WOW - Women of Wrestling Episode 3 2/1/19

The Beast vs. Faith the Lioness

ER: Faith is a singer and has her own back-up dancers, and I dig the whole lip-synced routine. It’s tough to do a full aggressive dance routine and not completely gas out before the match begins. Of course, maybe that explains why the rope running exchange looked so awkward. Beast is pretty raw but has a good base moveset, big athletic leaping spear, nice powerslam, nice world’s strongest slam, nice powerbomb, big things that land with a big bang. Faith has that Top Ramen hair and doesn’t look totally comfortable in the ring (I have to assume that several of the WOW workers are not yet super trained), and her spinkick and enziguiri could use a little work, but at minimum she took Beast’s big slams nicely. That’s not nothing.

The Disciplinarian vs. Fire

ER: Boy that backstage promo read by Samantha Smart was more wooden than the ruler she was carrying. Is this Disciplinarian Orginale? Sure could be, but I don’t remember a ton about the original. Whoever she is I dig her, she connects hard on her shoulderblock and chokes Fire with her boot, throws a cool throat thrust (David McLane: “It’s almost as if she ENJOYS inflicting discipline.” Um, well, yeah, it’s literally her entire name). Smart stands on the floor awkwardly shifting from left foot to right foot, but does rap Fire across the knuckles with the ruler, so that is at least a good “at minimum” thing to do. I actually liked Disciplinarian more than Fire/Hogan here, which I wasn’t expecting. Match was kind of built like a Disciplinarian showcase, and there’s a chance that was because Disciplinarian was not great at taking some of Fire’s more complicated stuff. Still, Fire is good, and she has more personality than just about anyone in the fed. Plus, I keep wondering how many matches it will take McLane to run out of “She got too close the FIRE” type quotes during her matches. “The fans want to get close to THIS Fire!”

Fury vs. Chantilly Chella

ER: Fury is the daughter of Darkness. Who is Darkness? That could be a late season reveal. Oof. Coachella girl gimmick. Spoiled, drunk, dehydrated, smelly, crying about ID dropped in portajohn, showing a lot of butt; gimmick really needs a floppy sun hat and some sort of cultural appropriation. I like Fury here, dug her kind of chicken wing crossface she was working, nice backbreaker, and generously sells some of Chella’s kicks. Chella isn’t great, although I liked her running knee in the corner, but there was more than one occasion where she looked like she didn’t even know how to do a pinfall, which is going to be an issue. She's been around for awhile but didn't look like it to me. I do see some potential in her finding creative ways to incorporate her gimmick, but we'll see if we get there.

Loved Tessa Blanchard saying “You know, maybe I jumped the gun a little when I [numerous ways I beat the shit out of someone’s dad].”

Khloe Hurtz vs. Abilene Maverick

ER: Still loving the Ring Rats, but I still have no clue why WOW keeps running these heel/heel matches. Who are fans supposed to get behind when the choices are a) politician’s daughter who has a boyfriend named Preston, or b) man stealing woman with at least 7 different parts of her body modified by plastic surgery? Who is the lesser of two evils in this scenario? If there was a match between Sarah Sanders and Tomi Lahren I would root for terminal cancer. This is like asking fans to choose between getting kicked in the balls, or getting kicked in the balls from behind. All that said, Maverick hits hard and throws her body into attacks, great vertical Boston crab, a lot of her stuff looks good. Hurtz looks a little stumbly but will occasionally throw a stiff elbow, and doesn’t lean out of anything. But she also does a tornado DDT that looks like she’s never actually done a tornado DDT before. Still, Hurtz has Ring Rats and I like all the Ring Rats schtick like them pushing the bottom rope towards Hurtz so she can break a sub. That's something.

This ep had much more wrestling than the other two, but I think I preferred the others’ mix of promo packages and wrestling. Three matches and a couple promo segments seems like the best use of WOW’s time. Also, they really need to stop with the heel vs. heel stuff. Fans clearly have no clue what to do with themselves during those matches and the piped in crowd sound is baaaad.