WOW - Women of Wrestling Episode 2 1/25/19

I still can't believe Santana Garrett's dad is dead. Opening in ring promo with Garrett and Blanchard was strong, Blanchard's personality is really bringing a lot to this. Also, there was a Blanchard vignette where they basically repeat soundbites of Blanchard over and over saying she's a legend, and she's coming for the title. I want to see Blanchard destroy her.

Siren the Voodoo Doll vs. Princess Aussie

ER: Shaul Guerrero does just about the worst ring announcer read possible when announcing Siren being from New Orleans, Louisiana. The growly drawl she said "Louisiana" with is impossible to listen to without wrinkling your nose at least a little. You cannot hear it and keep a straight nose. Not seen either of these two before, but am enjoying David McLane catching me up on various Australian cultural mythology, but am disappointed he's not doing the same for voodoo culture. Princess wasn't great, so a lot of her stuff relied on Siren doing a lot of working for two, but Siren made it work. I dug Siren taking a headscissors that was almost the equivalent of someone taking a spinnings headscissors from Bernie Lomax. Siren had a bunch of nice stuff, nice grounded facelock, a nice standing splash (no height but nice impact), had some good ideas on what to do to a grounded opponent. I dug Siren's look and how she handled the match, would like to see her against a better opponent. Aussie wins with a frog splash that lands hard but also propels herself to far forward so she kinda faceplants.

Jessie Jones vs. Azteca

ER: We get a long and really weird semi-shoot vignette introducing Jessie Jones and showing her with her mentor, WOW original Selina Majors. They actually turn Jessie heel mid-vignette, starting off presenting her as a tough southern gal who took a bus out to LA, and then by the end she's shooting on her training partner and breaking her arm, and yelling at Selina that THIS WAS HOW PEOPLE USED TO GET BROKEN IN. Things turned y'all. Jones is Tracy Smothers' daughter and I now actually want a Blanchard/Jones team. Jones gets in the ring and does a whole Build the Wall/MAGA spiel, and it comes off genuine, and her having the same horse face that Ann Coulter/Lara Trump/Laura Ingraham have makes it feel all the more authentic. She needs to get their same bottle of blond dye though. I have no clue who Azteca is, but she's not very good, although she is definitely trained. Jones was pretty awesome in this, exclusively targetting Azteca's left arm in really nasty ways, kicking at it and bending it and holding it in all sorts of rough subs (especially liked when she bent it behind her around the bottom rope). Azteca never bothered to actually sell it when she would go on offense, so we have to sit through her doing some bad strike combos and a rope assisted twisting armdrag that looked like she almost broke both her ankles upon landing, though her slingshot tornillo into the ring looked nice. Jones does a ton of stuff to Azteca's arm that looks like it would end a match, and them showing a vignette where Jones broke someone's arm in training and then a match where she keeps trying to break someone's arm is the kind of super simple thing that will always be effective.

LANA STAR IS STILL AROUND!? We get a nice nod to WOW history as instead of doing a promo in a handmirror Lana just does it in a normal full size makeup mirror.

Beverly Hills Babe vs. Tessa Blanchard

BHB is Amber Gallows, and her look reads way more southern to me than "Beverly Hills". And it's kind of weird to be throwing out a heel/heel match this early. Fans are going to be cheering BHB by default because Blanchard has been nothing but a rude asshole and they've never seen BHB, so they're cheering her while McLane is on commentary making botox jokes about her. McLane is really unintentionally hilarious on commentary, as Lana sits in and McLane explains her whole storyline motivation to her as if Lana had just now heard in real time how she was supposed to be acting. The whole match structure is wack, with Babe acting like a heel the whole time while inserted into the face control portions of the match, and she controls a lot of the match. So we get a heel working over the top heel as a face but still working as a heel, and controlling the top heel so long that the top heel gets put into a face sympathy spot because Babe is taunting her during the whole beatdown. It made no sense at all. O'neal isn't very good, a lot of her stuff looks weak, and I wanted to see way more Blanchard here. No part of the layout of this match made sense.

Even with the bizarre layout of the main I still think this was another strong episode, which feels pretty improbable. For all of the McLane-ness of this, they are doing a lot of things right.