The best wrestling match of the week arrived early! I probably should have bought a ticket to Slammiversary when they announced it was in Boston, but TNA has been rather hit an miss for me this year and I was waiting for them to announce the card. I became very excited when Gail Kim was given a match. I become even more excited when TNA announced it was a last Knockout Standing match! I just knew it was going to be good! I really wanted to see it live, but unfortunately while Boston Has decent public transportation, I couldn’t figure out a way to get back to home after the show :( If TNA had announced it earlier I might have been able to get a hotel room, but as it was last minute, I ended up having to watch it on PPV.
Now if you know me, then you know I am a Gail Kim Mark, but I am not marking out when I say that Gail Kim’s match stole the show at the PPV. It was awesome! It was so good, that it I couldn’t concentrate on the next match. It was hard hitting. Both women looked like they wanted to end each other careers. Gail pulled out the flying dragon and applied the figure four on Tarell around the ring post. Taryn got her receipt on Gail by putting Gail in ringpost figure four after Gail went her sideways splash and hit a chair that she wedged in the corner! Both women took huge bumps. The bit were Taryn went for a cross body and Gail countered her with chair was awesome. Taryn at one point tried to spear Gail but Gail got out of the way and Terrell went through the ropes and landed face first on the entrance ramp!
As a Kim Mark I would have preferred Gail to go over, but I can’t say that Taryn winning the match is bad. TNA has done more in building up Taryn Terrell then they have with just about any other Knockout except maybe Gail Kim herself. A lose for Terrell might have killed her momentum, while, Gail is still the big bad of the KO’s and a lose doesn’t change that too much for her.
The rest of the PPV was good as well. It made me very excited for Thursday, which unfortunately was a huge letdown. I was really hoping that TNA would do something with the Knockouts, but I guess TNA creative didn’t expect the match to as incredible as it was.(then agin TNA dropping the ball isn’t anything new. As one show is live and TNA then pretapes the next weeks show right after, I can tell you that things don’t sound too exciting for next week either. No Gail on either show. I am hoping she will be back at the next taping. The question is did this finish the feud? If not where else can it go? Monster’s Ball?
Sunday was a great night for women’s wrestling as not only was there Slammiversary on In Demand PPV, there was also Evolve 22 on iPPV. Evolve featured one of my favorite grapplers, Mia Yim. I have saw Mia Yim in one of her earliest matches and I knew right then that she was headed for greatness and every time I have seen her she has gotten better and better. The match was Mia Yim vs Ivelisse Velez. The match was good. It was a little shy of 10 minutes and had a lot of back and forth action. I think you can still order the replay.
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| Photo by Luke Matsuki |
The main event of WAVE was cosplay tag team match with Kana and Ryo” Aniki” Mizunami vs Yumi Ohka and Mio Shirai. It was a pajama match, in which all the girls had to wrestle in their PJs. Back when WWE RAW was doing their guest host gimmick, every divas match was a costume match catered around whoever was the guest host. Because every match was like that, I don’t think any of the girls enjoyed it, but when it isn’t a regular occurrence, it then becomes rare and special, I think the girls probably enjoy it. It certainly looked like they were having fun with it. Kana is amazing. She can do anything in the ring. While known for her stiff style, and technical wrestling skills, it is interesting to see Kana in a light, fun comedy match. A couple of great comedy spots in the match is where Mio is facing off against Aniki and is brandishing her stuffed cat like a pair of nunchaku and when Kana is wrestling Yumi. Yumi is blocking Kana’s kicks with pillow like someone holding a punching bag during a training session!
I can’t figure out which match stole the show at OZ Academy! Pretty much the entire card was awesome! I wish they hadn’t clipped the 1rst match as I am a big fan everyone involved. If you’re going to shave a match for time constraint then please don’t post the time of the match. If you post graphic stating the match time was 13:09 and the show has only been on the air for 5 minutes then it just makes me feel like I am missing all the good stuff. But other than that it was great.
02. Hikaru Shida vs Mayumi Ozaki - (OZ Academy... by SenorLARIATO
The 2 best bouts were Aja Kong vs Ayumi Kurihara and Mayumi Ozaki vs Hikaru Shida. Ozaki vs Shida was just amazing. For those who have never seen OZ before, think ECW but with women. They fight into the crowd every show and this match was no exception. Shida even got busted open! I have always like Hikaru Shida but I didn’t expect this type of match from her. Kurihara vs Kong was incredible as well. Ayumi is sporting new yellow and orange gear. Kong is so big Kurihara was grounded for much of the match, but Ayumi was still able to give Kong the urange several times! This match was very good and very exciting but I liked Ayumi’s Dress Up Wild Fight against Mayumi Ozaki a little more. Both matches are incredible!
04. Ayumi Kurihara vs Aja Kong - (OZ 05/12/13) by SenorLARIATO
Originally that was going to be it for this entry…but I got busy and didn’t upload so I guess I will talk about the following week as well… Well this week wasn’t so hot in my opinion. TNA might have been great at Slammiversary but failed to impress me on iMPACT on the following weeks. Instead of following up on the great action told at Slammiversary, TNA opted instead to continue the Mickie and Velvet angle. One June 6, edition of impact Micke dodged Sky because she was already signed for a match against Taeler Hendrix. It was a decent match but I really wanted to see where they were going with Kim and Terrell. The men’s action was bland as well. The main event between Jeff Hardy and Bully Ray was O-K but it had a lame finish. The next week on iMPACT was worse. They didn’t even have a Knockouts match…just an inring segment between Mickie and Velvet. wouldn’t have been so annoyed by this if there was an actual women’s match on the show as well. I am fine with the building of match. Infact I applaud and approve of the girls not only a storyline, but I want to see action in the ring and it would be nice to see two storylines active at the same time. There was a time when TNA routinely had 2 women’s matches per show. It is not like there is not enough women on the roster to fill 2 segments.
Now I hear this was a big couple of weeks for the WWE Divas. Supposedly there was lots of build to this Sundays Payback PPV and lots of stuff going on in NXT. But I didn’t watch it, so I can’t comment. Given that WWE has done so little with the division in the past couple of years and WWE Diva fans are so starving for something to talk about, the cynic in me, thinks the fans are making mountains out of molehills, but back when Gail and Melina were still in the WWE I so wanted their feud to go over that I read way too much into everything that happened. Although if you ask me, Gail Kim vs Melina was still the best feud in WWE in the year 2011 even if it got no coverage, only played out on HouseShows and Superstars and barely anybody remembers it.
The week was not a total bust because Pro Wrestling Wave delivered as expected. This week started out with a fun comedy match between Ayako Hamada and Kana vs Ranmaru and Apple Miyuki. At one point in the match Ranmaru uses her ninja magic to make Hamada dress up like a school girl. Hamada tags Kana in and Kana has to wrestle wearing an AKB48/school girl outfit. I think Ranmaru might the funniest person in all of puroresu. Is just me or does everytime that Ranmaru says, "Oh My God!"in English do you just burst out laughing!
The match itself is very solid. There is a reason that Kana and Hamada are known as two of the best to come out of Japan. WAVE followed that with Mio Shirai vs Leon. This was a grat high flying match! The last match was another tag match. This time it was Toshi Uematsu and Ran Yu Yu vs Moeka Haruhi and Shibutani Shu. Another solid match, although the 1rst two were my favorites in the program.
I am not certain what lies in store for next week. I know that Pro Wrestling WAVE will be great as it always is. Pro wrestling WAVE can be watched here http://gyao.yahoo.co.jp/p/01034/v00013/ Although you will need to go through a proxy to watch it.
