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.

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WOW - Women of Wrestling Episode 1 1/18/19

So I legitimately had no idea David McLane's WOW was back in any form until I saw Bix swooning all over it on Twitter. I was a huge WOW fan during it's original run. My gf and I at the time would watch it at 1 AM Saturday nights, I ordered a Riot shirt that never came because they went out of business, and I watched that PPV LIVE! Now they got Tessa Blanchard (who is clearly a better wrestler than anybody involved in WOW's original run) and I am not looking up any further information about it. It's on my TV right now, I'm watching it.

We start with WOW "Women of Wrestling World Champion of the World" Santana Garrett (apparently WOW has been running shows?) and Tessa Blanchard came out with her and McLane and made fun of Garrett's towel boy dad for carrying her dad's Gucci bag.

The Beast vs. Stephy Slays

ER: Unfamiliar with both of these girls. Stephy sets goals, and slays them. The Beast is making her mark. And really this wasn't bad. Both seemed pretty rough around the edges, but Stephy takes hard fast bumps and Beast lands clotheslines and avalanches with a lot of impact. Throw in a nice dropkick from Slays and a fun nearfall off a Beast missed corner charge, big butterfly suplex from Beast, surprise kickout from Slays on an Air Raid Crash, and this overdelivered on what I expected. Granted, I expected it to be two untrained fitness models clomping around the ring, but there have been modern Diva matches that have looked worse than this. The weirdest thing was that Stephy was working as underdog babyface, but Beast was working as dominant babyface. She pulled Stephy up from a kickout, which was the only heelish thing she did, and the rest of the time they were talking about her on commentary like she was Goldberg. I'm excited to see how the face/heel dynamics play out with the rest of the roster. I liked the mix of heels on the original WOW.

"The Governor's Daughter" Abilene Maverick vs. Fire

ER: Fire is Kiera Hogan, who I like, Maverick works all over as Barbi Hayden. This was fine, although apparently mule kicks are still really tough to make look good. This was split up weird, with Maverick taking the first half, building to a big comeback by Fire in the second half, until Maverick won with a rope drape DDT that Fire couldn't have made look any better (really dropped her on her head and folded her). Maverick makes good heel faces, McLane - in perfect McLane fashion - gossiped about her boyfriend (Preston!) during the match, and I liked Fire's comeback. Fire hit this sliding kick in the corner that looked real good. Fire had a whole vignette before this where she evolved from troubled bullied teen into FIRE, so I'm surprised she lost in her debut.

Khloe Hurtz vs. Eye Candy

ER: Hurtz is called the All Natural, which apparently is because she has fake lips and fake boobs, but she ALSO has a bunch of ring boys called RING RATS!! So that's pretty terrific. She didn't do a ton for me in ring, but I dug Eye Candy. I'm sure she doesn't actually go by Eye Candy on the indies, but she looked good here, best of the babyfaces so far. Crowd was way into her, she hit a couple nice senton variations (including a nice rolling one), a big dropkick off the top that I thought was going to fall short (nice whip bump off it by Hurtz), a nice headbutt and hip attack, and wins with a really great moonsault. So far in the first episode we've had at least one decent nearfall in every match even when some of the wrestling has been so-so. A nicely placed nearfall can be really exciting, and so far each one on this episode has added to their respective matches.

Jungle Grrrl vs. Santana Garrett

ER: WOW ORIGINAL JUNGLE GRRRL! Jeez WOW was another lifetime ago. I was literally a teenager when I first watched WOW. I didn't think we'd actually get any WOW originals. And Jungle Grrrl is now a Jungle Mother and she looks almost exactly the same as she did in 2000 and her son Jungle Boy is there in attendance! Jungle Grrrl is clearly a Jungle Pilates Trainer now, she is ripped. The match doesn't go too long as it serves more as an angle, but the action we got was pretty good. I liked the opening scramble, JG showing off her yoga strength and working nice exchanges around knucklelocks, the coolest being Garrett elbowing JG a couple times while they were still joined in a knucklelock! I don't think I've seen that before. JG hits the Jungle Driver (basically a Michinoku Driver) and commits big to missing the big Jungle Splash off the top. The angle we got to end the show was pretty fantastic, with Tessa Blanchard coming out and kinking up Garrett's dads oxygen tubes (awesome), and The Beast coming out to confront Jungle Grrrl. The whole show they're building up the inevitable showdown between Garrett and Blanchard, and then all of a sudden they're doing a huge pull apart between Beast and JG and making me want to see THAT match more!

I gotta say, this debut episode had to blow past everyone's realistic expectations. This show made shockingly good use of its time, felt weirdly like old WOW but with better wrestlers (though also less blue collar professionals moonlighting as wrestlers), it didn't have one crazy young referee out to take one extremely stupid bump per episode, but they unexpectedly seem like they know how to build things. I came out of this episode already wanting to see the matches they're setting up, which is a huge win for them. Eye Candy, Fire, Beast, Stephy Slays, almost everyone here showed breakout potential. I watched WOW as a teen, now I'm watching WOW as someone who just turned 38. WOW is on a larger cable television platform than Impact Wrestling, which has been around for an eternity yet somehow wasn't around the last time WOW was on television. What a strange Friday night.

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Blanchard vs. Hogan

56. Tessa Blanchard vs. Kiera Hogan Impact Wrestling 4/26 (Aired 6/14/18)

ER: A kind of out of nowhere fun No DQ match, a nice peak for the so far quietly quality women's division that Impact has been putting out. Rosemary, Taya, Su Young have all been putting on nice weekly performances, and Tessa has been coming off great in her few appearances. She looks like a real bitchy old money mean girl, like a modern pro wrestling version of Joan Collins on Dynasty. This is a quick paced match that makes good use of the No DQ stip by using stiffness and bumps instead of wasting time setting up complicated props spots. They make everything look good, nice ramp fighting, hard dropkicks, hard elbows, tough stomps, a big Saito supple from Tessa, neck cranked on an abdominal stretch, nice DDT from Hogan, and a big finish with a twisty facelock onto a chair. I've enjoyed several Impact women's matches this year, and this feels like the best of the bunch so far, and something I hope they keep excelling with.

PAS: Eric really comes up with some oddball recommendations, no way I would ever watch a Impact women's match with out him nominating it, but this was fun stuff. Blanchard works really stiff here, as the veteran who wants to punk out the rookie. Loved her running elbow with Hogan in the ropes, she really tenderized her kidneys. That spinning facelock into the chair seems like it would look stupid 99 times out of 100, but it looked like it might have knocked all of Hogan's teeth out.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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