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 5

Toni Storm vs. Hiroyo Matsumoto

ER: This one kept having me and then losing me. I liked the first half for the most part, and the stretch lost me. I thought the strike exchange was weak, the weird rope running weaker, and Storm's selling and facials the weakest. When Toni cut the cutesy crap she was better, and she certainly has no problem eating tough suplexes, that nasty kneedrop to the stomach, or hard lariats to the neck. I like how heavy Storm bumps; she doesn't look super athletic when she bumps, which works well as it makes suplexes look harder and makes lariats look like she's running into a low tree branch. The early parts with wristlocks and headscissor escapes were more interesting than bad learned behavior rope running, or Matsumoto clumsily taking forever to do a old  powerbomb turned into a Boston Crab. She held Storm's legs awkwardly for way too long, and Storm basically had to hold still until Matsumoto turned it into a nice single crab. I really didn't think this had any decent flow, despite some good moments (and that's been a running theme of this tourney so far).

Kacy Catanzaro vs. Rhea Ripley

ER: This was really fun. Ripley has great presence, and her size reads bigger than she actually is (and no it's not just because she's against a tiny human). Most of Catanzaro's offense doesn't look too plausible against someone like Ripley, but I really liked how Ripley made it look plausible. She didn't take light headscissors as if she was getting launched across the ring, more took them as if they were knocking her off balance. It's always annoying when much larger opponents bump the same for every opponent regardless of size, and Ripley doesn't act like any of these moves are devastating, but sells them appropriately. Kacy does important things really well, and her tight roll up was maybe my favorite spot in the match, fully grapevining Ripley's leg before they had even rolled fully over, clamping Ripley's legs shut. It actually looked like something that could have finished the match. Ripley's power offense to take over was really fun, nice cocky suplexes, show off dropkicks, a cool standing Cloverleaf variation, and that match finishing Riptide was about as gif-worthy as things get. Catanzaro was mostly good at the stick and move stuff, got hung up a bit on that Mascarita Sagrada spinning DDT, but Ripley spiked herself nicely and had some good comedic flailing after. This was a fun one, and I'm glad Ripley advanced.

Taynara Conti vs. Lacey Lane

ER: I wasn't sure what they were going to do with this one, both being still pretty new. They kept it to a tight 150 seconds. It was kind of clumsy but in a fun way, throwing awkward knees, getting tossed by hair, Lane tying up Conti in kind of weird ways. Conti has some cool judo throws and it's awesome that WWE in 2018 has two women working judoka gimmicks. Lane's crucifix was nice and snug, looked like a pinfall. This was probably the quickest match of the tournament, but it was fun and effective.

Meiko Satomura vs. Mercedes Martinez

PAS: An absolute classic, maybe the best WWE Women's match of all time. Satomura is incredible, in the early chain wrestling sections she looked like the best wrestler in the world. The way she transitioned from a collar and elbow lock up into an armbar was intricate and flawless, the hammerlock into an armdrag, into an armbar with a knee on the neck this was simple stuff done as well as it can be done. Martinez looked good in those sections as well, not as crisp as Meiko, but the bit of grime worked well with her character. After getting out wrestled early, Martinez tries to turn it into a fight, and lays in with huge thudding shots, Meiko worked a dozen Aja Kong matches so isn't afraid to escalate the violence and we get some of the stiffest wrestling ever in a WWE branded ring. Thudding forearms, punishing kicks and knees the kind of thing that leave deep bruises which last for weeks. Martinez used her size and power really well, I loved that choke bomb, tons of force and Meiko landed poorly. The entire section where Martinez was fighting out of the Fujiwara armbar was great too, I loved how all the counter attempts were counter countered, until she finally is able to get a foot on the ropes. The finish run was great, I loved all of Mercedes's selling at the end, the limp collapse from the axe kick put over both the violence of the move and the fatigue of the war they were in.

ER: Hot damn I thought I had pretty high expectations for this one, and this completely demolished my expectations. This is definitely the best women's match in WWE history, and we have had some WWE women's matches pretty high on our MOTY list the past couple years. This had a totally different pace and structure than most WWE matches, and from a kayfabe perspective it was exciting as neither woman felt out of the match, always felt like one could feasibly end it. I don't check ahead on results so honestly had no idea who would be advancing, so I was going nuts down the stretch. Rachel was positive Mercedes was advancing, I was positive Meiko would be...but was getting swayed by Rachel, and Mercedes' strong showing. All the early moments were tough, nice headlocks, headscissors, Satomura looking like she could maneuver to north/south and transition to any single one of Mercedes' limbs with her eyes closed. Things ramped up for me when Satomura fired off two quick kicks to the chest to drop Martinez, then drops a knee right into her neck. Meiko's knees are absolutely terrifying; I hate things touching my neck, the thought of wearing a turtleneck makes me anxious (luckily I...don't often think about wearing turtlenecks, so I'm pretty safe), and Meiko was making me watch this match while covering my throat with my hands. I loved Mercedes fighting back, working a guillotine, coming at Meiko with hard strikes and uppercuts and slams, and I like how each momentum shift almost seems like a surprise, not a preordained thing. Each of their transitions back to offense didn't necessarily have a smooth flow, which benefitted them, as every time one would fight back it felt just like that - fighting back, not wanting to give up ground. Meiko starts putting on a clinic, reversing a fisherman's buster into an armbar, and that armbar looked worthy of finishing a match. And obviously that's what made all of this so great, that so much of it looked worthy of finishing the match, without ever once feeling like they were burning through actual finishers. Mike Awesome/Masato Tanaka matches also had a few dozen things that looked like finishers, but it was just guys hitting big moves and then getting up and taking big moves, like you were demoing finishers while making a bitchin' CAW. Here their moves look very worthy, but it always seems plausible when both escape or kickout.

Meiko's arm bar was one of the nastiest I've seen, totally expected that to end, but Mercedes kept rolling while also getting her arm bent straight behind her, Meiko great at starting the armbar at 3 and cranking it up to 9 the longer it was on, allowing the spot to build and breathe and not look silly that Mercedes wasn't tapping immediately. Meiko hits a heavy frog splash, big knees, and an absolutely spine shortening DDT. I loved how Martinez took that DDT, loved her forward crumple, her defeated child's pose. I certainly wasn't expecting a kickout after Meiko's cartwheel knee aimed to behead Martinez, and Martinez looked to drill Meiko through the mat when she finally hit her fisherman's buster (on the third overall attempt). Meiko's slumped over sell on the mat after kicking out was an awesome visual. Fully agree that Mercedes' selling was impressive, loved her dropping to a knee from fatigue, allowing Meiko to hit a low spin kick. The sell reminded me of one of my favorite's from last year, in the Cain Justice/Cecil Scott match, when Cain hits Scott with a big shot and Scott lurches forward before falling, his will to fight being a second ahead of his pain. This was a stone classic, and Meiko can do no wrong. I have no clue what exactly she will get out of Lane in the next round, but I can tell you at this point I'm not looking forward to anything else in the tournament more than that.

ER: Well, good luck to the rest of the people in the Mae Young Classic, you got some mighty shoes to fill. Who can credibly beat Meiko at this point? As you may have expected, that is one very easy, very high add to our 2018 Ongoing MOTY List.

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Mae Young Classic 2018 Episode 1

Tegan Nox vs. Zatara

ER: Cole is a little too head over heels for Nox, so my household is Team Zatara right here. But Beth Phoenix informs me that Zatara is not here to make friends. You don't say. I mean, it's tough to make new friends once you're an adult. Maybe one of these 32 women knew they might not have the best odds of winning this tournament, but thought it would be a good way to meet some new girlfriends. I was entirely unfamiliar with both women, and this didn't make me want to get more familiar. There were some things I liked, like the fun arm work right at the beginning and Zatara's Negro Navarro-ish cruceta and Zatara's running knee and hard missile dropkick, etc. But both had some poor looking offense at points. Nox threw these uppercuts that looked like she was intentionally missing Zatara, and Zatara threw a pretty ugly mule kick (that's a tough move to connect on, and a lot of ladies use it, and I'm not sure I've seen one do it well) and threw missed clotheslines that were in no danger of hitting anybody. Nox also had a couple of annoying phony athletic bumps, like she was trying to do athletic Hennig bumps but there was a hesitation or delay. I remember there being worse matches than this last year, but I likely won't remember this one by the end of the tournament.

PAS: This didn't do much for me, Nox is someone who gets a lot of hype from people whose opinions I don't trust, and she didn't show me much here. There was some OK stuff by Zatara I though her moves landed with force, but parts of this also felt disjointed. I am not sure there are 32 good women's wrestlers for a tourney like this to be all good matches. I like how the MYC brings in women from all over the world, but the best Chilean versus the best Welsh lady is going to likely be subpar.

MJ Jenkins vs. Rhea Ripley

ER: This one was really fun. Ripley won me over in her match against Dakota Kai last year, and I liked how this was structured with Ripley being a bully until Jenkins snapped. Ripley hit a nice dropkick to knock Jenkins off the apron (with a nice two part bump to the floor from Jenkins) and a GREAT clothesline back in the ring, locked in a snug abdominal stretch, really all her control stuff looked good. She also did a few little things that impressed me, like when she missed an overhand strike in the corner when Jenkins slipped out to the apron, and Ripley missed hard and then grabbed her side and shook out her arm, occupying time until Jenkins was ready to hit offense. I see so many wrestlers just stagger back into position and just stand there crooked and waiting, so seeing a 21 year old already finding interesting ways to occupy time is really cool. Jenkins bumped nicely for Ripley and was mostly in there to make Ripley look good and sell, so it worked. Fun showcase.

PAS: I thought this was fine. Ripley was a bit OTT with her new tough girl attitude, lots of silly faces and grimacing. I did think her offense looked good, that powerbomb finisher was class. Jenkins had some nice energy, but I am not sure she showed me much to make her stand out, outside of being an opponent. I assume Ripley will go pretty far, which is fine, she fits with what they want, and is still really young.

Lacey Lane vs. Vanessa Kraven

ER: Absolutely love Lane's look, and I really liked the cat and mouse stuff here. Kraven is so much bigger than Lane, but it was fun seeing Lane find neat ways to put her boots upside Kraven's head. Lane doesn't have great elbow strikes (and yet I liked a lot of her kicks and she had a fantastic jumping knee to the chin) but I liked the way she would stick and move and spring back in undeterred. Kraven was good at those swinging "Andre being swarmed" arms, trying to shove away to create some space. There was an unfortunate botch that both handled about as well as possible, really not a ton you can do but pick yourself up and get back to it. Kraven had some cool stuff, like hanging Lane upside down in the ropes and chopping at her, and I liked Kraven's cannonball and the callback whiff, and Lane was working for a crucifix the entire match so it made sense to have her win with it. This wasn't always sound, but was an interesting match up and had a lot of ideas. Probably my favorite of the night so far because of that.

PAS: I thought parts of this were really fun, I liked all of Lane's early evasion and stick and moving. I didn't think she lost some steam post botch. Kraven is impressive looking, but I thought she was a bit stiff and didn't work with the same brutality as Jazzy or Viper last year. This is a match layout I usually dig, and it was put together well.

Killer Kelly vs. Meiko Satomura

ER: Is there going to be any woman in this tournament who doesn't get completely outclassed by Satomura? I loved her profile promo, talking about her WCW stint and keeping kayfabe by saying she was young and had no finisher yet, which was why she lost so quickly. And this match was awesome. Never heard of Kelly before, and she was basically in their to get her ass beaten by Meiko, and she ended up turning it into a whole lot more. She clearly understood who she was in there with and had no problems laying it in. She lands a kick to the chest that made me sit up, and then likely earned her a half dozen even harder kicks to the chest from Meiko. Meiko unleashes a lot, shows off her awesome speed and impeccable ring placement, hits a super fast armdrag roll up into a half crab that she turns into a chiropractor's dream of a STF (Renee Young on commentary even flipped out, yelling "Look at how Kelly's knee is bent!") and drops her cool cartwheel kneedrop. Kelly is cool working at a choke and really stands up to Meiko, and gets an awesome comeback when she catches Meiko up top, and the two have some cool close quarters struggle before Kelly locks in a sick dragon sleeper while hooked across the ropes. Kelly was good enough here - and Meiko was convincing enough - that I fully bought Kelly's fisherman's suplex pinning Satomura. Meiko had the perfect last minute kickout and I was actually smelling upset. That's effective work from both ladies right there. Meiko looked like an absolute boss in this one, but Kelly impressed the hell out of me too. Awesome capper to the first episode.

PAS: I don't think there are many wrestlers in the world who aren't going to be outclassed by Meiko, outside of maybe Daniel Bryan she is the best wrestler in the whole fed. She looked incredible in this match, she is clearly amped to be working in the WWE after all these years, and some of the chaining of moves in this match were breath taking. Kelly impressed me too, she realized where she was and who she was there with and came with it. Meiko unloaded with some huge violent kicks and when Kelly fired back she met her force to force. Meiko's timing in this match was great, that fisherman's suplex was timed perfectly, one of the better nearfalls I can remember.

ER: After talking it over we decided to add Meiko/Kelly to our 2018 Ongoing MOTY List, just a fantastic little TV match, with Meiko looking like the best wrestler in the world, Kelly getting a couple great comebacks, and really the match had the best nearfall kickout of the year. Very excited for what's to come.

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