It's almost the second anniversary of SHIMMER Volume 53 and our country is ready to celebrate! I'd forgotten that I bought this until I installed the WWNLive thing on my Roku. I remembered being disappointed by the main, but that's about it, so it's clearly time for a rewatch.
Mia does not look nearly mortified enough before the match and this makes me worry. Kong's offense here is really simple and capitalizes on her size advantage—stuff like avalanches in the corner and clotheslines. Me gusta. I also like Yim struggling to pull Kong up from a sitting position. It shows laudable thought into the physics of wrestling. But please send back your physics degree, Mia Yim, because later in the match, she German suplexes Kong. It looks ridic as hell and took me right out of the match. Even my theory of alternate wrestling universes cannot cover for this. The match was pretty standard opener fare, but the suplex thing really got on my nerves.
**
Serena Deeb comes out to give a speech about coming back from an injury and is immediately beset by Jessicka Havok, Nevaeh, and Sassy Stephie. Allison Danger and Leva Bates to the rescue! Dave Prazak brings some welcome logic to wrestling commentary when he insists that "it's time to press charges". Allison Danger logically argues instead that the invaders should pay for their crimes by wrestling a match. The most hilarious thing Allison Danger has ever said happens here: "Get to the back, get some gear on!" I'm docking SHIMMER 20 points for not showing Jessicka Havok running around backstage looking for something that fits or maybe a seamstress frantically trying to finish ring gear. F-.
Veda & Shazza win the match by coming out to Robyn, but then they wrestle anyway. I'm used to delightful Kimber Lee from Chikara, so it's weird to see her as a mean girl here. I feel that wrestling events happen in their own universes (like the WWE Universe is quite literally a real universe) and this explains why a guy can be Little Richard in one place and a wrestling boxer in the other. I prefer the Chikara universe version of Kimber Lee. I haven't seen Cherry Bomb before, but I'm digging her. She's very expressive and vocal and that works in this match's favor. McKenzie's offense seems a little off here and a lot of the stuff they do is pretty contrived and requires lots of waiting by the presumptive victims.
**
Evie vs. Kalamity vs. Rhia O'Reilly vs. Chistina Von Eerie vs. Yuu Yamagata
No screens! I hate multi-entity matches most of the time. O'Reilly and Evie bring flags to the ring. Christina Von Eerie looks like one of the girls who hops trains to get to Maryland Death Fest every year. She's way more athletic than a true crustie, though, and I was really impressed by how well this match flowed together. I'd probably dig it much more if any two of these ladies were doing a singles match, but what we have is fast-paced without degenerating into people very blatantly being knocked outside and standing there like a Sleepaway Camp corpse for ten minutes at a stretch.
***
Ayumi Kurihara vs. Mercedes Martinez
No screens! Mercedes has new hair. I love the way that both wrestlers convey damage here. Mercedes is especially great at these Rocky Balboa-esque drained facial expressions and physical swaying. Just excellent. Here's another difference between the SHIMMER universe and our own: you can use chairs in matches and not get DQ-ed as long as they're used outside the ring. Mercedes pops Kurihara a few times and the referee basically wags his finger like Danzig about it. Thankfully, nothing else in the match forces us to see the wires and zippers of professional wrestling. Kurihara's dropkicks are an easy highlight of the match, especially her lovely half-rotation missile ones. I loved the ending stretch a lot, with Martinez craftily slinking out of a submission and following up with two high-impact moves. Good stuff!
***1/2
Leva Bates, Allison Danger, & Serena Deeb vs. Jessicka Havok, Nevaeh, & Sassy Stephie
Spoiler: they found ring gear. Danger and Bates come out dressed as Jay and Silent Bob. Nice to see that they're so irate about Deeb being violently attacked that they're cosplaying about it. Daffney accompanies them. [interlude: I accidentally cut Daffney off from a bathroom at an IWA-MS show once. She was saying something to a girl as I was walking by and I didn't parse that it was, "I'll sign it as soon as I go to the bathroom" until I'd locked the door. But at that point, I couldn't go back out and say, "Wait, this isn't the cloak room!" or something. So I just tried to rush, but Daffney still glared at me when I was leaving. Sawry.] Epic Amber Gertner burn on the cosplay: "This reminds me of some movie I watched on laser disk once." I like the chain wrestling in the Nevaeh/Serena section. Nevaeh has a dumb name, but is clearly good in the ring. Serena at least seems pissed off at Havok and their interactions are the best part of the match. I'll have to check out whatever singles match eventually happened. The worst part of the match is probably Havok squashing Leva Bates while Bates is wearing her Silent Bob fake mustache. Certain camera angles make it look hideously creepy, like excerpts from a very perverted apartment wrestling video. I hope there was no mad rush of dads in the audience to the bathroom after this contest.
**1/2
Madison Eagles vs. Jessie McKay
Australia is riven by civil war! This alerts you that fun is happening right from the outset, when both gals try a cheap shot simultaneously. Madison Eagles is funny as hell, biting Jessie's wrist and constantly tossing out wisecracks. But the match itself is a blend of the light stuff and occasional epic-match peaks, like splattery powerbombs and such. It all gelled surprisingly well, though, and the structure of the match, with Eagles mostly killing McKay a lot, felt a lot like what Kong/Yim should have been. Madison Eagles is obviously a tremendous wrestler. It would be nice to see her in other places, since SHIMMER is on such a minimal taping schedule.
***1/2
Kana & LuFisto vs. Allysin Kaye & Taylor Made vs. Nicole Matthews & Portia Perez vs. Tomoka Nakagama & Kellie SkaterAllison Danger on commentary: "Jessicka Havok was not allowed to leave the building until she signed to face Serena Deeb next week." If SHIMMER didn't exist in its own universe, I'd think that makes no sense. But! This match. The Kana/Nakagawa parts are pretty rad, as are Matthews and Perez inventively trying to avoid facing Kana. This leads to a splendid Matthews vs. Perez portion where they do an Ebessan routine. You will l o l. Everything's gumdrops and kisses until Allysin Kaye refuses to show damage from vicious Kana kicks, to the point that it's noted in the commentary. Boo-urns, but Nicole Matthews quickly does a better job of dying to cover up. Creative finish with a bottle of water being utilized in lieu of Muta-style Asian venom glands. As you've already read, multi- matches usually raise my ire, but this one was fine aside from the selling glitches.
***
SHIMMER does a good job of recapping Athena's existing knee injury, just in case it comes into play during this match. We start with mat wrestling and it's fine, particularly the facial expressions. Athena works hard at conveying the story of the match, not just through displays of limb injury, but through her looks and gritted teeth. Getting into the meat of the match, there's a nice lucha exchange midway as well as some cool jockeying for submissions. Athena is very limber for a girl with her body type and proves it by delivering a knee to Hamada while she's being tied up in a standing position. Athena is also an expert at being missile dropkicked and the finishing stretches of this are mostly about Athena being overwhelmed by her sager opponent. Hamada lacks the kind of acting ability or expressive charisma that would make a TNA audience care, but she sure is a fantastic wrestler and seems to have an instinctive knowledge of what goes where in a match. If Athena were peas, she would be black-eyed peas after the beating she takes from Hamada, but just when you think she's about to go down like a cuter, better Jesus at Calvary, the match takes an unexpected turn. Super-solid match that deserved to be seen by a better, more lively crowd.
****
Cheerleader Melissa vs. Saraya Knight (cage)
In the recap, MsChif is wearing her own shirt. I sigh about it. I want to like MsChif, but this and the later Satyricon entrance music...I just don't know. Anyways, Saraya Knight is very English and elegant and sounds much like Queen Elizabeth I must have sounded. She terrorizes the dads in attendance on her way to the ring. This didn't get as vocal a reaction as you'd expect from a cage match, but maybe it's because it's not arranged like a typical cage match with lots of big "oooh" cage spots. It's definitely physical, but the interaction is very close, with lots of mat submissions and punching. In a way, it's very MMA. But also very pro rasslin', as when Saraya has Melissa down on the mat and then growls, "USA is shit!" and turns to leer at the camera like Pazuzu. In a lot of ways, I think this would have been better without the cage, as it would have allowed some brawling on the outside. This was the capstone of a long, long feud between these two and they brought the intensity, but they stayed so close together that maybe it was tough for the crowd to pick up on it. Or maybe the crowd was just zombified. They do come alive for a hurricanrana bit at the end and for the finale, so maybe more of that kind of showy stuff would have helped matters. Execution from both ladies was superb and Cheerleader Melissa is still dangerously close to Dick Murdoch and Bull Nakano in my favorite wrestlers list. I'll have to check out their other matches to see how they compare to this.
***
