2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Eagles vs. Purrazzo Submission Match

72. Deonna Purrazzo vs. Madison Eagles SHIMMER 4/14

ER: This was a submission match that I think really worked, built really well, and had some nice surprises. I don't believe I'd ever seen a Madison Eagles match before this and I cam away super impressed. They take their time and don't throw a single strike until almost the 10 minute mark, when Purrazzo started integrating a little pro wrestling into her submissions, kicking Eagles away from her and then hitting a headscissors into a Fujiwara armbar. I was enjoying all the mat stuff, especially loved how Eagles used her long legs to reverse or sweep Purrazzo. Eagles seemed really natural on the mat, and was always busy. There where never any moments where they were lying there not making contact, Eagles always looked like she was thinking two moves ahead. The way she would pin Purrazzo's leg down with her leg so she could grab a wrist, or kneel on Purrazzo's thigh while advancing, stuff like that really showed how good she is at details and not skipping steps. And once they started with strikes we opened up a new world of reversals. It's like Purrazzo using a kick suddenly opened that door, and not long after Eagles hit a great lariat (with the arm that hadn't been worked over) and when Purrazzo tried another kick she got caught, with Eagles awesomely stepping over Purrazzo's held leg and dropping her weight down over it to lock her into an STF. Eagles' long limbs added some cool drama to moments too, as she had easily gotten to ropes when trapped a couple times, so when Purrazzo finally caught her just a wee bit far from the ropes in a Fujiwara it felt like a big deal, Eagles stretching her leg and pointing her toe, desperate to hit the bottom rope. The brief strike exchange down the stretch had a lot of shots land hard, nice thudding blows to the chest, and the tapout came organically at what felt like the moment the match built to.

PAS: I dug Eagles in this, she is working as a poor woman's Mariko Yoshida which is going to be more up my alley then women working as poor women's Manami Toyotas. She had a bunch of interesting counters and approaches to holds, moving pretty fluidly from one hold to another and always looking to improve and adjust her position. Purrazzo felt a little more like a passenger in this match, although she had a really nice La Mistica, and I enjoyed the finish with her rolling through on the armbar. This was solid stuff, with all of the new feds starting up I could see both ladies finding their way into bigger things.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Mae Young Classic 2018 Episode 7

Lacey Lane vs. Meiko Satomura

ER: Killer 5 minute Worldwide match, tightly worked, no extra fat, worked evenly without feeling like trading off, both looking like they could potentially win. I'm extremely happy Meiko won, but I thought Lane looked strong in a loss. The work was really fun, Meiko looks like such a natural that she could sleepwalk through a match like this, she has every single step down, is able to convey great emotion while also coming off like a flat out cold blooded killer. Meiko hits kick combos with precision, and is great at setting up Lane to do the same, really anticipating her opponent, and Lane importantly knows she's in the ring with Meiko Satomura and lays it in. Meiko leaning in to spin kicks and Lacey firing off elbows? Yes, please. I really wanted Meiko to win (even though I've enjoyed Lane in the tournament, I just wanted as many Meiko matches as possible) and I think they did a great job of making it seem like Lane had a real chance. The crossbody nearfall was legit, totally bought it as a finish and I have to give Meiko the credit for making things into such believable finishes. She is able to build so much drama with her selling, body language, and timing. In many matches that crossbody could have just felt like another move, but Meiko knows just how to take it, just when to kick out, all for maximum effect. She comes up holding her jaw with absolute daggers in her eyes, and I knew Lane was finished at that point. This delivered what I wanted.

PAS: I could have easily seen this make a list if it went a little longer. Lane is clearly green as goose shit, but Meiko has been training wrestlers for two decades and is masterful at putting together something interesting. They even do some Red vs. Ki Jackie Chan spots and make them look cool. I loved the early grabbing of the leg by Meiko and how she drops it instead of breaking it, just to let Lane know she was drawing dead. It felt like something Fujiwara might do. Finish felt a big abrupt, I usually don't complain about a short finish run, but it felt like we were two minutes away from something pretty great.

Io Shirai vs. Deonna Purrazzo

ER: Pre-match package is amusing as Cole keeps calling Shirai the "Genius of the Sky" while clips are showing her doing a bunch of moonsaults with the shittiest landings, just clips of her mostly missing her opponents or landing short and hurting her opponents. The clips made her looked like she was a Lita trainee. A true genius. And I thought Io looked really good for the first minute of this, and then proceeded to look the worst she's looked for the rest of the match. She started with some cool knees to Purrazzo's stomach, and hit a hard crossbody dive that Purazzo just took full force on the entrance grate, and Purrazzo got a nice schoolboy off Io's missed double knees in the corner. Then Io started throwing these really flimsy elbows and Purrazzo just completely outclassing her. Purrazzo started throwing these violent fast German suplexes that would have looked fine on their own, but Io was doing her best to making them look hokey by leaping into them way more than necessary. There's a lot of really engaging stuff around Purrazzo getting the Fujiwara, really wrenching it in and locking Shirai's free arm around her chin for a weird modified Rings of Saturn. The move was effective as hell but was marred a bit by Io's mawkish "Ohhhhhhh I hurrrrrrrt and I might just tappppppppp!" Before long Shirai is up and running around with no pain whatsoever, and Renee Young asks, "Where is Io getting the momentum, the energy!?" Well, you see, Shirai is a parody of a joshi babyface, so she has the power to make opponent's offense meaningless and pointless in the scheme of a match. The sweetest icing of all is when Shirai whiffs the match-ending moonsault completely, flying right over and past Purrazzo and slightly grazing her with arms, bad enough that the three person announce crew had no idea how to cover for it other than saying "Well she didn't get all of it but still won!" Shirai is very much not good, which is only magnified by putting her matches on directly after Meiko's matches. She comes off like a backyarder whose favorite wrestler is Meiko. I refuse to believe people thought she looked good for most of this match.

Tegan Nox vs. Rhea Ripley

ER: This was both a shame, and a damn impressive performance from Nox, and likely lead to a better  and more intriguing match than it otherwise would have been. Nox wrecked her non-wrecked knee in this one, immediately, after landing hard on that damn entrance grate on a dive. I didn't actually know about the injury before this happened, having successfully avoided tournament spoilers. But I noticed something was weird the way she stood up by pushing up off Ripley with all of her weight. Also,  she was suddenly selling *really* well. But I gained a ton of respect for Nox, as she kept trying to work on it, through a couple of match stoppages as the ref and trainer checked on her. She kept persisting to such an extreme degree that I began thinking that maybe she really was just putting on an amazing knee selling job, because she continued taking a furious beating from Ripley and kept fighting back for more. Ripley was a beast, muscling her up hardway for a huge flapjack, throwing some awesome clubbing shots to the back, and just plastering her with her sweet high dropkick. And because Nox was such a lunatic and kept taking all of this punishment and getting up for more, I really thought the only thing that made sense was Tegan Nox: Master of Sales. But soon she starts crying and the match is stopped, and I could not be more impressed and shocked by what she went through. Gutsy as all hell, as apparently her injury is quite bad (and likely made worse by working a few minutes on it). What awful luck she's had, but what huge respect she assuredly gained from everyone. Even truncated due to the circumstances, the match was a fascinating story and incredibly effective.

Mia Yim vs. Toni Storm

ER: I came away from this really impressed with Yim, and still very much unimpressed with Storm. They clearly want to make Toni Storm a thing, and Toni Storm is definitely not a thing, not in this house. She has a good look, and she's not sloppy, so she has at least a somewhat high floor, but she's very overrated at this point and not as good as they pretend she is. I really loved Kaitlyn/Yim last week (and was surprised to see that many people didn't think much of it), and Yim follows that match up with a real nice performance with a dull finish that we saw coming a mile away. Yim threw plenty of nice strikes, especially loved her muay thai knees, liked her locking up Storm with an Indian deathlock, a bow and arrow, and a guillotine, and dug her great powerbomb and even better Saito suplex. Storm was selling a lot throughout, just taking a lot and I just had a big hunch it was going to end with her taking a bunch of offense and then just winning with a move or two. That's exactly what happened, though she had some nice isolated moments in the match: her headbutt to cut off Yim was good, fighting through the guillotine for a spinebuster was nice, but I'm just not very impressed with Storm relative to how impressed they are with her. Satomura/Yim and Ripley/Purrazzo seem like potentially WAY better matches than what we'll be getting, but I suppose we will see.

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Mae Young Classic 2018 Episode 6

Zeuxis vs. Io Shirai

ER: Zeuxis had a better showing here than her 1st round match, and this match had the potential to be a good match, but Shirai is a joshi babyface who transitions back from a beating by suddenly deciding that the beating she has been taking isn't as bad as it seemed, and starts running and screaming and hitting offense again. The Shirai arm injury was set up with quality timing and a nutso bump from Shirai: Zeuxis caught her with a forearm in the middle of a Shirai springboard spot, then hit her with a baseball slide that sent Shirai crashing violently to the floor off the apron. Awesome looking spot, and I liked Zeuxis working her over and bullying her around the ring after. But at a certain point Shirai just decides that she isn't all that hurt after all, and then the running starts. Anybody who hates Hulkamania Hulk must hate joshi babyfaces, those unkillable T-9000s but with cool hair. I knew Zeuxis wasn't advancing, which is fine, I don't have a problem with Shirai advancing. But once she just got up sprinting from a beatdown I knew she was definitely going to win, and the rest of the match would be no looking back. Her overshooting the moonsault for the finish was icing on the cake, and as an accountant I like that she netted out, since she sloppily whipped ankles first into Xia Brookside in the first round. This could have been better, it really wouldn't have taken much more.

Deonna Purrazzo vs. Xia Li

ER: I liked the pace they went with here, and while there were things that didn't hit cleanly I still liked what they were going for. Purrazzo goes after the arm but keeps getting caught with various Li kicks, including a nice dropkick off the top (I mean, it was one of those ugly RVD dropkicks, but it looked like it had some impact), and I liked how Purrazzo kept going for the arm and using any kind of offense to eventually get to the arm. Hit a lariat, go for the arm, Russian leg sweep, go for the arm, oh and also hit Li with some nice thumping chops; doing that opened up some nice counters for Li, a nice cradle reversal, a really fun layout. There was some timing that was off, or some things that took a bit or set-up, but pace and layout were strong.

Nicole Matthews vs. Tegan Nox

ER: This was good enough, and really didn't overstay its welcome, but more to their detriment. There haven't been too many under 4 minute matches in the tournament, and they probably could have easily stretched this out twice as long. Matthews was nice and mean, really bullying Nox around after elbowing her out of a dive attempt and hitting some hard kicks on the apron, and I dug how Matthews kind of walked through Nox's stuff to continue pounding her. Throw some kicks at me? Yeah, I'm just gonna elbow you and hit a nice northern lights. But the finish really felt like they just got a sudden call to wrap it all up, as Nox just gets up from what had been a fairly one-sided beating, throws some iffy uppercuts - maybe better than her 1st round ones, but those looked like she was intentionally missing her opponent - before just hitting a cannonball and a so-so shining wizard. Color me unimpressed with Nox, both because she hasn't looked impressive, and because Michael Cole just will not shut the fuck up about her.

Mia Yim vs. Kaitlyn

ER: Well this ruled and I wasn't really expecting Kaitlyn to be my favorite not-Meiko gal in this tourney. In the first round Yim had a bad version of a match she'd had a dozen times with Allysin Kay, with the announcers selling her hand pain for her in lieu of Yim actually selling it herself. Here she has her hand taped up and immediately hurts it with a chop. Kaitlyn hits a bunch of legdrops and a great cannonball, then works an awesome body vice. Kaitlyn was a powerlifter and always had strong legs, really made the body vice look legit and I loved Yim grinding her elbow into Kaitlyn's leg to get out of it. Yim starts working over Kaitlyn's leg after Kaitlyn misses a baseball slide, slams it into the apron, dishes hard kicks to the hamstring, and works an awesome standing figure 4 (almost like a figure 4 and a stump puller, looked painful as hell). Things get really great when Kaitlyn baits Yim into punching her and dodges so that Yim punches the mat, and then Kaitlyn decides to just try to rip Yim's hand off. Good god I totally wanted a tap there, Kaitlyn looked like she wanted to tear Yim's hand off and wear it like a necklace. Kaitlyn was great going for bodyslams (all powerlifters should have a good bodyslam), her leg buckling at first and her stubbornly going back for them. Yim begging off properly ends with her whiffing an attack so Kaitlyn can hit another slam, and Yim's missed strike was a great way to set that up. We get a couple of very convincing nearfalls, especially Kaitlyn's spear which looked killer, and I *really* wanted to end the match. But just like Yim missed a punch to the mat earlier, Kaitlyn misses a stomp to leave herself open for an ankle lock. This was totally great, although I think they really missed out by not having Kaitlyn advance. Yim has had her best matches against Baszler and Kaitlyn, those styles really complement her style, and someone like Toni Storm is much closer to the typical Yim opponent who all just bring out awful 2018 indy tendencies in each other. But this match was fantastic, and made me really hope for a 2018 full time Kaitlyn return.

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Mae Young Classic 2018 Episode 2

Deonna Purrazzo vs. Priscilla Kelly

ER: Is there anyone other than original World of Sport guys who can make those "crawling on knees through legs" spots look good? So far I don't think I've seen it look anything but dumb. Early parts of this had stuff I didn't like, the WoS cosplay, and Kelly weirdly looking like she was barely running during spots that required running, but I thought the last couple minutes delivered. Once Kelly locked in a nasty dragon sleeper I was into it, and only got more into it when Purrazzo cracked her with a great back elbow. Finish was cool with Purrazzo rolling into a nasty Fujiwara armbar that really looked like she was ripping Kelly's arm off. They kept it short and relatively timely, and did enough things that I dug.

Zeuxis vs. Aerial Monroe

ER: Zeuxis is easily one of my favorite ladies in CMLL, and her shiny hair makes her look like she's in a lucha Pantene Pro-v commercial. The secret is conditioner y'all. There was some awkwardness here, possibly due to language barrier, the first couple rope running and strike exchange spots didn't look good. Zeuxis can be pretty vicious in CMLL and appeared to be holding back a bit here, and it was a weird spot to be in as she was up against the clear local babyface (and also awkward that the local babyface also really wanted to trash talk during the match), and should have worked more overtly ruda. The best parts were when that ruda side was at the forefront, like when she was fishhooking Monroe or tossed her crotch first on the top rope and immediately smacking her, and I really liked her bridging pin. Monroe has good in-ring confidence, but got a little too cute with some of her offense. It wasn't bad, but I was expecting more.

Kacy Catanzaro vs. Reina Gonzalez

ER: Catanzaro is really tiny, which only makes Reina look bigger, and I'm glad Reina's back this year. I really liked her opposite Nicole Savoy in last year's tournament, and that armbar finish was one of the best finishes of 2017. And I liked her here and am really bummed she didn't advance. Catanzaro is clearly an impressive athlete but I can't get too excited for another CrossFit wrestler with tiny offense that couldn't crack an egg. The structure of this was problematic too, as Reina slammed her around the ring for a few minutes, but Catanzaro was springing around for the finish. I liked all of Reina's offense here, and working against someone who is barely 100 lb. is only going to help that. She had nice stuff aside from throwing around a Lilliputian, had nice stomps and a good elbow drop. I'm fine with Catanzaro winning with a roll up I guess, but didn't think any of her offense looked very plausible with the size difference. The "three cheers for Kacy!" post bell stuff, lifting her up like she was Rudy after sacking a QB, only made me dislike it more.

Ashley Rayne vs. Mercedes Martinez

ER: Not sure why we get the Madison Rayne name change, has she actually signed with WWE? I guess it doesn't matter; Rayne has been around for ages now and she's never really impressed me, and that didn't change here. She gets up for and takes offense fine, but never leaves a lasting impression on me. I've literally been seeing her in matches for over a decade now and barely remember a thing. Martinez looked good, like the delayed vertical suplex (odd that we don't see that often anymore, a vertical suplex somehow seems special now), a knee into a fisherman's buster is a good finish, although maybe not in a match that also saw her doing a nasty cradle driver. This whole thing was worked fairly even, which is problematic as I didn't think Rayne's offense looked even with Martinez's. This one got the most time of the episode, but overall didn't do a ton for me.

ER: Episode 2 moved quickly but won't make much of a lasting impression. As with last year I'm sure the matches will continue to get better in the later rounds, and this episode wasn't bad, more "mostly inoffensive".

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Wrestlemania Weekend Thursday Cherry Picking: A Lot of Intergender Wrestling?

ER: So apparently it was somebody's idea to run a whole card of intergender wrestling matches, which sounds pretty terrible, but I like a bunch of people on the card so it's worth cherry picking to see if anyone actually made this problematic concept work. The major bonus that comes from writing these up, is if I hate the concept, it also makes me look like a hate women!

Matt Riddle vs. Deonna Purrazzo

ER: Well, Matt Riddle was not really able to make this concept work. The announcer is at least smart to say that Purrazzo's only advantage is the fact that Riddle has already faced Zack Sabre Jr. and Minoru Suzuki earlier in the day. What is not to her advantage is the fact that she is half the size of Matt Riddle. So we get a lot of Matt Riddle offense where it looks like he's pulling back a lot, and then you see him briefly sell strikes that don't look anywhere near the strikes people have already seen Riddle take earlier in the day. It's why the concept is problematic. There is a fleeting moment of intrigue, when Purrazzo lands on her feet after a Bro2Sleep attempt and stomps right on Riddle's bare foot, and is able to land some strikes and a nice running knee. But that was the only time she really did anything that could logically give her the advantage. A match based around her constantly attacking his feet could have been constructed smartly. Most of this match was her just trying to trade with Riddle, which is risible. Riddle ends up giving her a big powerbomb off a rana attempt (at about 70% strength) and flips her over right into a running knee. Kewl.

Timothy Thatcher vs. Toni Storm

ER: Well now, this also did not work. We get 8 minutes of Thatcher dominating Storm, 8 minutes of Thatcher not selling Storm's offense because it looks like the weakest offense he's taken in years, and then Storm hits a couple moves (one of which looked like Thatcher giving her the move) and won with a surprise armbar. The mat stuff at the beginning was the only engaging part, as Storm looked easily outgunned on the mat, but at least rolling is more interesting than standing strikes where one person hits 8x harder. Thatcher lifts her into a throw that she can't do anything about, then we get a lot of Storm hitting uppercuts that don't faze Thatcher, all ending with Thatcher landing one uppercut that she sells the same way each time: Falling down like Tim Sylvia. This happens a few times. Eventually she starts throwing headbutts, which look like she's repeatedly headbutting her own wrist, then hits a running one which looked like Thatcher hitting her with one (because him leaning into one of her headbutts looked harder than Storm hitting a headbutt). He generously goes over on a German, but it's not enough. She then catches him with an armbar after he goes for a pin, which is a little rich considering what we've all seen Riddle and Sabre and WALTER put him through.

ER: This was a bad idea, not only the show concept as a whole, but me attempting to watch it. I hope the people there watching it at 2:30 AM (!) enjoyed it more. These two matches were awkward, uncomfortable, condescending, and now I think I look like a jerk for criticizing them. Couldn't somebody just convince Fox to air another Man vs. Beast episode? Interspecies is far more interesting than intergender. Give me an orangutan challenging a sumo in tug-o-war or a giraffe racing a sprinter.

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