Saturday 22 October 2011

Week in Review for Women's Wrestling #18

Quite a busy week we had in store for us here. The biggest TNA PPV of the year took place with a big title match. We also had our Tag Champions defending their titles as well as a return that was the buzz of the wrestling world. Over in WWE we are once again zipping towards another PPV though we will be seeing a fresh match up instead.

Bound For Glory - Winter* vs Mickie James vs Madison Rayne vs Velvet Sky (Four Corners Match; Knockouts Championship):
If I may pull out one of my stock catchphrases, one of the biggest trainwrecks since the Titanic. It was overbooked and sloppier than when my cousin's dog finds the secret stash of Indian food. Making Karen the referee ruined the match. This is the same problem that WWE had when they put Vickie in the tag match at WrestleMania 26. Karen could be a good thing to add to the division but not when she's booked to draw the attention to herself instead of the girls wrestling. If they were dead set on involving her in the match then having her come down to ringside and try to interfere would have been more than fine. I couldn't get into the match at all with Karen not even bothering to count pins. That kind of comedy is fine for a regular TV match but not a big title match at the big PPV of the year. Now if you removed Karen completely from the match, the actual in-ring work wasn't bad. I feel that it wasn't as cohesive as last year's four corners match but the work was all fine. I did like that spot where Winter accidentally took out Karen with the red mist but I feel she's the forgotten party in this. She got her first title taken off her for no good reason and then abruptly put back on her and creative team didn't bother to build her up as a strong champion. Making this a Fatal 4 Way took all the attention off her and all the attention in this match was entirely on the two favourites to win - Madison and Velvet. I felt a swerve coming on but they went with Velvet anyway. I am happy for her to finally win the title and she does deserve it but I wish it could have happened in a singles match with a long running storyline to make it feel more special. 5/10

Raw - Eve vs Natalya:
I did see this coming eventually but I was surprised that Kelly just got dropped like that. She did deserve better since she gave three stellar PPV matches with Beth and the big feud gets dropped with a two minute non-title match on Smackdown that the writers appear to have retconned into her rematch clause. I do have a theory though - the idea of either of Eve or Kelly turning heel has been tossed around and I think Kelly is building towards one. If it should be either of them to turn then Kelly should give it a go. I was curious about seeing one at the start of the year but now it seems like they might be laying the groundwork for one. Kelly can say she fought Beth as hard as she could and then she gets dropped only for her friend to "take the opportunity away". Kelly can be aggressive and she could make a good bitchy heel in my opinion. Now for the match, I enjoyed it. Not as fun as their match earlier in the year but still good and very fresh. I especially liked that move Eve did to knock her down when she went for the moonsault. I like the idea that they might be thinking of a possible Eve/Nattie feud in the future so they won't give too much away. WWE does do short build ups pretty well so the title match on Sunday could go down pretty well. 6/10

NXT - Maxine vs Kaitlyn:
I remember last week I suggested bringing Kaitlyn and other divas over to NXT to give them a chance to work, and good on WWE for following through. NXT has really been a nice little haven for the forgotten wrestlers in WWE this year like Tyson Kid and Yoshi Tatsu and it has extended to the divas this time. Kaitlyn got to speak and have a segment with AJ who wasn't left out either. It's also fitting that almost exactly a year after their trainwreck of a match on NXT season 3 that we see them come together and put on a pretty good match. The opening exchanges were really fun and I really do enjoy watching Kaitlyn in the ring because you can see her improvement. For someone who got thrown on TV with no experience she has gotten ahold of wrestling well enough, though of course there is room for more improvement. Maxine was as solid as she ever was though there was a bit of a sag in the middle. The pace seemed to slow down for a while when she was dominating. The ending was much better and it was certainly a different way to end the match. I'd like to see Maxine recruit a diva of her own to help out. Maryse should be returning any time soon. Wow, I can't believe I'm actually anticipating a Maryse return to the ring. 6/10

Impact - Tara & Brooke Tessmacher* vs Winter & Angelina Love (Knockouts Tag Team Championships):
I was annoyed at the tag champs being left off the Bound For Glory card but this works fine having them defend the belts on Impact. As iffy as TNA can get with the titles, I do like that Tara and Brooke have defended them fairly regularly, even if they haven't been on TV as much as I would have liked. I suppose we could have Angelina and Winter get placed into a feud with them once Winter has her rematch with Velvet over and done with. The match here was fairly good and gave Winter the attention she was missing the last few weeks and at the PPV match. It is a shame that she's barely a year in the company and she's already a 2-time singles champ and 1-time tag champ but her full potential has hardly been tapped into. Now then this match was a decent length and the breakdown at the end was fun to watch. Brooke continues to impress in the ring. 7/10

Velvet Sky, Karen Jarrett and Traci Brooks segment:
The video package they made for Velvet was pretty good and it made her title win seem more special than it actually felt on Sunday. This segment was pretty cool and I guess I wasn't completely off the ball when I suggested Madison would take the title at the PPV because it seems she is to be Velvet's next challenger. It does seem that TNA has muddled up their storylines a bit because we have a sort of tag team feud involving the singles champ when the tag champs don't have anyone to feud with. I'm sure they'll fix this little hole eventually. Anyway it's interesting to see Gail Kim back in TNA. She wasn't looking that good - too much makeup and unflattering hair but it will be curious to see what she's like in the ring as a heel since she hasn't been one for years. She did alright enough as a heel in WWE so it does give something to look forward to. The possibility of a Gail Kim/Velvet Sky match with the roles reversed is very exciting for me now. Segment rating: 8/10

Smackdown - Eve, Natalya & Beth segment:
I'm happy they got to cut a promo but it did seem like Beth was rushing through all her lines. Maybe the segment was meant to go longer but had to be cut down a little? It was cool for them to show replays of their submissions on Kelly and Alicia and Nattie has really improved on the mic. As good as she was as a face she is so brilliantly evil as a heel. I still feel that Beth is more of a tweener while Nattie is a full blown heel in their little stable. Eve was solid on the mic as she always is though I guess I was hoping for some more excitement for the title match. It's been built up of course and hopefully Eve won't take the title on Sunday because this is another long feud I'd like to see. Going back to what I was saying in the Raw entry, Kelly was conspicuous by her absence wasn't she? True this might be clutching at straws but could we be seeing the start of some tension developing between the two of them? I'd like to see two feuds - Eve and Kelly on Raw while Beth feuds with either Alicia or Layla on Smackdown. Segment rating: 6/10

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