After the events of yesterday, SHIMMER returns for its DVD tapings for volumes 56 and 57.
Expected to continue on from yesterday’s tapings include the quest by the Global Green Gangsters to secure another Tag Team Title shot at the Canadian Ninjas; Saraya Knight‘s reign of terror is being curbed by the officials; meanwhile, Jessicka Havok wants to leave more bodies in her wake, and Cheerleader Melissa is looking to retain the SHIMMER Championship. Also, these tapings mark the final matches for Allison Danger, who retires from the ring on volume 57.
As with yesterday, we will bring you results after the jump, along with pictures on thoughts on the show in due course. For now, click into the results and enjoy.
SPARKLE
a. Angelus Layne beat Marti Belle with a TKO.
b. Xandra Bale & Pink Flash Kira defeated Angie Skye & December. Bake pinned Skye with a flying bodypress.
SHIMMER Volume 56
1. Kimber Lee pinned Shazza McKenzie following a released German Suplex.
2. Leva Bates defeated Miss Natural with a crucifix.
3. Rhia O’Reilly beat Leah Von Dutch with the Rhiajustment.
4. Kellie Skater pinned Nicole Matthews with the International Incident.
5. Saraya Knight made Jessie McKay tap out to the Bridal Rocking Horse.
6. Mia Yim beat Evie with a gutwrench suplex.
7. Allysin Kay & Taylor Made defeated MsChif & Christina Von Eerie. Kay pinned Von Eerie after interference from Saraya Knight. Shazza McKenzie & Veda Scott made the save.
8. Portia Perez v Tomoka Nakagawa ended in a double DQ. 3G and the Ninjas had a pull apart brawl afterwards, and they’ll compete on volume 57 in a no DQ, no count out match for the tag belts.
9. Kana beat Ayako Hamada, Mercedes Martinez & Yuu Yamagata in a 4 way.
– Allison Danger revealed her final match on the next volume will be with Leva Bates against Ayako Hamada & Cheerleader Melissa.
10. Madison Eagles defeated Athena with the Hellbound.
11. Serena Deeb pinned Jessicka Havok with a spear.
12. Cheerleader Melissa defeated Kalamity with an Air Raid Crash to retain the SHIMMER Championship.
SHIMMER Volume 57
1. Santana Garrett beat Rhia O’Reilly with the Shining Star Press.
2. Melanie Cruise defeated Xandra Bale with a massive spinebuster.
3. Jessicka Havok beat Mia Yim with a sit out powerslam.
4. Christina Von Eerie, Veda Scott & Shazza McKenzie defeated Saraya Knight, Allysin Kay & Taylor Made. Von Eerie pinned Knight after a punch with a foreign object.
5. Thunderkitty beat Sassy Stephie with a sleeperhold.
6. Athena pinned Kimber Lee with a springboard DDT.
7. Jessie McKay beat Mercedes Martinez with the Boyfriend Stealer.
8. Kana made Kalamity tap out to a cross armbreaker.
9. Allison Danger & Leva Bates beat Cheerleader Melissa & Ayako Hamada via reverse decision DQ after Melissa refused to release a Fujiwara armbar on Danger. Melissa then secured her heel turn by attacking Hamada.
– Afterwards, Danger revealed the reason why she was retiring was because of a stroke she suffered in January, after which, tests found she had lesions on her brain which were career ending but not life threatening.
10. Madison Eagles defeated Courtney Rush with the Hellbound.
11. Kellie Skater & Tomoka Nakagawa beat Portia Perez & Nicole Matthews to win the SHIMMER Tag Team Championship. Skater pinned Perez with the International Incident.
Thoughts on the shows
Today’s disclaimer is that these notes are being written up on Monday evening (and finished on Tuesday morning) and based solely on memory rather than notes – and come after an afterparty, sitting up until silly o’clock in the morning on Monday, and two periods of sleep. Anything missed is almost certainly due to having watched 50 live wrestling matches in the last two days. And with that…
• Two more SPARKLE pre-show matches today featuring some of the same names as yesterday. Angelus Layne & Angie Skye looked best today. There’s definite potential there.
• There were lots of people making major waves this weekend, with heel turns, retirements and returns – and Kimber Lee’s contributions to the weekend may well be overlooked by people due to being a bit further down the card, but she had a really good showing across the whole weekend – including on this volume vs Shazza McKenzie. For someone of Kimber’s level of experience, she clearly gets it and should’ve secured herself a regular spot on the roster.
• Leva Bates vs Miss Natural was an incredibly fun match. Leva cosplayed as Mr Spock from Star Trek, which was the basis for some really nicely observed spots and comedy (Leva’s Vulcan mind meld with Natural revealed “…Beer… Beer… Beer…. Beer… Justin Bieber??!?”) and some Star Wars/Star Trek confusion when Natural tried to use a Force Choke. This was comedy used right. Natural even bit off one of Leva’s Vulcan ears, resulting in a “Mike Tyson” chant. Just really good.
• Rhia O’Reilly vs Leah Von Dutch was a pretty one-sided contest. Rhia dominated and won pretty convincingly.
• Kellie Skater vs Nicole Matthews was the first of two 3G vs Canadian NINJAs matches on the volume, and the pick of the two in my opinion. Always a big fan of Nicole Matthews singles matches, and this was the only opportunity to see one this weekend, so I enjoyed this.
• Saraya Knight vs Jessie McKay was a storyline based match playing off their interactions on Vol 47 when Knight had intimidated McKay. Good but brutal match with a conclusive winner.
• Mia Yim vs Evie appeared to be very good and kick-based. Honestly, I was distracted for much of this match due to a drip in the Eagles Club coming from the A/C and dripping on my arm. I’m sorry, but my overriding memory of the match is uncomfortably shuffling my chair around to avoid getting any more wet while also going “Oooh!” at the match.
• Made In Sin vs MsEerie was a decent tag match – want to take a moment to throw out considerable credit to Taylor Made for having a strong weekend. She seemed to work in the ring more than usual, and the impromptu “Trailer Made” chant from Day 1 really gave her a chance to show some personality. The post match which saw Saraya join up with Made In Sin to set up a six woman on the next volume was an intriguing combination too. More on that later.
• Portia Perez vs Tomoka Nakagawa was good and not probably the result you expected – but it felt like the match was overshadowed slightly by the overarching angle of 3G vs NINJAs. The finish saw Nakagawa accidentally spit water in referee’s face and Nicole Matthews and Kellie Skater run in with chairs, drawing the double DQ. All part of the story running across the weekend.
• The four-way between Hamada, Kana, Yamagata & Martinez was a weird one. It was easily one of the most entertaining matches at the Eagles Club in recent memory – there was plenty of personality on show, and a fair bit of silliness too. It even had some fun storylines running through it, with alliances and double crosses between competitors. I think it was the best match on Vol 56, though part of my brain seems to think it’s a bit weird to term it a “great match” given the large amount of mucking about in the match, but all I know is that I watched the match with a smile on my face throughout.
• Madison Eagles vs Athena was another “Eagles Special” that harked back to her glory days as SHIMMER Champion where she’d give you *just enough* to think that your favourite will beat her, only to crush your hopes with a Hellbound. Clean, of course. No excuses other than Madison Eagles was the better wrestler – which actually makes her even more infuriating as a heel than if she cheated her way to victory. Once again, Eagles wasn’t missing a beat here.
• Funny how I suggested that Jessicka Havok and Serena Deeb could have a better match if they were to meet again… because that’s exactly what they did here. They reprised the general feel of their original bout but added some more to it. Better than Vol 54.
• Cheerleader Melissa vs Kalamity was interesting. Melissa, who appeared to be working a subtle/not-so-subtle heel against Courtney Rush yesterday all of a sudden worked pretty outright heel here, being very aggressive and very rough with Kalamity. Kalamity did well here, and the fans did get behind her (though it was still a mostly split crowd). Kalamity didn’t get enough in to make it truly competitive, in my opinion, but it was a good match.
• Santana Garrett vs Rhia O’Reilly happened. Unfortunately, this is one of those matches that, across a weekend of 50 matches, it’s kind of lost in a haze of memories. They did have a very difficult slot though – just after the interval. I remember Santana’s finish (the Shining Star Press), but for the most part all I can remember is quite liking it.
• Melanie Cruise vs Xandra Bale was a superb squash match – damn near perfect for what it set out to do. Bale was the rag doll for Cruise to destroy in reasonably short order – ending with a sitout spinebuster following what might well be described as a delayed “Dirty Dancing” style lift.
• Interesting that Jessicka Havok came out directly after the Melanie Cruise match given the similarities I wrote about on the first day’s report regarding their current pushes and styles – though her match with Mia Yim was far more competitive than Cruise/Bale. Good though, and I’m personally glad Havok appears like she’s staying around.
• The six woman match with Saraya teaming with Made In Sin was fun to the point where I highly suggest that Knight & Made In Sin are kept together as a unit in future. Makes sense that the evil Saraya would have some backup, and who more appropriate than a tag team called ‘Made In Sin’… plus the leadership dynamic of the team is good. Allysin Kay is clearly the captain of her tag team, but even she respects Saraya, so there’s a three-step thing going on there which I like, and which offers some storyline potential.
• I said I “quite liked” Thunderkitty’s match on Vol 55, but I outright adored her match here against Sassy Stephie. It was laid out beautifully, and the throwback gimmick – which is based around careful observation of old school wrestling – worked very well here. Stephie’s style meshed pretty much perfectly with TK’s, and the match was an unexpected gem.
• Athena vs Kimber Lee and Jessie McKay vs Mercedes Martinez were both good to very good matches, but again somewhat difficult to really remember in any great detail especially given the emotional bombshells coming up on the show. There was certainly nothing I remember in a bad way about either match, though we’re not sure what Athena’s finisher was supposed to be – was it a springboard DDT or a springboard O-Face attempt? Not clear.
• Kana vs Kalamity was excellent. Kalamity’s two matches today were better than her two yesterday as far as I’m concerned, and I’m over the moon she’s had such a productive weekend. Not sure we can say that LuFisto’s absence on these tapings “opened up the spot” for her to have some higher profile matches or not, but hopefully Kalamity can stay at this level.
• Allison Danger’s last match was an emotional roller coaster… from the announcement of Re-X’s weight as “12 Large” (which I’ll be honest, got me filling up), to the references to Melissa breaking Danger’s collar bone five years ago (coincidentally the first SHIMMER show I ever travelled to live back in early 2008) to seeing Danger get to work her wrestling heroine in Hamada, to realizing that Melissa’s aggressiveness over past volumes was playing out in an uncomfortable way here (leading to the post match “official” heel turn) – this was a crazy one. Loved it though. And as for Danger’s post match reveal of her health issues, well, I’ll write something more for the Roundup this week, but Danger’s been super close to us travelling Brits for the last five years, and it was quite the moment. Thank you, Danger.
• After the emotional last segment, how was anybody going to be able to follow that? Well, I don’t think anybody could – but I’ll tell you this much, there is nobody on the roster I’d rather have seen to try and raise my heart back up than Courtney Rush wrestling Madison Eagles – two of my personal favourites and two of the people I most like to watch live. They ended up having quite the match too.
• The main event of Vol 57 and the main event of the weekend concluded the major in-ring rivalry of the weekend – and culminated in an emotional title win for 3G – with Kellie Skater finally completing her personal journey from opening match “comedy” figure to SHIMMER title holder. I think *everybody* in the arena was ready and waiting for the NINJAs to lose their titles, and so everybody was overjoyed to see it happen. After the frustration of Day 1 (and even back to WrestleCon), Day 2 paid off the 3G/NINJAs feud perfectly. I hope the NINJAs run is over now as a tag team. Even though I like their schtick, I’m ready now for a proper singles run for both Portia and especially Nicole.
• So, when’s the next SHIMMER weekend?
— Stew Allen
— Kimber Lee & Courtney Rush ringside photography by Rob Myers
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