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 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 2 1/25/19

I still can't believe Santana Garrett's dad is dead. Opening in ring promo with Garrett and Blanchard was strong, Blanchard's personality is really bringing a lot to this. Also, there was a Blanchard vignette where they basically repeat soundbites of Blanchard over and over saying she's a legend, and she's coming for the title. I want to see Blanchard destroy her.

Siren the Voodoo Doll vs. Princess Aussie

ER: Shaul Guerrero does just about the worst ring announcer read possible when announcing Siren being from New Orleans, Louisiana. The growly drawl she said "Louisiana" with is impossible to listen to without wrinkling your nose at least a little. You cannot hear it and keep a straight nose. Not seen either of these two before, but am enjoying David McLane catching me up on various Australian cultural mythology, but am disappointed he's not doing the same for voodoo culture. Princess wasn't great, so a lot of her stuff relied on Siren doing a lot of working for two, but Siren made it work. I dug Siren taking a headscissors that was almost the equivalent of someone taking a spinnings headscissors from Bernie Lomax. Siren had a bunch of nice stuff, nice grounded facelock, a nice standing splash (no height but nice impact), had some good ideas on what to do to a grounded opponent. I dug Siren's look and how she handled the match, would like to see her against a better opponent. Aussie wins with a frog splash that lands hard but also propels herself to far forward so she kinda faceplants.

Jessie Jones vs. Azteca

ER: We get a long and really weird semi-shoot vignette introducing Jessie Jones and showing her with her mentor, WOW original Selina Majors. They actually turn Jessie heel mid-vignette, starting off presenting her as a tough southern gal who took a bus out to LA, and then by the end she's shooting on her training partner and breaking her arm, and yelling at Selina that THIS WAS HOW PEOPLE USED TO GET BROKEN IN. Things turned y'all. Jones is Tracy Smothers' daughter and I now actually want a Blanchard/Jones team. Jones gets in the ring and does a whole Build the Wall/MAGA spiel, and it comes off genuine, and her having the same horse face that Ann Coulter/Lara Trump/Laura Ingraham have makes it feel all the more authentic. She needs to get their same bottle of blond dye though. I have no clue who Azteca is, but she's not very good, although she is definitely trained. Jones was pretty awesome in this, exclusively targetting Azteca's left arm in really nasty ways, kicking at it and bending it and holding it in all sorts of rough subs (especially liked when she bent it behind her around the bottom rope). Azteca never bothered to actually sell it when she would go on offense, so we have to sit through her doing some bad strike combos and a rope assisted twisting armdrag that looked like she almost broke both her ankles upon landing, though her slingshot tornillo into the ring looked nice. Jones does a ton of stuff to Azteca's arm that looks like it would end a match, and them showing a vignette where Jones broke someone's arm in training and then a match where she keeps trying to break someone's arm is the kind of super simple thing that will always be effective.

LANA STAR IS STILL AROUND!? We get a nice nod to WOW history as instead of doing a promo in a handmirror Lana just does it in a normal full size makeup mirror.

Beverly Hills Babe vs. Tessa Blanchard

BHB is Amber Gallows, and her look reads way more southern to me than "Beverly Hills". And it's kind of weird to be throwing out a heel/heel match this early. Fans are going to be cheering BHB by default because Blanchard has been nothing but a rude asshole and they've never seen BHB, so they're cheering her while McLane is on commentary making botox jokes about her. McLane is really unintentionally hilarious on commentary, as Lana sits in and McLane explains her whole storyline motivation to her as if Lana had just now heard in real time how she was supposed to be acting. The whole match structure is wack, with Babe acting like a heel the whole time while inserted into the face control portions of the match, and she controls a lot of the match. So we get a heel working over the top heel as a face but still working as a heel, and controlling the top heel so long that the top heel gets put into a face sympathy spot because Babe is taunting her during the whole beatdown. It made no sense at all. O'neal isn't very good, a lot of her stuff looks weak, and I wanted to see way more Blanchard here. No part of the layout of this match made sense.

Even with the bizarre layout of the main I still think this was another strong episode, which feels pretty improbable. For all of the McLane-ness of this, they are doing a lot of things right.

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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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