Mae Young Classic 2018 Episode 3

Kaitlyn vs. Kavita Devi

ER: This was a showcase for the returning Kaitlyn, out of wrestling for 4 years, and apparently going through a "tumultuous divorce" in the meantime. I remember Kaitlyn getting better during her original run, eventually being a perfectly fine WWE trained fitness model. I liked her here, nice sliding clothesline, hard elbows, nice cannonball. I remember enjoying Devi more last year, in what was apparently her first match. Here she didn't stand out much, hit an okay kick to the back, whiffed a missed clothesline by a mile. This was meant to make Kaitlyn look good, and it did that well enough.

Toni Storm vs. Jinny

ER: I liked this one, and really liked Jinny. I'd never seen her before, and she carried herself great. She's got a bird bones body, like Sweet Dee or a Sikh Summer Rae. She packs a nice wallop with her long limbs, nice thrust on stomps, nice surfboard, great attitude, broke out some cool things (like reversing a charging Storm with a Japanese armdrag into the corner), and her biggest strength may have been her fast bumping. She really SUWA's herself on a Storm lariat and gets absolutely dumped by a Storm German. Storm's running hip attack in the corner looked good, and I expected Storm to advance, but I know we're going to get a few ladies advancing who I don't want to see more than Jinny.

Karen Q vs. Xia Li

ER: Okay, WWE, we get it, only ONE Chinese girl will be advancing in this tourney. And I really liked this. Li has improved a lot in the last year, all of her strikes looked good, tons of tough corner shots to the body mixed in with low kicks, nice palm strikes, and Q had no problem laying things in either. They have a couple moments that looked like a nice take on Red/Low Ki, and I dug Q playing an overt heel, begging off, kicking Li in the face when Li was talking to the ref, stuff that made the match far more interesting than if it had just been "two Chinese warriors going to war!" Q hits hard back elbows and snaps off a nice exploder, tries to ground, and Li's strikes to come back are good. Q misses big on a frog splash and Li hits her cool spinning kick finisher. This only went about 4 minutes, but was really hot, and made really good use of the time. Very into this.

Mia Yim vs. Allysin Kay

ER: Eh, a lot of this felt like every breathe hard indy war you've seen the past few years, and while there were moments I liked, a lot of it felt like a bunch of sequences lifted from every indy card. We even started with a brutally bad phone booth fight spot, big looping punches coming nowhere close to a human. Early on Yim chops the ring post, and they never do a single thing with Yim's hand...and what makes it awkward is all three members of the announce crew talk up that hand as if it were a major part of the match. After chopping the post, Yim never let on that the hand was bothering her in the slightest, but that didn't stop Cole, Renee, and Beth from speculating just how much that hand was bothering her. Even after the match, which Yim - ahem - handily won, the first highlight they showed was Yim chopping that post, which made Cole just keep talking about that hand while clips of other stuff played. Guys, stop trying to make Mia Yim's hand a thing. These two have faced each other tons of times dating back to 2012, so you'd think they'd have a decent touring match down. This was clearly their touring match, something that would not look out of place 3 matches into any indy card across the country. Again, this whole thing just felt like an attempt to pull moments from other matches, and not interesting matches, just pulling sequences from athletic indy contests. It did not feel like their own match, it just took the DNA of other matches and reassembled it here. Kay's 360 lariat looked really good, loved Kay fishhooking Yim in the ropes, Yim threw a couple nice knees, their strike exchange (you knew there would be a strike exchange) didn't linger, but overall I just didn't think they took it anywhere interesting. This was the longest match of the tournament so far, and I think several other matches have accomplished way more in 1/3 of the time (see Li/Q right before).

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Mae Young Classic Episode 3

1. Ayesha Raymond vs. Toni Storm

ER: A good match with a flat, poorly executed finish. I thought all the early stuff was good, the taunts over hand shakes leading to Raymond booting Storm in the chest, Storm's hip attacks, and especially Raymond's nasty strikes to the chest and throat (two nasty palm thrusts to the throat and a killer chopblock). Raymond didn't always take moves great, but sometimes that made them look more effective, like that backcracker out of the ropes. The finish took too long to execute and everybody saw it a mile away, the long climb of the ropes, getting into it with the fans at the worst time, really rote stuff. But overall I thought the match delivered.

PAS: I didn't really like this, Toni Storm was super try hard, with her wacky faces, stupid hat, eye black, it almost felt like Anne Hathaway trying to be an energetic women's wrestler. Raymond had some nice crowbar moments (at some point she raised a nasty bump on Storm's forehead), but I didn't care for Storm's offense and the finish was a mess.

2. Dakota Kai vs. Kavita Devi

ER: I was really digging the slow burn on this one, and was disappointed that they went to the finish immediately after Kai's comeback. The double stomp finish and kick looked fine, but it ended up feeling like a Randy Savage 5 minute Nitro match, where he just sells for 4.5 minutes and then hits the elbow for the win. Devi is clearly green but I liked her simple wrist control stuff, even the rope climbing armdrags that have seemed played out for years in cruisers had a nice thump to them; With her size advantage it made it more plausible she'd be able to pull off that kind of leverage move. She fully won me over with the press slam as I love press slams. I wish we could have had even just one more brief Devi control segment and maybe a reversal by Kai, but I liked the bulk of this.

PAS: I completely disagree about the finish, I really liked the pacing of this with Devi dominating with power moves, those rope walk armdrags looked awesome and violent, which those moves rarely are, it really looked like she was dislocating Kai's shoulder and Kai did a nice job selling the pain. I loved the idea of the veteran Kai getting over powered but capitalizing on the one mistake to hit a couple of big moves and get her out of there. The running kick and the double stomp were both big KO moves and I really liked that they ended the match. Thought this whole thing was great.

3. Sage Beckett vs. Bianca Belair

ER: Belair looks like she's cosplaying as the singer from Culture Beat's "Mr. Vain" video, but her braid is insane. That things is gonna get stepped on. This had some clunky moments but enough stuff that I liked. Although I HATED how they essentially did the exact same finish as the prior match. Who's the agent for this? Two matches in a row where someone slowwwwly climbs up top, poses a bunch, then misses their move and immediately eats the pin. Beckett has some nice power stuff although I always come away wanting her to be better than she is. She seems to get lost a little, but then will do something cool like that shotgun dropkick. Belair has to be pretty new, but she has some potential. I liked that she actually uses the braid as a whip. That's ridiculous. It would be better when she's a heel and uses it to choke.

PAS: This had some ups and downs, I liked the roughness of the early parts of the match, both ladies were throwing fast balls, and I really loved Beckett's body shot. Belair is clearly a great athlete and has some real explosion in her moves, but she is a rookie and parts of this felt rookish. Beckett has been around forever and probably should have been able to pull this together more. I agree the braid whip is an awesome move.

4. Piper Niven vs. Santana Garrett

ER: This was pretty easily the best match of episode 3, but I also probably liked it more because I was REALLY rooting for Niven and didn't think she was actually going to win. So my reactions to it were really similar to Brian Kendrick vs. Tony Nese in the CWC where I was positive Nese would advance but I wanted Kendrick to win so bad. That match was epic to me. This was not quite there, but it was real good. I was convinced Santana was going to advance and Piper was too easy to root for. Garrett has a lot of polish but doesn't totally do enough to interest me. She wrestles like someone who grew up watching Trish Stratus, which is fine, but something we have no shortage of. So Garrett would do her 2006 offense (including oddly hitting Mia Yim's finisher as a move just meant to knock Niven into the corner), but the money is whenever Niven would take over. She breaks out a couple of great low crossbody blocks, good clothesline, works a nice cravate (while JR wouldn't shut the fuck up about British cuisine), but the prior matches' sloppy agent work starts getting me nervous, because Niven climbs to the top. In the last 20 minutes we've already seen two bigger ladies lose matches when going up to the top, so I fully bought that Garrett's headscissors was the end. But Niven hits a great senton and a falling slam and I am happy. Really fun match.

PAS: I think I am going to be the low voter on this match. I liked all of Niven's big splash offense, loved her Mike Knox memorial diving bodypress, but I didn't like the way she took offense. She would do really big flips and rolls on Garrett's headscissors and rolling DDT's and it took all of the impact out of the moves. Garrett has been around forever (she worked a bi-sexual gimmick with Orlando Jordan in TNA) and knows what she should do in the ring, but I was pretty unexcited by her offense. It was fine, but I liked Kai v. Devi a lot better.

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