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 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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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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