Madison Eagles vs. Nicole Matthews, SHIMMER Volume 58 (10/19/2013)

An absolute hoot.

It’s SHIMMER’s version of the famous (famous? famous among people who’ve seen it, I guess?) CM Punk vs. Steve Corino 20:00 draw from 2013, in which two heels at different stages of their careers have an incredibly fun and wholly inconclusive match.

There are differences, of course. These two are a little more hammy early on, with the near-immediate double cheating spots, and the characters are slightly different. Corino was a just barely over the hill dirtbag to Punk’s not super athletic but endlessly endearing dirtbag on the come up, much closer to mirror versions of each other. Here, Madison is still clearly in her athletic prime and a classical best in the world type still very much in the middle of that, to Nicole’s…well, not super athletic but endlessly endearing dirtbag on the come up. Nailed that part perfectly. The main difference comes out of that, as it’s very much a legitimization of Matthews as a singles wrestler after the long Canadian Ninjas reign, and it totally works.

It’s a slow transition, as Eagles never goes totally nuclear to try and kill Nicole by the end, but it’s surprising all the same that she’s able to hang in there as long as she does and take it to the draw.

Nicole’s super expressive, but Eagles goes down low with her and completely matches her with all the great little bits here. There’s some fun mirror stuff, but it always pays off with one of them cheating immediately after the show of respect. It’s everything a heel vs. heel match should be. Relentlessly charming, funny as hell, but then also just a really great match on top of that. It’s always moving forward, and Eagles does such a fantastic job of slowly taking Matthews more and more seriously, and Matthews does a great job of slowly getting more and more serious about it too. By the end, Madison Eagles is closing in as the natural order’s asserted itself, but when she can’t end it in time, Nicole suddenly has this gigantic boon, being the first one in a long time that Eagles wasn’t able to beat.

After the match, they don’t do the pitch perfect Corino/Punk “SCREW YOU, PAY FOR IT NEXT TIME” bit, but there’s another deeply endearing little bit they do instead, where Nicole keeps holding up a palm to signal for five more minutes, but when Madison Eagles echoes her, she just high fives her instead and leaves.

The most charming SHIMMER match I’ve watched yet, making up for whatever else it might have lacked in flawless execution or going a little long to get to the time limit. There’s always a good to great match or a handful of them on these shows, but this is one of the only ones I’m actually going to remember and think about in a month’s time, probably.

One to seek out.

***1/4