Kairi Sane vs. Shayna Baszler, WWE Evolution (10/28/2018)

This was for Kairi’s NXT Womens Title.

I liked it just a little more than the Takeover match in August.

Sure, I think there are some complaints to be had here. On the main roster, the crowd is nowhere near as receptive as one that specifically came to see NXT, and who at least theoretically knows these two and responds to them like stars. It also lacks the moment of triumph at the end that helped smooth over a lot of the issues with the Takeover match on a mechanical level, this being a match about Shayna getting her title back now with the help of some bullshit in a real rarity for the NXT Womens Title that you can only chalk up to being infected by it happening on a main roster event. If you look at all that and say you think the Takeover match is better for atmospheric reasons, I get it.

However, what this match has going for it is that it cleans up the major issue that the Takeover match had, and opts for something far more preferable.

Rather than asking Kairi Sane to sell the leg, Shayna instead focuses on the arm.

The work on Shayna’s end is just as brutal as always, again being one of the only other wrestlers up there with your Rod Dogs and Trevor Lees as the best bullies in all of pro wrestling, but Kairi is a hundred times better at this. The issue before, asking her to sell leg damage while still demanding she does all of her exuberant high flying and high speed offense, is entirely removed now. Kairi Sane, being STARDOM born and bred and a joshi wrestler in general, is not a naturally great limb seller, but this asks so much less of her. She strikes with her right, so there’s rarely a moment where she’s forced to use it to go through the routine that’s the reason she’s here to begin with, and the segment is not so long that it demands she constantly is in this deep state of agony either. Kairi is a functionally good seller, holding it at her body, remembering to touch it or favor it when she lands on it even a little bit, and with the way the match shifts, that’s enough.

It’s a small change in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a small one that makes this match better in a way that really mean something to me. It’s the difference between trying to shove someone into a match layout with no regard for their skills or talents and crafting one that suits those far better. The latter will almost always prove better.

Beyond the slight change, what works about this pairing works again here.

Kairi is a perfect babyface and Shayna makes for a perfect opponent. Kairi’s increased confidence following winning the title in their last match allows her to have more sustained offense at the start as well, and it makes Shayna’s eventual transition to control even more impressive than usual. The offense is all perfectly crisp, they have a few real great ideas, and it works as well as it can, before the main roster stink gets all over the thing in the closing moments. It’s just great wrestling.

The other two Horsewomen get involved at the end, and following a kick from outside from Duke on Kairi, following Kairi’s escape of the rear naked choke, the champion falls right back into it. Like before when she won the title, Baszler’s second application of her hold is a hundred times more desperate, with a real serpentine nature to the thing. Kairi passes out, and Shayna gets her shit back.

Still not perfect, but all the small improvements more than make up for what it loses on the main roster.

***

Shayna Baszler vs. Kairi Sane, WWE NXT Takeover Brooklyn IV (8/18/2018)

This was for Shayna’s NXT Womens Title.

Veggies first.

It is not as great as it could have been.

For whatever reason, the absolute brain geniuses behind the scenes laying out NXT matches at this point decided that it would be best to have Kairi Sane in a leg selling match. You can sort of see the idea behind it, in the same way you can always sort of see the idea behind it. Take away the thing a babyface does best, or at least tease it, and introduce them to some adversity on their way to the big win, either now or later. The thing is, and this is almost always the case with modern matches like this, the wrestler in question is offensively minded and will do their shit no matter what, so with rare exceptions, the selling is not especially good (usually done in that very annoying way where someone runs full speed and uses their leg fine, then briefly holds it, before changing absolutely nothing and rarely being affected in the slightest bit), and so it is simply a large chunk of the match that does not matter. It is time wasted, and this match is no exception.

That being said, the match is still great for two reasons.

Firstly, Kairi Sane still rocks.

She has a natural babyface gift to her that allows her to overcome a lot of the problems with the focus of the match. She hits hard, does cool offense, and most importantly, is simply very very easy to like. Kairi is naturally sympathetic and likeable on a level that few other babyfaces of her generation have the ability to reach (it is her misfortune that one of them was one of NXT’s two greatest ever babyfaces), and the match still functions effectively, because one naturally wants to see her succeed.

The other part of why this works is also a big part of the answer as to why that is.

Shayna Baszler is among the best antagonists anywhere in wrestling.

Her work on the knee, although limited (smart! if you have to do something ill advised, do less of it!) is incredibly good. It is violent and mechanically perfect and done with a meanness few in wrestling can match. Even though it is not her best attack on a leg this year, nor her best match with a focus on the leg, it’s the sort of performance in control of a match that can make it great, in spite of a not-great performance in response to it. Shayna is great at the other stuff too, not just the villainous character moments and nasty holds. When Kairi gets the Anchor on late in the match, first regular style and then in the ropes, Shayna’s brief moment of back selling is tremendous and stands out especially because it does not matter much at all, instead feeling like something a great wrestler decided to do because they are great at wrestling.

Damage to the back also maybe helps Shayna out just a little bit at the end, as a purely instinctive move to offer herself even more protection than the match does, when Kairi rolls backwards through a rear naked choke and on top of Baszler to take the title off of her in something of a moderate upset.

It’s not a finish I love, but even more so than the decision behind the body of this match, it’s one I get, and like on some other level.

Beyond the fact that Shayna will win it back and they realize how triumphant it will feel when someone actually beats Shayna’s ass and pins her for the title the next time (don’t ask what happens to the person who gets that rub in the months after that), I like the actual way they pulled off the flash win. As the other loss in Shayna’s 2018 showed, she has a real weakness to not just these flash pinfalls, but ones that come as counters to submission holds that feel like match enders. It’s not only a 2004 Samoa Joe style piece of booking to book someone dominant to be susceptible to something fast, but it’s this last little shred left of Shayna not being as experienced in pro wrestling as everyone else in the division.

NXT being NXT, I have real doubts it will ever be used to the full potential of such an interesting idea, but conceptually, it’s a neat thing, and like this match at large, it winds up working almost in spite of itself.

Despite the imperfections, between the more positive aspects of Kairi Sane’s performance, and yet another outstanding Shayna Baszler singles performance, there’s still just a little too much here to deny.

***

Kairi Sane vs. Nikki Cross vs. Candice LeRae, WWE NXT (7/18/2018)

 This was a #1 Contender’s Match. 

Nobody is reinventing the wheel here or redefining how a triple threat match can work, certainly not in 2018 NXT. It is what it is. You might not be able to call every single move or the exact order of things, but it is more or less the three way match you know, with all of the bits and/or tropes you would expect.

I don’t especially care all that much.

The thing is that it is still good as hell.

Candice, Kairi, and Nikki have enough cool moves and various differences and idiosyncrasies to keep the match interesting for the ten or fifteen minutes it lasts. They have a lovely little fireworks show, laid out (and probably edited) perfectly so as to always stay interesting and be filled with cool things happening, and without any of the many stupid things this company could foist upon them showing up to ruin what gets built largely on the back of pure talent and skill. Not exactly the greatest example of what the machine itself can do, but a great example of the sort of thing it ought to be doing constantly with a roster this great, simply giving them time and getting the hell out of the way.

Kairi succeeds with the In-Sane Elbow (god, I know), breaking up Candice’s pin on Cross, and covering LeRae for the win.

A pleasant little chunk of good ass wrestling TV.

***

Io Shirai vs. Kairi Hojo, STARDOM THE HIGHEST 2015 (3/29/2015)

This was a tournament final for the vacant World of Stardom title.

It’s definitely a flawed match.

They have less than twenty minutes, but Kairi not yet being a fully finished product, they feel like they can’t just go totally nuts despite the main event slot. They instead opt for a double body part match, which is often one of my least favorite things to see joshi wrestlers do, because it rarely ends well.

It doesn’t end horribly here, but it’s clearly something that detracts from the match in a lot of ways. The work Io does on Hojo’s arm is great and occasionally really mean and shows flashes of how good she’ll be at a meaner kind of work a year or two after this. The selling from Hojo wavers in between really good and a clear sign of the all-world sympathetic babyface that she’ll become very soon, but then also often times non-existent at key moments in the match, like a lot of the late match offense she does. Naturally, they chose the right arm of Kairi Hojo to focus on, so as to make it as difficult as possible to do this without any issues. They’re so gifted athletically, but sometimes this match feels like it has two left feet.

The other side of it is that the action itself is all tremendous. Io is a generationally great athlete and has this perfect snap and smoothness on virtually everything that she does. Hojo isn’t quite as gifted, but the elbow drop that she wins the title with is up to her usual standard and she already stands out in perfect contrast to Io as Stardom’s all time best babyface.

Imperfect as hell, but there’s so much spirit promise to this thing. It’s no wonder they eventually got it as right as they did over the next two years.

The Kabuki Warriors (Asuka & Kairi Sane) vs. Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross, WWE WrestleMania 36 Night One

This was for the Warriors’ WWE Womens Tag Team Titles.

Wrestling without a crowd is especially weird and noticeable when it’s not good. It’s ESPECIALLY noticeable when they do all of the big WWE taunting and the theatrics and there’s nobody to react to them. This was generally alright. I definitely want to say that it wasn’t a bad match. It’s still very weird to see Kairi trying to play a heel, but she’s a foreigner in WWE, so I’m not sure how else it was ever going to end up. She does pretty well here with the mannerisms, but the entire act feels wasteful because like, jesus, you didn’t sign and hoard these talents to do evil foreigner character work, right? Kairi Sane was one of the best babyfaces in wrestling, so like Sami Zayn, she is doing this because nobody in WWE can just be likeable alone. Being nice is bad. Anyways, the match is alright for the most part. The lack of outside sound lets Kairi and Asuka’s hard shots stand out a little more. Alexa Bliss does as good of a job cosplaying a good wrestler as like half of the guys who have done Takeover main events in the last two or three years. They do a big moves finishing run, and it’s also fine! Bliss hits Da Bliss Dat Don’t Miss on Sane to win the titles. Not much of a pop for that one.

This is a match that might have been elevated by a hot crowd, but

**1/2