Last week, Danny Bonaduce suffered a back injury during training and his extended stay in the hospital prevented him from competing in the match. As a result, Hogan eliminated him from the show. Or so we thought.

The next morning, the remaining celebrities gather in the lounge. They immediately get into how rough Dennis Rodman is in the ring before Brutus Beefcake and Brian Knobbs drop by to bring them on a field trip. As everyone is getting dressed, Todd Bridges decides to confront Dustin Diamond about an unplanned kick the previous night that apparently caught him for real. Dustin brushes him off while Todd continues to get in his face and is backed by Butterbean and Trishelle Cannatella.

The celebrities are brought to a junkyard where judge Eric Bischoff lets them know that the next match will be in the style of hardcore wrestling. Brian and Brutus bring them to a beat up car and get the celebrities to unload all their aggressions on the car, taking a bat and beating it as much as they can. It ends up becoming a stress relief for Todd and all the celebrities get their licks before Brian pushes the car over to complete its destruction.

The celebrities return to the lounge, feeling much better about themselves. Then Danny returns. Apparently, he wasn’t aware that he was eliminated and goes off to find Hogan to find out what’s going on. This doesn’t sit well with Dustin, who ends up following behind.

Danny confronts Hogan about the elimination when Dustin interrupts. The whole set up is obviously worked, but that’s alright. Danny and Dustin start exploding on one another, resulting in Hogan having had enough and booking them in a Falls Count Anywhere Match. Should be fun.

All the celebrities, including Danny, are brought to the training ring, where Hogan informs them about what he did. With Dustin already booked in a separate match against Danny, the other four will be competing in their own hardcore match. Hogan than assigns the next three moves, all of which involve how to best use weapons: Hit in the Back, Hit in the Head, Hit in the Gut. The celebrities take turn taking a chairshot to the back. Trishelle takes one and it quite shaken up, immediately heading out to the gym’s medical center to get looked at.

Trishelle returns in time to take headshots, though it’s obvious she’s still a bit hesitant. Dennis plainly states he’s going to hit her hard regardless. Brutus feels it’s time to take Danny and Dustin away from the rest of the group and help them set up for their match. Back with Brian, Trishelle is now really scared with the hardcore aspects. It’s clearly pissing Brian off, especially since he’s doing all he can to show her the safest way to take and perform the hits. Back with Brutus, everything apparently going alright until Danny takes a trash can to the head and immediately loses it to the point that he scares even Brutus.

Hogan returns to help give everyone the pep talk, especially for Trishelle. So he brings in Bill Goldberg. They have the celebrities show off the three moves they learned. Hogan is impressed, but Goldberg decides he wants to play with Danny. He has Danny hit him over the head with a trash can. Goldberg doesn’t sell it, but is doing so because he’s not seeing the intensity in Danny. He pushes Danny enough for him to swing the can in a way that’s believable. Goldberg then puts an exclimation point to the lesson of focus by giving Danny a major bodyslam. The focus of making the moves believable both in giving and taking.

It’s match time. We begin with the tornado tag team hardcore match. It’s Mr. Not-So-Perfect and Mean Bean against The Red Hot Redneck and Rodzilla. Todd and Butterbean bring a plethora of weapons while Trishelle and Dennis brought kendo sticks. Todd and Butterbean play heel as they immediately attack and concentrate on Dennis.

After a mistimed headshot, the faces gain control. Trishelle apparently overcame her fear of giving shots real quick. Bubba The Love Sponge’s commentary was more kayfabe last week, but he’s apparently back to his previous commentating method of deconstructing the match. Everyone is just beating each other with weapons until Dennis slides in a table, setting for running Butterbean through it. Dennis nails a chairshot to the head of Butterbean from the middle rope for the victory.

We move into the main event, a hardcore grudge match that is falls count anywhere between The Winner and “Dangerous” Danny Bonaduce. Oddly enough, Danny is face given he was humbled before the fans in the previous match. This is the first true singles match of the show. It starts out in the ring, putting together a series of action that plays like a normal match. Danny shoulder tackles Dustin out of the ring and does a crossbody from the apron. They fight around the ring before making their way into the match. Todd actually tries to get into it a little bit, but is quickly pulled off by Brian.

They destroy a great deal of stuff around from doors to walls before making their way back to the ring, bringing a few frying pans with them. Danny tries to hit the flying crossbody from the top, but Dustin moves out of the way and then spikes Danny with his DDT finisher onto a chair for the win. A lays a boot after the bell for good measure. The judges give them a standing ovation.

Elimination time. Eric praises Butterbean for his attitude and willingness to learn and improve. Hogan puts over Todd’s abilities. Jimmy says he was impressed with Rodman capitalizing on the believability. All three are safe and asked to leave the ring. Trishelle doesn’t hide how intimidated she felt this week. Dustin is still unhappy with Danny. Danny manages to utter, “I did my best,” through his hoarse voice.

Hogan gets back to Trishelle as asks her if she gave one hundred percent. She avoids the question at first, saying she’s willing to step it up. He asks her again. She says no. He tells her she’s a jabroni and to get the hell out of his ring. Trishelle adds to the camera that the first chairshot in training totally took the focus out of her as well as her confidence and admits she’s not ready to hang with the big boys.

Preview to the next episode shows the celebrities taking and receving bodyslams from Hogan, which has them all very excited. Dustin apparently suffers an injury that has the doctors concerned that he shouldn’t continue wrestling. The next match appears to be another multi-man outting and someone’s timing is so bad it dumbfounds Hogan.

Overview: Interesting episode as half of the training stuff came off as worked. How much more obviously could you get than the whole Danny seeking Hogan only to be interrupted by Dustin segment? But never mind, this whole thing was about focus. Something Trishelle lost the second she got hit with the first chairshot. It was painfully obvious to her that she needed to overcome it if she wanted to move on, but it began to effect her confidence and even she knew her time was up.

The tag team hardcore match was pretty much the kind of chaotic mess one would expect. The grudge match was very good, one of the best from the show thus far. Brutus really did a great job developing the match and both Dustin and Danny executed it very well. All in all, it was the matches that made this a great episode to an awesome show.

Episode Verdict: Thumbs Up

Dan Short
dan@ifight365.com