Just Imagine This Small Child Is Courtney Rush.
It's Shimmer weekend part two, boys and girls. And it's about to get ROWDY.
SHIMMER VOLUME 55
Since this is the second taping of the first day, there aren't any Sparkle matches before the main show. And just bear in mind that for many of these women, this is the second of 4 matches in one weekend. And they aint half assin' anything.
Jessie McKay pinned Yuu Yamagata with the Boyfriend Stealer.
Cewsh: Running four shows in one weekend offers some unique challenges to the performers on these shows. Since the fans are sitting through 8 nearly continuous hours of wrestling, it can often be hard for even the most dedicated fans to keep their energy level up all the way through to the end. Especially since the opening match of the second show basically has to follow the main event of the previous one. It's a serious challenge. As such, wrestlers like Jessie McKay who get a response from the crowd no matter what the situation are worth their weight in gold.
Jessie works her magic here, and gets everyone dialed back in after the intermission, and Yuu really stands out here in the ring with her. Shimmer has a history of exciting show openers, (Kellie Skater basically made her name doing them,) and this fits right it on that list.
Allysin Kay made Thunderkitty tap out to a gogoplata.
Cewsh: This is a clash of completely opposite gimmicks. Thunderkitty is a throwback character, who wears a once piece outfit and exudes old school, hard nosed classy realness. Allysin Kay, on the other hand, is essentially trailer trash trying pretending she's high class, and it's a role that Kay devours and inhabits completely.
Thunderkitty
As you might imagine, there's some great humor here as the characters clash, and the match is enjoyable overall. Thunderkitty is still very new to Shimmer, and newbies have to pay their dues, so this is Allysin's win, but for two relatively recent additions to the roster, these two have fit in seamlessly.
Sassy Stephie & Jessicka Havok beat Santana Garrett & Heidi Lovelace. Havok pinned Lovelace with a chokeslam.
Cewsh: One of the disadvantages to being at a wrestling show live instead of watching it at home, is that you don't have the benefit of commentary. So in cases like this, where Jessicka Havok is in a match that doesn't involve Serena Deeb in any way, you can definitely tell that having the commentary drive the storyline between Havok and Serena home would help bridge the gap to the next show where their feud continues. For us in attendence this match seemed oddly detached from the feud, and that might have detracted a bit from it, but what it accomplished was worth it. From this match, Havok's alliance with Stephie and Rochelle is established, and Havok gets to have a dominant victory to offset the inevitable defeat she'll suffer at the hands of her firey foe.
Just Don't Tell That To Her One Lonely Fan.
Lovelace and Santana are both fine in their roles as cannon fodder, but aren't really much focused on.
Christina Von Eerie defeated Saraya Knight via DQ.
Cewsh: This feud actually got started during intermission, when a fight between the two broke out at the merchandise tables in the middle of a crowd of fans. Here, Saraya calls out Von Eerie to get in the ring and show her some respect, and, well, Von Eerie is fresh out of the stuff.
I Don't Think These Two Are Destined To Be Besties.
They have a great brawl that ends when Saraya knocks Christina with a foreign object. But before she can sneak off with her victory, referee Andy Long earns her ire by busting her with the object and reversing the decision, giving Von Eerie the win. This establishes two running storylines for Saraya over the rest of the weekend. The first is sneaking that foreign object into matches to cheat, and the second is Saraya's new found burning hatred for Andy Long. Will poor Andy live out the weekend? I wouldn't bet money on it.
Athena beat Taylor Made with the O-Face.
Cewsh: Athena actually has a lot in common with the man whose school she attended, Booker T. She's extremely athletic, has shined in the midcard against every different kind of opponent, and the fans are just begging to see her make it to the top one day. A big reason for her blooming popularity is her finisher, which is the talk of Shimmer. It's seriously rad, you guys. It's even called the O-Face due to it's habit of making the crowd yell "OOOHHHH" at the top of their lungs when they see it. Would you like a taste? Yeah, you know you would.
Taylor Made, for her part, was a run of the mill babyface when she arrived in Shimmer, and things really weren't clicking for her. But when she turned heel and joined Allysin Kay as the queens of the trailer park, she really found new life. The crowd rewarded her for this by inventing the brilliant "TRAILER MADE" chant that was so great that ring announcer Joey Eastman actually praised us for it after the match.
Veda Scott & Shazza McKenzie beat Nicole Matthews & Portia Perez via DQ.
Cewsh: Beating Re-Generation X and getting a match with the Canadian Ninjas in the same weekend is a huge deal for Veda and Shazza, and it's easily their biggest chance at getting in title contention since they entered Shimmer and became bestest best friends. Unfortunately to get that chance, they have to go through the champions in a non-title match, and the Ninjas are not interested in taking it easy on anyone but themselves.
OW!
The Ninjas stay in control for most of the match, and when it looks like Veda and Shazza are making a comeback, they go and get themselves disqualified because heels be heelin' 3G comes out to the rescue, but too late to do much but glare as the dastardly Ninjas.
Not Shown: The Ninjas Kicking Puppies and Knocking Over Sandcastles Off Screen.
Then Skater gets on the mic and demands a title match, which the Ninjas scoff at. As a compromise, Senior Referee Bryce Remsberg, the only ref in the business with any actual authority, decrees that they will wrestle two singles matches on Volume 56. And we creep ever closer to the inevitable showdown.
Kalamity pinned MsChif with the Kalamityville Horror.
Cewsh: While there were some really big happenings over the weekend that would wind up overshadowing it, this was really the weekend that Kalamity really staked her claim to a high profile spot on the roster. She had a solid match with Yuu on Volume 44, but here with MsChif she really shows off her enormous potential, and this quickly turns into a star making performance for Kalamity.
MsChif and Kalamity
She beats MsChif, and in Shimmer, beating former champions is a big, big deal. So big in fact, that this win is going to net her a title shot. But that's another Volume.
Tomoka Nakagawa & Kellie Skater beat Allison Danger & Leva Bates. Nakagawa pinned Bates with a Fisherman Suplex.
Cewsh: Next in line for the "Allison Danger Puts Over The Entire Roster Retirement Tour" are 3G who, as I previously mentioned, leaped into the role of the top babyface tag team in Shimmer over this weekend. And this match showed why. 3G looked great as they struggled valiantly against their cheating instincts, and Leva Bates actually came out of this looking very good. I'm glad Re-X's matches highlighted Bates so much all weekend, as she'll be on her own in Shimmer from now on, and she really got an opportunity to show what she could do.
Allison Danger
Frankly, it was best match featuring Dr. Seuss characters that I have ever seen.
Madison Eagles pinned Kana with the Hellbound.
Cewsh: It must be hard to main event shows in Shimmer. The crowd is tired, you work the longest matches, and you're forced to constantly follow matches like this one that just utterly blow everyone who sees them away.
Eagles and Kana
This was the best match of the first day to such a crazy extent that it doesn't even seem fair to everyone else. Madison Eagles showed that she has immediately returned to her champion form, and is staking her claim as possibly the single best wrestler in a company stacked with them. And Kana, for her part, continues to treat the concept of bad matches like she treats her opponent's faces. And by that I mean harshly. So very harshly.
Eagles won here, and seems to be on the rise back towards title contention. And from what I saw, there wasn't a single person in attendance who would have a problem with that.
Mercedes Martinez defeated Ayako Hamada with the Fisherman Buster.
Cewsh: It says something about the quality of Eagles/Kana that a match between Mercedes Martinez and Ayako Hamada could be forgettable by comparison. Don't get me wrong, this match was great from start to finish, and both women are just at the top of the game right now. But even the mighty Hamada couldn't follow the match before this entirely. See what I mean about main eventing in Shimmer?
Sad Hamada Is Sad.
Mercedes actually pulled out the win here, a very rare singles loss for Hamada, and all of a sudden, we have a log jam around the number one contendership. With Kalamity, Martinez, Eagles, Athena, McKay, and Kana all in contention. That's called a well booked main event scene, ladies and gentleman. Though I'll understand if you haven't seen many of them before to help you recognize one.
Cheerleader Melissa beat Courtney Rush with the Kudo Driver to retain the SHIMMER Championship.
Cewsh: By the time this match rolled around, the crowd was quite frankly exhausted from all the matches they had seen, and were slow to get invested in this one. I'm not sure if it helped or hurt matters for Courtney Rush to introduce a dance contest in the beginning of her first ever major singles title shot, but it certainly is the first time that I have ever seen a wrestler give the champion a lapdance before a title match.
The match did it's job, and definitely recaptured the crowd before the end. Rush looked good in her big singles opportunity, though she seemed a little out of her depth at this point in her career to be on this stage, and Melissa tapped into her mean side and just punished the hell out of Rush. That eventually culminated in the move we were all begging to see, the move so nasty it has "Thanks for coming" right in the name, the Kudoh Driver.
OW.
Melissa retained the title, everyone left happy, and we all headed over to the after party to get groped by Jimmy Jacobs.
If we're lucky.
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Cewsh's Conclusion:
Cewsh: Well this wasn't quite as good a show as Volume 54, but what is? If nothing else, this show moved all of the storylines along quite satisfactorily, and gave us a run of 3 matches that are completely beyond fault. I'll give you a minute to try to remember the last time you watched a show that had 3 consecutive matches that you couldn't find any fault with. Or maybe more than a minute. This could take awhile.
That's all for the second part of our four part series wrapping up the awesomeness that was the Shimmer weekend. Still to come we have a fatal four way so good that Joey Eastman had to warn us in advance, the retirement of a legend, and the most satisfying title win this year by anyone not named Okada. Stay tuned, boys and girls, and as always remember to keep reading and be good to one another.
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