@twf87
This week saw the conclusion of the second round of the Mae Young Classic. Wins for Io Shirai, Deonna Purazzo, Teagan Nox, and Mia Yim saw them join Meiko Satomura, Toni Storm, Lacey Lain, and Rhea Ripley in the quarter finals. This week’s episode didn’t live up to last week in terms of match quality, but I enjoyed Purazzo’s match against Xia Li, and Nox looked good against Nicole Matthews. Seeing Io in the MYC has been cool, but I think that she’s yet to have a great match. Her bout against Zeuxis this week had some good spots, but it doesn’t seem like everything has clicked for her yet. Again her moonsault landed a bit off target, but it was enough for her to move on. Mia Yim vs Kaitlyn was a match that impressed me, and I really expected Kaitlyn to progress, especially after she kicked out of a Soul Food. Yim showed her versatility by forcing her to tap out to a knee bar submission, and promises to be a tough opponent for Toni Storm in the quarter final.
There were also some interesting developments in Stardom this week, as their Goddesses of Stardom tag team tournament kicked off. Stardom announced that at their next Korakuen Hall show there would be title matches between Kagetsu and Hana Kimura, and Momo Watanabe and Mayu Iwatani. Normally the main event would be the World of Stardom title match, but this time around Momo argued that her title should be in the main event, since she had drawn with Kagetsu in the last match they had. Stardom officials decided to hold a fan vote, which means that there is a possibility that the world title match could get demoted to the semi main event. Currently match between Kagetsu and Hana has 55% of the fan votes on Twitter.
I don’t watch WWE anymore, beyond the current MYC, but it’s been interesting to see the reaction this week to the news that Saudi Arabia has almost certainly murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. There is growing support for WWE to cancel their second planned show in Saudi Arabia, Crown Jewel, which is scheduled for November 2nd. The fact that WWE has no problem in taking Saudi money up until this point, despite their support for terrorism, a bloody war in Yemen, and human rights abuses, it would seem unlikely that they will change their mind now, unless the PR damage from running the show becomes so great that they have no choice. I wouldn’t expect WWE to jeopardise their financial relationship with the Saudi royal family, so they’ll probably push on and hope that everything blows over.
A lot of my week in wrestling has been writ fairly large across the website as I have been watching the wXw shows as they had their second big weekend of the year: World Tag Team League. Outside of the happenings on each of the shows, the biggest thing to come out of it is the injury to Absolute Andy that has forced them to run with an interim champion. The fact that it is interim at least implies that Andy isn’t going to be out for long, but I also feel that his injury probably cost Bobby Gunns a title victory in front of a crowd that would have been very receptive to the King of Smoke Style going over for the big gold. Andy coming back to take on Ilja Dragunov is a story that is just going to work better than having Gunns be the guy that Andy comes back for, whilst a win over Dragunov felt a little bit too soon for Gunns.
It is also worth mentioning the mental atmosphere for the Gunns versus Dragunov match. The presence of a strong UK/Irish contingent helped, but the chants for both men didn’t let up for close to twenty minutes. I remember once seeing Radiohead perform ‘The Bends’ on Jools Holland, and it was one of the very few times a live, televised performance of something really blew me away. This was somewhat akin to that. The match wasn’t mind-blowingly amazing itself, but the crowd made it something more special than it otherwise would have been.
I’m really pleased to see JayFK pick up the wXw World Tag Team Titles. They are an excellent heel act – sure, they just play the usual arrogant, chickenshit bad guys, but they’ve had some recent matches in which the matches have played out in a fashion that just makes them really fun to watch. Case in point would be the win over Aussie Open from Night 3 of WTTL; the match could have conceivably been over within the first twenty seconds, and that would have made sense for the type of team that JayFK are. However, in staying in the contest after the initial onslaught, they were able to pick up the victory that took them into the final. I look forward to seeing where they go with the belts as we head towards the end of the year.
In my old school watching, I realised that WCCW and WWF both ran big matches/angles on the same week in 1984. As part of their Thanksgiving Star Wars event, Killer Khan and Terry Gordy met in a Texas Death Match that would win first place in the DVDVR 80s project for the territory. Airing on the same week, we’d see Andre the Giant make the interesting decision to choose S.D. Jones as his tag team partner against Ken Patera and Big John Studd. With Jones knocked out by a back body drop to the floor, Patera and Studd would cut Andre’s hair off; a rare moment where the Giant was made to look weak. Knowing where things head in 1985, it is interesting to see WWF beginning to move the pieces into position in preparation for Wrestlemania. On the same show, mention would be made of Cyndi Lauper getting an achievement award at Madison Square Garden in the near future – another angle that would pave the way to Wrestlemania.
