Iceman's Match of the Week
Ayako Hamada & Ayumi Kurihara vs Madison Eagles and Sara Del Rey
SHIMMER Volume 43 - October 2nd, 2011
Match Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eClN6zJQ0gs
Fun fact: Roughly a decade before Stephanie McMahon invented women's wrestling, a little indie promotion sprung up in Chicago for the express purpose of putting a spotlight on something that very closely resembled it.
Sarcasm aside, SHIMMER is a pretty cool part of modern American wrestling history. A good portion of the most popular women wrestlers in the world today spent at least some time there at one point, including Becky Lynch and Bayley. We kinda take it as a given these days that there's just a lot of good women's wrestling out there, but in the early days of the promotion, it was a pretty big deal to have a company whose selling point was, "Hey, we've got a bunch of ladies who just have really good matches."
And this is one of those really good matches. Most of the names in this match are probably at least somewhat recognizable to the folks in our little community: Hamada from her TNA days, Del Rey for being a big-time coach in NXT now and arguably the single biggest reason that women's wrestling in WWE has become what it is, and Eagles from my occasional rants in the Discord about how great she is. Kurihara may be an unknown, though - she's actually married to one YOSHI-HASHI, and make no mistake about it, she's easily the better worker in that relationship. She plays her part very well in this bout, as do the others.
There's nothing particularly revolutionary about this match, but it's such an easy watch. A hot start leads into some very solid heel work from the challengers, and then once they hit the halfway point, they're off and running, with basically no downtime until the end. It's a shining example of why indie wrestling was so popular among the portion of the fanbase that it was during this period; in a time where WWE was still calling their women "Divas" and running their top programs with such luminaries as Eve Torres, Maryse, Melina, Jillian, and the Bella Twins (long before people started pretending they were Kobashi and Misawa reincarnated, even), Dave Prazak and Allison Danger just put four of the world's best female workers in the ring and told them to go kill it.
I guess that settles the lingering Benoit question. Not like I'm rushing to recommend his body of work because I imagine it's still awkward to some fans, but he does have some things that are worth showing off. The man legitimately was one of the finest technical wrestlers the business has ever had and, even today, his matches hold up. There's so much people can learn from Benoit but I don't know how many workers these days are able to remove themselves from his actions to take something from his matches. It's a shame.
Black Tiger II (Eddie Guerrero) vs Wild Pegasus (Chris Benoit) Super J Cup, First Round Match 4/16/1994
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6drjk
Inspired by Voices of Wrestling's Rich Kraetsch's discussion this tournament on an episode of his retro series regarding Best of the Super Juniors, I did myself a major solid and checked out the original Super J Cup from 1994. It was a legendary one night tournament show and if you've never seen it, do yourself a favor and make time to correct that. As our resident guy who focuses on American fan favorites this match caught my eye as a candidate for this topic.
It's super short at just 11 minutes and features icons Eddie and Benoit back in their early years and under weird pseudonyms and gimmicks. Hell Eddie is under a mask. Neither was yet anything resembling a star, though Benoit was already developing a reputation among the tape traders for the speed and intensity of his work and this tournament would earn him his first five star match. But I assume most people have seen Wild Pegasus vs Great Sasuke by this point, so I figured I would go for a deeper dive.
This match presents an excellently executed match that is built around the clash in styles between Black Tiger's aerial maneuvers and Wild Pegasus' penchant for the ground game and chain-grappling. The result is fast and furious and serves as showcase for Black Tiger's athleticism, including a glorious springboard rana that was truly innovative in 1994.
Santo vs Casas vs Dandy
First of all, thanks for the writeup, Bidoof. Definitely added to this match to understand some of those details you tossed out there.
I guess it's pretty well known at this point that I'm not much of a lucha fan and likely won't ever be, and while this match did feature some examples of a few of the reasons why (awkward spots here and there, points where there wasn't much flow from place to place), it also managed to avoid a whole lot of those pitfalls. Violent lucha, generally speaking, tends to grab me a little better than high-flying lucha, because there's usually such a stronger feeling of authenticity to everything. And that pattern definitely holds here. There's venom behind every strike thrown, which makes for a whole match full of great visuals, especially when mixed with all the blood that shows up later. Hard to believe Santo's even wearing the same gear at the end of the match as he was at the beginning for how different the color looks.
I know the meat of the match was always gonna be in the 2-out-of-3-falls section and all, but I would have liked to have seen the beginning sections go on a little bit longer. I was enjoying the interplay between the three where the Dandy/Casas alliance threatened to explode a couple of times before they got refocused on their plan, and it just would've been nice to see a little more Casas in general. I'm also just not a huge 2-out-of-3-falls fan in general. But again, I understand why those first parts had to be slightly rushed in favor of the latter.
Random additional thoughts: very good crowd, liked Santo's submission work a lot, the diving headbutt was brutal, really enjoyed the bits where Dandy was just tearing at the mask. Can't say I loved this match - my small issues with the structure and flow hold it back some, as does the fact that I just don't have enough investment in these guys to really get drawn all the way into such a personal, story-based bout - but for something that kinda had to fight against my typical taste as a wrestling fan, it was quite enjoyable. Certainly something I'd never have watched if not for this topic, which is exactly what makes the series so fun.