Cheerleader Melissa vs. Madison Eagles vs. Athena vs. Nicole Matthews, SHIMMER Volume 68 (10/18/2014)

(photo credit to Falcon Joshi Blog)

This was an elimination match for Melissa’s SHIMMER Title.

It’s far from the best match possible. It’s not really even a great match. Stunningly, it’s the rare SHIMMER match that may have benefited from five more minutes, as the first segment with all four in winds up lasting too long, as opposed to the more dramatic sections following it. There’s a lot of those quirks that always bother me, beyond just sloppiness, the insistence on numerous elbow exchanges when nobody in this throws a reliably good elbow during it. The match just sort of goes a long for a while there, before the booking begins.

Uncommonly for independent wrestling, it’s there that the match becomes a lot more interesting and worthwhile. You get the classic sort of Anarchy Rulz ’99 ending with the challengers teaming up and Athena eliminating Melissa with the O Face, forcing a new champion no matter what. Unfortunately, they then sort of rush through the section with her on offense against the other two, with Melissa blaming Athena and distracting her for a cradle with the tights by Nicole.

The final segment with Nicole and Eagles is the absolute best and most correct choice. It’s not on the level of either singles match, lacking the foundation that both of those matches built up with better and more focused first halves, but there’s still a chemistry here. It’s also the home to a great payoff, as Nicole now stops trying to prove anything and gets back to good old fashioned thievery. She manipulates three different referee bumps, each resulting in a phantom pin or submission by Eagles, answering all those questions. In a situation where preparation was a lot harder and with luck maybe not purely on Nicole’s side this time, Eagles is so obviously and clearly better.

Fortunately, it doesn’t matter in the slightest.

After their last two matches and after not being beaten in SHIMMER for the last three years, Eagles is comfortable doing it on her own while Nicole has a thousand different tricks up her sleeves. Portia Perez comes out to help after the third straight visual fall, and with help, Matthews throws a whole ass god damned FIREBALL at Eagles and covers her for the win. As someone watching these shows relatively blind, it didn’t come out of NOWHERE because it’s one of the things friends had told me about, but it’s still just so great. Building the thing up for a year, then not only giving out a big payoff for the title, but doing it in this way was so great. Beyond just the old idea that a great heel denies you of something, that thing being a clean finish between them finally, it also makes all the sense in the world. Eagles got caught up in the questions Nicole’s draws brought up in people, but Nicole only ever wanted to advance her career. It’s the difference between wanting to win in a certain way and wanting just to win period. Employing the greatest illegal tactic in wrestling history to do that didn’t hurt either.

The match isn’t great, but again, credit to SHIMMER for advancing the Eagles/Matthews story in an unexpected way like this. One of the finest pieces of booking in company history.