WOW - Women of Wrestling Episode 4 2/8/19

Beverly Hills Babe vs. Eye Candy

ER: It's a pretty amusing heel move for a white woman to be upset that a black woman is touching her hair, I assume this all started in an unseen backstage vignette where Lana and Amber asked to touch Eye Candy's hair "to see what it feels like". But that's about the only decent part of the match, and when the decent part of the match is a storyline that I made up, it's not great. They both work this like they had already had a super tiring 30 minute epic one minute in, both moving slow and selling exhaustion wayyyyyy too early. Babe has some good mannerisms but a lot of her stuff doesn't look great (though her backslide is really good), and Candy has great charisma but a lot of her stuff doesn't look good. I've seen both look better. The highlight might actually be Lana's post match promo saying she saved her from "mediocracy" and that Lana is the real star of the fed. I was impressed with Lana's delivery, no clue what she's been up to the last 20 years (vanity homemade jewelry line, I assume).

Jessie Jones vs. Stephy Slays

ER: I really liked this, a smart 5 minute match with Jones focusing on the arm and Stephy getting some nice comebacks peppered in. All of the early standing wrist control stuff looked good and the mat stuff was fun, Jones carries herself really great and picked up a ton of charisma from her daddy. Slays would get a nice crossbody and rana, but Jones would go right back to that arm, bending the wrist, dropping a leg on it, dropping a knee on it, and we got a fun nearfall where Jones dropped down but Slays shifted to get a roll up. The whole thing was real satisfying, I like what Slays brings as a babyface and Jones really should eventually be moved up to a top feud.

Holidead vs. Azteca

ER: This look like it had a generous amount of editing in spots, especially cleaning up an Azteca headscissors off the ropes. But this gets a lot better when it's just Holidead controlling things and powering Azteca around. Holidead sticks a nice tilt a whirl backbreaker, dug her forearm shots to Azteca's upper back, and she had a real nice avalanche. She also actually got into it with fans which more heels could did in their matches here. Holidead runs nicely into a cool spinning back elbow and takes a frankensteiner, and I liked Azteca's knee in the corner. None of Azteca's strike combos look good, but Holidead is really good at setting up offense for her. This thing could have been a royal mess without Holidead in there. They are giving support to the wrong babyfaces, really should have had Stephy get a win and stop backing Azteca.

Tessa Blanchard vs. Jungle Grrrl vs. Santana Garrett

ER: Tessa Blanchard really has the face of a woman who would send back her ice tea three different times. And this is clearly the best match of the first 4 WOW comeback episodes. The pace is quick and they don't bog it down with a bunch of stupid 3 person stuff, mainly kept it to singles match-ups until the finishing stretch. I especially dug the Jungle Grrrl/Blanchard segments, thought they matched up nicely and wouldn't mind seeing a longer singles match with them. Grrrl has that big pilates strength and she took a German suplex from Garrett like a lunatic, really a much bigger bump than I'd expect to see on WOW (unless they bring back the presumably deceased referee from the original WOW run), liked Garrett using an actual real headlock style bulldog on both of them, thought the sequence where Grrrl pushed Garrett off the ropes and rolled her right into a Blanchard cutter was really cool, thought Blanchard kicking out Grrrl's knee on the ropes was nasty and the chestbreaker that followed looked even meaner. This whole thing played out really well, and the silly double pinfall finish probably sets up a Garrett/Grrrl singles match that will doubtless be ruined by Blanchard. This was a strong way to end what had been a fairly lackluster show.

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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.

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Big Time Wrestling TV 9/2/16

Here are the the semi-finals of the Damsels in Distress 2 show, which is awesome of them to show.

1. Katie Lea vs. Beatrice Domino (7/15/16)

Katie Lea is the former Katie Burchill, and she still looks exactly the same as she did 5 years ago, which would have been the last time I saw her wrestle. The match itself didn't accomplish a whole lot in the 8 minute run time. Lea was the heel, and worked over Domino with various chokes. I don't mind an entire match based around chokes, but this really didn't have the playfulness of the best hide the chain matches or other cheating heel matches. In fact it was never really played up as cheating, more just Katie Lea choking Domino, breaking before 5, and then resetting before doing it again. There wasn't a ton of playing to the crowd, not a lot of build to the chokes, just ended up feeling like a heel occupying time before the comeback. Domino's comeback is very brief but looked great, with Kaite coming off the ropes and going for a rana, but Domino catches her, holds her, and plants her with a great sit out powerbomb. Finish looked great, both looked fine throughout, just never went anywhere too compelling. Plus Renner and Dave always leer and drool over the women which just comes off badly.

2. Raze vs. Dementia D'Rose (7/15/16)

D'Rose has that ever tough wrestling gimmick of "crazy", which never seems to come off very well. Dragon Dave suggests she may eat the title if she wins it. You know, because she's crazy. You would think the suggestion of eating a belt would lead to some crazy ring antics, but we mostly just get some teased hair. I like Raze and the parts with her controlling were good, really liked her hard knees in the corner and in the ropes, and she really plants her Saito suplex finisher. D'Rose is pretty new I think, and she ends up out of place a couple times, but I like her bombs away and I'm sure she'll continue to improve.

3. Sara Del Rey & Davina Rose vs. Amber O'Neal & Sassy Stephanie (5/21/11)

Aw man I miss seeing Sara Del Rey wrestling. I'm absolutely positive her current gig is much better, but she had grown into a real favorite of mine. So, it was fun to see this, and it went exactly as you likely guessed: Rey controls early, heels cut off the ring with Rose as FIP, leading to Rey eventually coming in and going monster on everyone. Rose was a good FIP at this point (and she's obviously only gotten better) and Del Rey knew how to work like a real brute. Never seen Stephanie before and I don't think I'll be rushing out to see more, but O'Neal is currently married to Luke Gallows and she runs most of the heel team. She was good with the taunts and doing great annoying things like lock Rose's arms behind her and doing sit-ups with Rose trapped. The eventual hot tag to Del Rey is fun, especially dug her rolling kappo kick in the corner, really making sure that leg swung accurate. So an overall fun match, but they already featured Rose/Bayley in their throwback match segment, just a few weeks ago. They have over a decade of shows to pull from, I wish they'd choose to show what they thought were the best matches in the promotion's history, instead of a Nasty Boys match. Show me the best BTW has to offer!

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