recovered quickly and got a submission win with the Sharpshooter.

Balls Mahoney and Masato Tanaka defeated Angel and DeVito of Da Baldies. Balls came out first and introduced Tanaka, who got a loud 'welcome back' chant from the crowd. Great, wild brawl from all four athletes, and the crowd was into it 100%. When Balls was conducting the audience after the match to 'Big Balls', I noticed Tanaka singing along. Not to hammer an old saying into the ground, but music is indeed a universal language. :)

Simon Diamond and his cast of misfits came out and Diamond made his ring announcer Mitch The Bitch and the Musketeer Guy (the 19th Musketeer Once Removed?) stand in the corner like petty children. Mikey Whipwreck came out and pretty much held his own against everyone in the entourage, all of whom got Whippersnappered. The Musketeer Guy jumped in with his sword drawn, so Vandenburg ran in and fought a duel with him, using his cane as a sword. Friggin' hilarious. Mikey won the match.

The Impact Players fought a successful title defense against Nova and Chris Chetti. Actually, after a ref bump, Nova and Chetti got the 'first' victory and the belts, thanks to a replacement ref running in to make the three count, and people were shocked. ECW have done title changes a couple of times before at house shows (I think both Public Enemy and Raven & Stevie Richards won the tag titles at house shows that took place at the Flagstaff in Jim Thorpe), but this was unexpected. Then the IP's attacked Nova and Chetti as the default referee recovered, pinned them, and got the official win.

Super Crazy and Rhino fought a match that ended with Rhino piledriving Crazy off the ring apron through a press table like he did on TNN last week. Then Steve Corino took the mike and shot his mouth off about being the Texas Bullrope Match champion (Yeah, right, and the Sinister Minister is a Buddhist!) and said that no one could beat him. Out came Tommy Dreamer. They brawled for awhile until Jack Victory came out and jumped Dreamer. That brought out the Sandman to even things up. Either Victory or Corino (I forget which one) got laid on a ladder that the Sandman brought to the ring with him, and Dreamer and Sandman did a parody of Grandmaster Sexay's worm. (Actually, Dreamer did all the worming, Sandman just joined in with the hand gestures and 'whoot''s. Yoshihiro Tajiri came out to make it three on two, and as a result of this, out came New Jack. Things got extremely wild (no pun intended) and after about twenty minutes of insane slapstick, including a spot where Tajiri was 'choking' on his mist until Victory gave him the Heimlich maneuver, causing the blinding agent to be delivered into Corino's face, the faces got the victory. Lori 'Peaches' Fullington came out with an ice bucket full of beers and all four faces toasted everyone.

Francine was signing autographs during intermission -- of course the line was hella long. Damn, her tits are huge! That had to be said, no offense, Franny.* Rob Van Dam came out unannounced and signed a lot of stuff, so as a result everyone in the lobby was yelling 'RVD', '4:20', 'Whole Fuckin' Show', etc.

This cannot be forgotten: In the lobby, when everyone was meeting up for the bus, this beautiful Black woman came out with a blue outfit, matching blue wig, and a Powerpuff Girls purse. Someone called her the love child of Jazz and The Blue Meanie and everyone laughed, her included. **

4.22.00 8:47 AM. Ate good (curry chicken and shrimp fried rice from JC's Chinese, check them out when you stay at the Holiday Inn Stadium in Philly, their menu's in the binders they put in the desks), slept good. Had a CD of Sinatra's best Capitol stuff bring me into sueno last night. Coffee brewed, fIREHOSE's last album on the stereo, waiting for breakfast. So far, the morning's good for me. Not so in Miami. Fucking INS pigs showed up in riot gear in the middle of the night and kidnapped Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint. At least 75% of Miami is pissed off and rightly so. An appropriate sign held up by one of the demonstrators has one of the AP photos of Elian clutching his uncle while an INS pig with a machine gun and riot gear is reaching for the poor little fellow. The sign is captioned, 'ASHAMED TO BE AMERICAN'. Looks like the words on Lady Liberty's tablet are about as worthless as Mike Awesome's promises to ECW.

Raven was not at last night's Q&A session and is not on the Q&A panel this afternoon. The doors open at 11 AM for the session which starts at noon.

I wanted to knock on Mikey's door this morning but thought better of it. Suppose Vandenburg answered the door in full Sinister Minister regalia? Would have been both scary and hilarious, that's for sure.

A little later: Finished breakfast, checked voice mail. Sonic Youth's Goo on stereo. Elian's American relatives are on CNN now discussing the hell they went through this morning courtesy of the fucking INS. One of the pigs left a broken riot helmet behind so now they have a war souvenir.

4.23.00 8:36 AM. In the limo already. Good weekend except for the fact that I accidentally erased the first disc of pics from the Q&A trying to copy the disc in the camera for John Brodigan, which really sucks because I had pics of me with Jazz, Lou E., Elektra, Nova & Chetti, the Sinister Minister (I called him Mr. Mitchell when I met him) and Steve Corino. Got one with 'Miss Wonderful' (A Samjerry-ism for Francine) but in my opinion it's the worst one of the bunch. Met and got pics of two ladies that I met at the convention, Jenn Scott and Bianca Mountford. Bianca is the one who dressed like the love child of Jazz & Blue Meanie on Friday. Last night she wore pink. Jenn got people's attention yesterday for wearing a bodice that pushed up her ample boobs to make them look even more ample. Of course, last night she got 'Show Your Tits' chants in the Arena, and according to her, they almost got that wish involuntarily because one of the buttons almost popped out on her frilly shirt. Bianca, on the other hand, said she flashed Rob Feinstein [ECW Fan Cam operator and owner of RF Video.]. Got their e-mail addresses so I'm going to send them copies of the pics this afternoon.

Favorite/memorable moments from the Q&A session, in the order that I remember them: Paul E., not surprisingly, did not use the microphone once. He was asked who the most inspirational wrestler in the company was and replied, 'everyone except Raven'. OUCH. He seemed to enjoy ripping on TNN and on Raven.

Joey Styles came out during the Impact Players' segment and the first thing people asked him about was the infomercial he did for the 2000 Liberty Silver Dollar. He said he was asked by a friend to help him with the commercial and was willing to do the show for free as a favor -- this was all before the TNN deal -- but they paid him anyway. He explained in an aside how until the TNN deal, he was a vice president in charge of advertising with the News Corporation. I asked him if anyone in the locker room ribbed him about the infomercial and he said not only does everyone rib him about it, they try to get free coins off of him.

I also asked Joey about the time during November To Remember '99 when he said 'Holy Shit!' instead of his trademark 'Oh My God!'. HE said that members of her family were indeed upset about it. even though it was on PPV. When I was asking him about the Holy Shit Incident (no relation to the habanero sauce of the same name!), the cordless mic was cutting out a little, and when it got back to normal, Joey was looking around saying 'Hello? Is that you, God??' So I responded, 'Over here, Joey, the jibrone in the TLC shirt!!'

New Jack talked about how the fall from the scaffold at Living Dangerously 2000 messed up his vision for two weeks (amongst other injuries) and how Mike Awesome was NOT over with the fans despite the monster push Paul E. gave him. Paul E. later added that he deserves 'the bullet' (the criticism) that was directed at Awesome for his lack of heat. It takes a real man to admit to something like that, God bless you, Paul Heyman.

Bianca, prior to asking Balls Mahoney a question, apologized to him for accidentally waking him up the night before when she was watching a porno movie in her room. I asked Balls about his cover version of AC/DC's 'Big Balls' and if it would ever come out on a CD. He said that if it came out as a single, he'd 'probably beat off about 50 times over it'. He said he either wanted to either recut it with a live band (Harry Slash played all the instruments on the current version) or do some more work on the current version of it.

During the first autograph session with the first panel, Jazz complimented me on the TLC shirt I was wearing. Glad to see at least some of the women in ECW have good taste in music! :)

Jenn asked Jim Mitchell about what kind of references he uses in his Sinister Minister spiels, considering that he wears a symbol of Baphomet ring and used a tarot deck in the 'elevator to Hell' promo. He said, 'If I told you that, dear, I'd have to kill you.' *lol* I guess he doesn't want people to focus totally on the occult aspects of his character, which is OK with me. I seem to like his character a little more every episode.

There was this one little kid at the session who asked a lot of questions. He, according to his father, is a born wrestling fan. Whenever he got the mic, people knew that there would be a zinger in the chamber. He was awesome.

Some jibrone in a Lance Storm shirt was giving Nova and Chris Chetti a ton of shit over how they got beat by the Impact Players the night before. Chetti fired back with a shoot that started with "Listen, you little fuck…" and got a great pop. Balls almost wanted to come down off the stage and wallop the asshole, but instead laid in a testimonial of his own in defense of the business he loves. Way to go, Chris and Balls! It was real stupid of the fan to say such markish things to them.

During the segment with Paul E. and Fonzie, Jerry Lynn, Spike Dudley and Rob Van Dam all came out at different parts of the segment, all to applause. Jerry and Spike both got 'welcome back' chants. The little kid with the fountain of questions was called up by Spike (who is still on crutches), who gave him a pair of his trademark glasses.

The highlight of course, was going to the ECW Arena. Frank Romeo from ECWNews.com made some funny remarks about the 'scenery' in the neighborhood. Once we got into the Arena (and I got over the shock of being in the building), the New York contingent took over the bleachers opposite of the TV cameras and were holding up anti-Philly signs and doing anti-Philly chants. The other 98% of the building drowned them out with 'Fuck New York', 'New York sucks (dick)', and 'Let's go Flyers'.

While I had a ringside seat, my vantage point for pics wasn't that good as I was essentially at the end of section B which is the section to the (on screen) left of the one where all the semi-famous ECW fans have been sitting for years. I took a few pics of most of the matches and saved most of the camera time for the main matches, the Tajiri/Rhino confrontation and the main event. I'm already looking forward to seeing the show this week on TV because the Sandman came out for his match right at my side of the arena, so when you see that part of the show, please note that the Webmaster Of Extreme can be easily identified with his Peanuts 'Crabby' hat, blue denim jacket, and black TLC shirt! I got off a quick close-up pic of the Sandman and then hid the camera in its case before he popped open his first beer of the match. ***

The scariest moment of the night was when Lance Storm landed bad on the back of his head and neck during the mixed tag match with him and Dawn Marie against Nova and Jazz. Between that and what Justin Credible did later on that night, plus the fact that Storm signed a 30-day deal, rumors are flying with increasing speed. Time will tell if the injury was a work or legit.****

The moment Tajiri very explicitly refused to forfeit the TV title to Rhino (and apparently turned babyface), the excitement was indescribable. A lot of fans already appreciate him for his skills, so this move should put him right at the top tier of ECW wrestlers.

When the main event came out, I'll be honest, I wanted to watch the match so I watched as much as I could and snapped pics whenever the right shot seemed to be coming. How often does one get to see Tommy Dreamer and Tazz wrestle for the ECW World Title lately? Exactly. Tommy's victory and the subsequent celebrations with Tazz and Raven (best moment of the night) were pure magic. And only The Queen of Extreme Francine could turn from tweener with Raven to face with Tommy to heel with Justin Credible in one night, hell, in one match!

After getting back to the hotel (and bumping into Jeff Jones, who may be having offstage differences with Johnny Swinger from what he was saying -- that's just my guess, Jeff, you're more than welcome to correct/clarify with me via e-mail)****, I went back to Legends to hang out for a little bit, had two beers (I rarely drink, good thing I wasn't driving home… good thing I don't have a headache, else I'd be cursing out Jerry Lynn, the guy who got me drunk in the first place!), ran into Elektra as I was walking through the lobby (I think if I had hung around her a few minutes later I would have wound up being picked up by her, judging from her eyes…), retired for the evening, got up at 7 AM, did my  usual morning routine, hung out a little with Jenn Scott at the hotel restaurant, and left at around quarter to nine.

All I can say is watch the show this weekend, folks! I certainly won't forget it.

Thanks (April 2000): All IGN/Scoops (esp. John & Al) and ECWNews.com (esp. BJ Leiby and Frank Romeo) crew, my better half Fran Prokop (who I missed all weekend), Jenn Scott, Bianca Mountford, and everyone I met at the Q&A (so that I don't have to list you twice).

Thanks (May 2001): The True Head Cheerleader & Queen Of Extreme Frances "Blossom" Prokop, all WrestlingBytes.com (esp. John), WrestlingGuys.com and InLewd.com crew, and anyone that has ever worked for ECW.

Anarchy and Peace,
CJ Marsicano "The Webmaster Of Extreme"
cj@cjmarsicano.com
http://www.cjmarsicano.com  

©2001 CJ Marsicano.