Madison Eagles vs. Cheerleader Melissa, SHIMMER Volume 33 (9/11/2010)

This was for Eagles’ SHIMMER Title.

It’s a little weird, to have already experienced the end of a great story, and to go back for the earlier parts you skipped over before.

Going back for a lot of this 2010 stuff, from back before I decided to really make as much of this project as possible, is weird a lot of times in this way. Seeing the start or the middle parts of stories that I already watched and wrote about the later chapters and endings for. It can hurt matches or segments of a story like this some, the drama being removed by knowing how it all ends up, that’s a risk of watching things out of order sometimes. Thankfully, at least with this series, that is not the case.

The match works great anyways.

A large amount of the credit for how much this works, despite watching it out of order, has to go to how well Eagles and Melissa work together.

Were it not for another Eagles match up a few years later that was even better and even more natural, I would say these two were born to wrestle each other. It feels that easy. The early grappling in the first third of the match flows so so easy, easier than most womens grappling in the English speaking world at this point. On top of how clean it is, it always communicates the same things as the more action heavy parts of this match, the idea that Eagles is the absolute best at this and that Melissa is one of the rare wrestlers who can keep up, but she’s a little less ruthless and with worse luck.

Something SHIMMER die hards always said about Madison Eagles was that she was Danielson-esque, and while I always thought that was something of an oversimplification (in the same way as calling 2006 Danielson Flair-esque was also an oversimplification), something about the easy and casual way she slides into control in this match genuinely does feel like the best of Danielson. No flashy transition, just a focused attack on the back of Melissa until enough time has passed that it strikes you that this is what’s happening. It’s both an interesting intellectual exercise for anyone watching, but in a “well, if this is real” sort of way, the sort of thing that feels like real sports, one side kind of slowly and casually inflicting their will to the point that somewhere near the end of the first quarter, you realize someone is up by like thirteen.

Eagles in general is incredible here. Mean holds, but also inventive ones. Small little things that always make the match just a little more interesting, like grabbing onto the hand of Melissa that’s closest to the ropes in a Boston Crab to delay her getting the break, or stepping on the bottom of the perpendicular railing section to step up and kick Melissa just a little higher on the chest when attacking her outside. Eagles is maybe not the best female wrestler in the Western speaking world yet, Sara Del Rey still has her CHIKARA work to point to, but chronologically speaking, a performance like this feels like the first time that you can say it might also be Madison Eagles too.

The match is also just really well assembled.

Cheerleader Melissa makes her comeback, and again on this particular SHIMMER show, they do a better job with nearfalls than usual for this company earlier on. Melissa comes closer and closer, only for the champion to find trickier and trickier escapes not only from her big pieces of offense (Air Raid Crash, Kudo Driver), but from defeat in general, as the hurt back of the challenger also just barely manages to bail her out and buy her time.

Madison is finally able to get the space to land a kick, and she follows with the Hellbound to hold onto the title.

It’s a genuinely crushing defeat in the best possible way, totally clean, but because of the attitude of Eagles and the meanness of her attack, also managing to feel just cruel enough to leave the lions share of the sympathy and sentiment with Cheerleader Melissa. Our Hero finally gets the chance, but is exactly unlucky enough against a wrestler just great enough to take advantage of the slightest opening. Given that, a year later as previously linked at the start here, they go all the way through with the thing and live up to the promise of this match, I have zero problem paying this match one of the ultimate complements.

Pro wrestling ass pro wrestling.

***

Mike Quackenbush vs. Madison Eagles, CHIKARA King of Trios 2018 Night Three (9/2/2018)

As with previous big CHIKARA event deep niche dream matches like Quackenbush/Kidd or, to a lesser extent, Quackenbush/Sabre Jr., this is another one of those matches that selects its audience before the bell even rings.

This is less one of those matches just because of the style, but also because of who they are. They get to that point in wildly different ways of course. Quackenbush having had a lot of exposure, but being a remarkably offputting weirdo of course, and Eagles simply being one of the most underrated professional wrestlers of the twenty first century, largely because her scene(s) often felt like they only occasionally had the opponents and situations to highlight her the way other all-world and all-decade level independent wrestling Ace figures in their primes had consistently.

So, to reiterate —

Barring those who are newer to both, or maybe like one or the other without too much exposure to the other half of the match, or who like grappling based matches in general but haven’t entirely branched out yet, you know ahead of time if this is going to be for you, probably.

For the most part, nobody is going to watch this match who isn’t already inclined to like it a whole lot. If you are some sort of boring water-brained weirdo who doesn’t like this sort of grappling-based riffing it out sort of pro wrestling for any number of shit headed reasons, this is not for you (and that includes this site too, probably). If you are going to disqualify a match because Quack is a big ol’ geek or because he’s a shithead in real life, or because CHIKARA hosts some real eye-rolling stuff at this point at other points on a show (including this one, look at the cagematch for it, I mean god damn), you know, you were probably never going to watch this to begin with.

I love that.

I love that for you, but way more importantly, I love that for me.

For seventeen or eighteen minutes, Quackenbush and Eagles wrestle the sort of match that primarily appeals to the sorts of people who will watch it sight unseen and for the people whose eyes lit up seeing it on a card or the people whose eyes will light up whenever and however they learn about it for the first time. Part of that is in terms of the science of the thing, as two masters of matches like this trade holds and bounce ideas off of each other, each of them cooler and a little meaner than the last in a display of a perfect sort of chain wrestling match that not only offers all of these wonderful displays (as well as a really great Quackenbush selling performance in the last third of the match), but that crafts something where they evolve and each one, and the match as a whole, builds on top of them.

The match, like those others, again strikes a light tone at first that becomes more and more serious, but also one that goes about it in a different way.

Eagles isn’t quite the secret villain that ZSJ was in 2017 or that Quackenbush is as a wrestler, and plays the match with a little more of an antagonistic approach as opposed to the SHIMMER Living Legend stuff of more recent years, but that fits into the framework just as well. The match comes off as Eagles being frustrated at a wrestler who is as good as her on the ground, but also too big to bully around with her size like she does whenever she winds up in that spot elsewhere, and eventually has to just find a way through it by being more careful and cautious, which appears to annoy her more than anything in a fascinating touch.

Madison finally gets get break when an especially mean STF seems to hurt Quackenbush’s leg, and he can never really get right again. It lets her begin throwing some bombs out there, and more than that, it both removes Quackenbush’s greatest defense, but also opens him up for Eagles on both ends of the matcch. He has trouble running, going up top takes just enough time that he never actually successfully hits anything off of the top rope, and more than anything else, Eagles has an easy point of attack that gives her the exact opening to win.

(Secretly, there’s a really fun kind of mirror of the Quackenbush match against another SHIMMER all-timer in Sara Del Rey from 2011 here, now seeing Quackenbush on the other end of an assault on the knee. I would never suggest this was intentional, of course. Quack/SDR was not exactly this ultra popular reference point, and as with anything in CHIKARA, if they meant to do it, they would have made it a point to mention it ten thousand times, but it’s a really neat little thing that happened.)

Robbed of his best skill, Quackenbush tries to evade, only for Madison Eagles to also figure that out too. She dives on his hurt leg when he tries to step around her, and goes back to the STF that started the entire thing. This time though, she’s in a much stronger position and yanks back even harder, resulting in a real satisfying tap out.

Quackenbush has yet another sensational weird little dream match, and in turn, Eagles gets to show for the second time this year that she’s one of the best wrestlers in the entire world. A match that thrills on a bunch of different levels, not only offering up a showcase of a bunch of inventive holds and neat ideas, but also getting to see the far more likeable wrestler solve a problem in real time, culminating with the joy of seeing someone not only get Quack, but to make him submit too.

It’s a success in every way that this match could possibly succeed.

One of the year’s best.

***1/3

 

Madison Eagles vs. Deonna Purrazzo, SHIMMER Volume 101 (4/14/2018)

(photo credit to @TGD287 on Twitter.)

This was a submission match.

It’s a delightful follow up to the sleeper match of the previous weekend.

During the ten minutes of that match, Eagles and Purrazzo crafted one of the great master and would-be successor stories in recent memory. The match not only showed Deonna as a quality heir apparent, but did a lot of real interesting and satisfying micro level things to show that she still has a ways to go. It was a match about mentality as much as strategy, the experience of Eagles teaching her to go with what a match offered up against Deonna very specifically wanting one exact sort of a win, all things that gave them a whole lot of material for this second match.

As was maybe real easy to expect given this having more time and being in front of the regular SHIMMER crowd, this is not only just a little better, but it is markedly better, and my favorite SHIMMER match since the Eagles/Matthews blowoff some two and a half years prior.

Part of that is the act of simply having more time, it’s true.

Three more minutes may not seem like it makes all that large of a difference, but in hands as capable of these, three minutes feels more like five or six, and has the utility of ten. It’s not to say their first match was ruined by being somewhat rushed, but it matters so much more when they have the luxury of taking their time here. Having more time to riff around in the first half makes it feel like a bigger success when a point of focus is finally found in the second half. Having a little more time to get into that point of focus not only allows them to play with that a little more, in terms of raw material, but also feel more vital and important for the match, rather than being simply a short of shorthand for the larger story that it was in that first match.

Really though, it is just an outright better wrestling match. It is crisper, they hit harder (or at least have a production set up in a much smaller room that allows it to sound that way), it is more effective, they do cooler things, there’s room for a really sensational Madison Eagles arm selling performance, and it also has a much better ending.

It is also one that holds a far greater stylistic and ideological appeal for me.

Seven days prior, it very much felt like a match that made certain decisions to have a broader appeal to the many more casual fans in the area for WrestleMania weekend, getting up off the mat midway through and trading some bombs in more of a classical indie style affair. On the other hand, this is some deep-in-the-weeds sicko grappling focused stuff. Not entirely that, there are some bombs thrown and really wonderful sounding elbows hurled out there, but it is a much more thoughtful match in general. Great wrestlers being great wrestlers, both versions of this match up are great matches, but it’s not even a contest.

Give me this one every time.

The style is less the deciding factor and more so how well they do it, and Eagles is as great at this as anybody in the world. Deonna holds her own, of course, no match this great is even a little bit one-sided, but the match’s coolest moments and most impressive holds come primarily from Eagles in the first half. She either invents or sweeps some heavy dust off of like three or four super complex holds while they’re chain wrestling in the first half, each of them not only incredibly cool, but also so painful looking too.

Madison Eagles in the first half of this match is as close as U.S. indie wrestling has had to true alchemy in years, pulling absolute gold out of places that you would never imagine it, as seen below.

Everything in this match feels like such a struggle too, as also seen above.

There’s even this little fight over a rear chinlock, where Madison reaches up with her hands around Deonna’s head and shifts it from side to side to get out.  It’s just a small little moment in here and not something that matters all that much or that they tried to get a lot out of, but it’s sort of emblematic of the entire enterprise. Look at any hold in this match and you can say the same. Nothing happens in this match that doesn’t feel like it requires effort and that it isn’t some kind of smaller scale fight in its own right, and when even the smallest aspects of this match possess that quality, the larger aspects feel that much more important.

Narratively speaking, it is just as much of a delight.

While Eagles tries to search for something all match, not really being in her strongest element in a match where the Hellbound cannot immediately net her a submission win, Deonna knows one hundred percent, again, what she wants out of this.

As opposed to a week ago, this time, it’s to her benefit.

Purazzo stays on the arm, and this time, it pays off. Not only in the sense that it helps her hold work like she wanted it to a week ago, or that it disables Eagles from locking her hands late in the match, so the STF she’d occasionally won with before isn’t able to work, but also in terms of what it brings out of the veteran. Eagles tries to go to the neck and back, using brute force instead of any one piece of more scientific focus. She briefly gets there, only to get real overzealous, miss a repeat shoulderblock in the corner, and hurt her arm even worse, never totally recovering.

Eagles makes the other big mistake of the match too, and after surviving another Fujiwara Armbar attempt, tries to repeat what worked for her a week ago. The DVD into the top turnbuckle gets hit this time (after super smartly being a set up for Eagles to do something else earlier in the match, another great little bit of wrestling shorthand to show Eagles’ mastery and later set up Deonna’s growth), but Deonna dodges the head kick. She rolls Eagles back into the Fujiwara Armbar, and when Eagles tries again to repeat a successful trick by forward rolling out of it, Deonna rolls with her and turns her back over and Eagles gives it up.

Deonna not only gets her victory, but gets in the exact way she wanted it.

It is maybe just enough at this point that Deonna wins period, but there’s a fun little statement to it too. There was no major moment where she succeeded this time where she failed a week ago, so much as a series of small ones. Dodging the kick, being more effective in pursuing the arm, and just generally taking advantage of the things the match presented in a way she wasn’t a week ago, and that Madison was. She won simply by staying present when Eagles panicked in a few moments, and in one of my favorite ideas wrestling can offer up, it’s a match Eagles loses as much as it is the one that Purrazzo wins.

Very much, it is a match that feels like was building towards a rubber match. The submission element of the thing gives Eagles a slight out, as despite clearly being one of the best technical wrestlers in the world, she wins far more often with the Hellbound than any one hold seemingly. Couple it with the statement in the preceding paragraph, and there are still questions there and material on the table for something truly definitive.

Unfortunately, Deonna Purrazzo would be off the independents and collecting dust on that shelf down in Orlando within a few months, and Madison Eagles would have a series of problems in the ensuing years. Hell, SHIMMER is, as of March 2023, more or less officially dead. We have never gotten a third American match between the two, we may never, and if we ever got lucky enough to get there again, it likely would come at this from a totally new perspective, rather than continuing the story of these two SHIMMER matches.

Do I wish there was more?

Not so much of the match individually, but of these two wrestling each other, at least in a dumb kind of critic brain sort of a way, always thinking of what the best version of a thing looks like, absolutely.

The story told is outstanding, but I think it could have landed even better with more separation between the two matches, and especially with another match in between the first one and Deonna’s success. It’s not to say her winning is unbelievable, as the match(es) did a tremendous job leading everybody there, but it is to say that a mere week doesn’t totally feel like it was exactly enough time needed to learn every lesson, given how the first match went.

Still, given all that happened, at least we got this little two match series between them, and while not perfect, it is truly outstanding.

It’s mean, crisp, interesting, and above all, always deeply interesting. A match that rewards you for paying attention, one of those things in which all the pieces matter, but also one that just flat out whips ass too.

The second or third best SHIMMER match of the decade, the second part of a stellar two-act production, and a genuinely really impressive thing.

As opposed to so much else from SHIMMER that is either hidden behind a paywall or hard to find on your basic free internet (i.e. I am gatekeeping you if you dont know how to pirate without a blog providing you a link, no reason for that stuff to get yanked just because you need someone to do the work for you), this one is on SHIMMERs official Youtube channel. You might not like it as much as I did without seeing the first match, or watching so much of the company and growing the affinity for Eagles that this match clearly utilizes for full effect, but given that it just might wind up on a year end list, I see zero reason for you not to at least give it a try.

***1/4? ***1/2? ***1/3? star ratings aren’t real! i loved it a lot! 

Madison Eagles vs. Deonna Purrazzo, SHIMMER Volume 100 (4/7/2018)

(photo credit to @champagne_ken on Twitter.)

Hey, look at that.

I haven’t been able to cover SHIMMER since the June 2016 tapings, sadly. Chalk it up to Stream SHIMMER being one of the worst official services ever (small player, bad quality for screenshots I like to use on the Twitter links to reviews, bad Roku app interface), and the shows after Volume 85 also not being up on the Highspots Wrestling Network yet or even Click Wrestle (an archaic feeling pre-ubiquitous streaming era relic that, none the less, I have used in the past for more difficult to find single match downloads), so those shows fell through the gaps.

Fortunately, being a part of WrestleMania Weekend meant this show was on WWN and broadcast live, thus being immediately accessible and preserved.

Madison Eagles vs. Deonna Purrazzo, even for only ten or eleven minutes, is a hell of a match to come back with.

Present and future in a similar style, all of that, but more than anything, it’s an intriguing match simply because of how many of the correct ideas they have, and how rarely anything happens in one of their matches (Eagles moreso) that feels at all incorrect. Decision making is a secret wrestling skill that we don’t often talk about in the way we do things like crispness, selling, personality, or whatever else, but Madison Eagles is one of the better decision makers of her generation, and given a younger wrestler with the right ideas in Deonna, it’s a real appealing thing.

It helps, considerably, that this is only the first match of two between them in SHIMMER (and that, unlike so much of post-2016 SHIMMER, it is available online for free).

Largely, I say that because while it is only ten or eleven minutes, it’s ten or eleven really really good minutes, and you can see that there is such a great match here between them. It’s the sort of wrestling you just don’t get to see as regularly as you ought to on the 2018 independents anymore (it is unfortunately no longer 2015). Not entirely on the ground, but the actual hold-for-hold wrestling they do is not only great mechanically, as is their later match big offense, even hitting better consistent strikes than one might expect out of a SHIMMER match (with one big unfortunate exception), but has the time to really develop into something rather than feeling like this perfunctory thing to do before the cool moves, and establishes these ideas that they play with for the rest of the match (and probably the next match between them too).

On that note, it’s very much wrestled like the first match in a series, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Narratively speaking, beyond all of the wonderful holds and delightful techniques, they get so much out of what they do and how they do it. The easy and obvious story, as seen above, is younger technician Deonna going after the best in the world, and it’s one told incredibly well. The smaller story within that is Deonna’s dogged pursuit of her Fujiwara Armbar, and how she eventually gets to Eagles’ arm in the first place. Early attempts at the obvious target fail when Eagles is too tough and persistent, and most of all, too ready for it, even matching young Purrazzo with her own work in that direction, and never quite letting her get her hold on her like she wants, even later in the match.

Deonna instead goes to Madison Eagles’ braced up right knee to create openings for herself, and once Eagles gets distracted protecting herself, Deonna has the openings she needs. It’s a great little way to get there, and one that does a lot more for both of them than Deonna’s initial attempts simply succeeding as they were. Instead of immediately getting there, Deonna has to figure something out and comes off smarter for it. The story of the match — master and successor — is also helped out a lot more by the way they went about it, illustrating Eagles’ position at the top, before then also painting her as a little more sympathetic because of the pre-existing injury allowing Purrazzo her route in.

At the end, Deonna has the Hellbound entirely scouted just like Eagles has the Fujiwara seemingly figured out, but the difference between them at this point becomes real real clear in that moment. Without the ability to get her armbar on like she wants, Purrazzo is just a little lost. Without the ability to hit her big move, Eagles instead adjusts without a moment of pause or even really frustration. She drives Deonna neck first into the top turnbuckle with a kind of standing Death Valley Driver, before throwing a kick to the head to win.

Youth meets experience, and uses for the reasons it almost always will, wanting the one kind of definitive type of win, rather than simply taking it where it presents itself. This tale of sorcerer and would-be apprentice and/or heir apparent is one of my absolute favorite little stories wrestling can tell, done well enough to get past any issues the match has otherwise.

The ending is a little frustrating, as despite the great narrative concept behind it, the kick totally misses despite the sound produced, caught in the cruelest possible camera angle ever. It’s the sort of thing you rewind to make sure you didn’t actually see like you thought, maybe it caught her on the top of the head or something, but that’s sadly not the case. It’s especially unfair as it’s really the only part of this that wasn’t as crisp as possible, or at least that wasn’t so clearly visibly off, especially from two wrestlers who rarely encounter situations like that. The match is ninety nine percent perfect, only that that other one percent is maybe the most important part. It’s not the end of the world, ninety nine percent great is still pretty God damned great, but it’s a problem others might have watching this on their own.

If this were the only match available between the two, the ending, on top of the issue of it clearly being the first match of two, it would be incredibly upsetting.

Fortunately, SHIMMER uploaded the rematch between these two from a week later onto Youtube, and so what could be a matter of deep frustration instead largely turns into a string of positives, and qualities to admire for other reasons.

What it is is a hell of a first go at it, establishing a whole lot of fun stuff and laying a great foundation for a bigger and better outing back in SHIMMER’s home base, making full use of everything they did here, on top of delivering a match that’s borderline great in its own right, doing just enough that I love that the big issue doesn’t matter all that much when thinking about it in totality.

three girl

Madison Eagles vs. Arisa Nakajima, SHIMMER Volume 82 (6/25/2016)

This was for Eagles’ SHIMMER Title.

It feels almost too obvious to say this was great.

Like, of course.

You’re not idiots, you know that. (the people who only read WWE/NJPW/AEW reviews? well, jury’s out there, but if you’re reading this stuff, I like to think you’re reading more than just the big ones, and I like that. or you’re one of those obsessive womens wrestling specific fans, which has always felt weird to me.)

Eagles and Nakajima have an easy sort of a dream match and it absolutely rocks.

Good matwork, great offense, and ideal construction. Nobody gets all that fancy with it and aims for something that might not work, it just gets to naturally unfold. Two of the best in the world and of the decade throw their offense out at each other, and correctly trust that it’s enough. The match gets to a wonderful point near the end, where Nakajima throws enough out there, survives enough, and keeps Eagles on her toes and stepping back enough that there’s a doubt about the defense in the way that there isn’t in a lot of other Madison Eagles title work. There’s enough grit to make the quieter parts work and enough substance in between the big moments to give this a more fleshed out feeling. It’s about the big highlights, of course, but like with any other match like this that reaches a certain level and becomes great, it succeeds just as much because of those quieter moments.

Sadly, it’s cut off before we can get any real conclusion or before it can get to the next level that it so obviously can, as Viper attacks Eagles for the disqualification to set up the next volume’s main event.

One has to imagine it’s political. SHIMMER often puts stories first, but it seems so obvious that Viper could have just done that after the match to the same result, without pissing everybody off and also while probably giving the company an even stronger sell for the DVD/VOD than just an Eagles/Nakajima match (an Eagles/Nakajima classic, theoretically). It would be a bone-headed call from a promotion that tends to not make those sorts of unforced errors, especially not in main events. So, in that case, it kind of just is what it is. Throw your hands up, what’s there is there, and we move on.

Still, a pretty great match.

I imagine if you’re in deep enough to salivate at “Madison Eagles vs. Arisa Nakajima” on your screen, you can find a way to enjoy this for what it is, as it really is worth your time.

***

 

Madison Eagles vs. Courtney Rush, SHIMMER Volume 81 (6/24/2016)

(photo credit to Falcon Joshi Blog.)

This was for Eagles’ SHIMMER Title.

I usually don’t cover matches solely because I thought one aspect of them was really good or really funny, unless it matters long term or it’s a way to talk about some larger trend. It’s not a hard rule, I just tend to think that it doesn’t make for the best sort of review or piece of writing to say “I thought [x] was good”.

However, there are always exceptions, and this is one of them.

Courtney Rush is now on TNA television as Rosemary, the demon character. In the obvious thing to do, she’s adapted parts of that into her independent wrestling persona, and is also a demon in SHIMMER.

As such, Madison Eagles develops two tremendous bits early on in an attempt to combat this demonic presence (this fiend, if you will). Firstly, she adapts her classical bit of hiding forks in her knee pads or boots in a modernization of the old heel spot where a ref finds brass knuckles hidden there (SHIMMER’s most enduringly good bit), now getting caught with two forks, but tying them together with a piece of string to form a cross. She keeps Rush at bay by shouting that the power of Christ compels her. When that fails, Eagles gets Rush outside for a moment off of a kick, and then pours lines of salt all around the edges of the ring, to make it impossible for Rush to come in, which works until Rush has the brilliant idea to drag the referee out under the bottom rope, creating a break in the salt where she can enter and/or exit the ring, but only in this one spot.

It is as good to me as any famous 2000s CHIKARA bit, a total commitment to the act taken to a logical extreme, but one that the match is able to move on from without it being too sudden of a shift. It sounds easy, but there really is a skill to walking that line exactly right, and it’s one this match displays.

The match is good otherwise. Rush is fine, especially when she breaks free of the gimmick and they can just huck some bombs out there, and Eagles is one of the best wrestlers of the world, no qualifiers attached. It’s something of a gimme defense and as is the custom in SHIMMER, they don’t go too far to try and stretch credibility just for some nearfall pops. It is what it is, and it’s real good for what it is. A solid chunk of pro wrestling, bell to bell.

Mostly though, I wanted to let you know about the bits.

It’s not a great match, but I will probably remember the salt around the ring bit for years to come, and maybe sometimes, that is more important.

Madison Eagles vs. Nicole Savoy, SHIMMER Volume 78 (10/11/2015)

This was for Eagles’ SHIMMER Title.

A day after finally regaining the title and putting the period at the end of a two year long story, Eagles now does something both entirely different and very comfortable at the same time. Savoy is a very different kind of wrestler from most of the SHIMMER locker room as more legitimate shitkicker, but also still an incredibly rude and ambitious up and comer with a chip on her shoulder and a point to prove against the best in the world. The best of all worlds.

Once again, it’s one of those lovely sorts of Eagles matches. Nothing complex to it, a wonderful economy of movement, the story of the match told at every possible moment and through the majority of motions made. Savoy is still a little new sometimes, but they take such a different approach with a more grappling focused match that it doesn’t matter all that much.

Savoy’s greatest quality is her spirit, which is to say that at every possible moment, she is as disrespectful as possible. The way she goes about it also fits in perfectly with her more legitimate leaning style and the grounded nature of the match, feeling disrespectful more in a sports way than a pro wrestling way. The new kid wants the crown, not so much constantly spitting or saying mean things about someone as a person. The competitive aspect of the thing always takes precedent. It’s unfortunately not the smoothest match in the world and maybe goes a hair too long for where Savoy is at this point, but it’s that spirit and the difference from every other SHIMMER match around this time that does so much for them.

After Savoy countered the Hellbound once into a cross armbreaker, Eagles is scared away from it somewhat, but doesn’t lack for ways to win a wrestling match, as Savoy seemed to think. She lacks Savoy’s speed and accuracy on her strikes, but makes up for it in power at the end. She gets her back with a high one to the back of the neck and upper back, and then puts a little modification on a Northern Lights Bomb, grabbing the calf instead of the back of the leg and folding the leg like a Fisherman’s Buster before the lift, and it’s enough to hold onto the title.

Exactly great enough to be a really interesting match, and exactly interesting enough to be a great match. While imperfect, a match with enough snap and novelty to it that it has a way of standing out in the memory. Something of a breakout for Savoy, and yet another hit out of Madison Eagles, who just does not miss at this point when given an opportunity like this. `

three girl

Nicole Matthews vs. Madison Eagles, SHIMMER Volume 77 (10/10/2015)

PHOTO CREDIT TO FALCON JOSHI BLOG

This was a No Disqualification match for Eagles’ SHIMMER Title.

Two years ago, these two had one of the more charming matches in company history and of the decade, in which best in the world Madison Eagles took Nicole exactly lightly enough to allow a time limit draw that accidentally legitimized her as a top level wrestler. They spent a year buddying up to each other, but constantly also quietly insulting each other, before a rematch happened. In that match, there was still no conclusion, this time because they went to the classic simultaneous pin and tap out draw. The next show, at the end of a four way elimination match for the belt, they executed a perfect turn when Matthews used a fireball, of all things, to beat Eagles definitively while also becoming SHIMMER Champion, as Eagles focused on proving something while Matthews gave up after the second draw and focused on pure careerism. A third match in the spring of 2015 saw Eagles absolutely beat Matthews’ ass, only to now lose definitively one on one because she got too caught up in delivering a beating and nothing else.

After two years, SHIMMER’S greatest feud comes to an end. Given that this match, I think, works best with a lot of context, it’s worth saying that and worth discussing that for newer readers (especially given SHIMMER’s schedule).

Once again, these two deliver.

In discussing their last match, I wrote about Eagles and Matthews that, “these are the two who I always make time for over the course of this 2010s project when it comes to SHIMMER because they always have matches like this, that are always grounded and understandable” (HANDWERK, 2021). Once again, they have the perfect match for the moment and this time, the moment calls for them to knock everything off the table that they’ve spent the last seven hundred and twenty one days setting up. If not the endearing and novel concept of that first match, it is a blowaway great finale. Something more common, but no less admirable and in many senses, a more difficult landing as a result.

As always, Matthews and Eagles display a gift for getting immediately to the heart of the matter and for never straying.

The match never loses sight of the story of the matter and it’s here where the match really succeeds. Nicole Matthews deserves a beating, and Madison Eagles badly wants to give one out. It’s simple enough, but the devil is in the details, as always. Eagles is always just on the edge of once again getting too comfortable and getting caught like she did in April, but the match offers a new story in the end as well. As Nicole is more able to trap Eagles and outsmart her as a result of the occasional overzealous nature of the beating, her schemes also get too complex and fall apart. Being unable to best Eagles now that she a.) 100% sees her coming & b.) everything is legal causes Matthews to revert back to the place of insecurity that this all started from, giving Eagles the exact specific opening that she needs to finally get her.

To their credit, the match more than holds up the other end of that too. It’s just just the stellar execution of the story, it’s a genuinely brutal and violent match that’s spent years earning all of that. Eagles’ offense on Matthews early on when she’s beating her around the building is all incredibly nasty and interesting, even going to the back to find the first woman she can (Kay Lee Ray) and hurling her into Nicole as a weapon. Matthews’ offense is similarly fitting, bordering between desperate and nasty. At every moment, the story is told through offense that she’s not as good and has to resort to either lower lows (trying to use her sash belt to tie Eagles to the ropes for a fireball) or riskier attacks (a dive), almost all of which either fail or take as much out of her. At all points, there is a sense of struggle present that’s so important in a match like this.

Following a clear and firm advantage after an absolute God damner of an apron brainbuster to Eagles, Matthews finally has the clear advantage. Fittingly and naturally, she blows it trying to prove a point. She tries to make a show of hitting Eagles with the title while she sits in a chair to win, adapts to do something else when Eagles blocks it, only for Eagles to get out and hit a flash Hellbound onto the title belt on the seat of the chair to both finally beat Nicole Matthews and also finally win her title back after four years.

It’s the perfect ending for the feud. Nicole eventually gets there, even if it takes her way more effort than Eagles, but insists on getting dirty with it. The schemes finally fail and Matthews takes the loss she’s spent two years avoiding. Questions initially raised by those two draws are answered, and the answers benefit each of them. Yes, Nicole Matthews can be as great as a top level talent. At the same time, she hung on against Eagles because of plots, schemes, and plans. Without any of that, the truth becomes clearer and clearer. Madison Eagles is the best in the world.

SHIMMER doesn’t often deliver the big great match to go with the quality of stories and performances in the ring, but this time they did. The result is one of the company’s crowning moments and a finale as brutal and satisfying as their initial match was charming. A wonderful and fitting end to one of the best and more underappreciated stories of the decade.

***1/2

Nicole Matthews vs. Madison Eagles, SHIMMER Volume 74 (4/12/2015)

This was for Matthews’ SHIMMER Title.

It doesn’t quite have the same bite as the two draws did, but that’s less the fault of anything that happens here and more that a great classic style title match with a villainous champions trying to fend off a superior challenger is far less interesting than two great versions of a heel/heel draw. That’s just down to simple economics, there’s far less of the latter than the former, one is more special than the other.

However, it is a wonderful continuation of all previous meetings, and a great match all on its own.

Eagles’ quest for revenge largely works out early on, since she is actually better than Matthews, but it makes her sloppy in a way she usually isn’t. Matthews takes advantage and spends the match attacking the head and neck. It’s a simple point of focus that anchors the match at all times. These are the two who I always make time for over the course of this 2010s project when it comes to SHIMMER because they always have matches like this, that are always grounded and understandable, even if they don’t result in great matches every single time, and this is no exception. They commit to the bit in the same way they’ve committed to every bit over the course of the match.

The offense is all wonderful and interesting, and for as good as Eagles has been in the past as a dominant heel champion, she’s even better now as someone on a mission. She’s better than anyone else in SHIMMER at this point and maybe ever (the only competition is perhaps Del Rey) at conveying anger while kicking ass, and also at doing so from a position of total strength. On her end, Nicole Matthews is one of the great chickenshit heels of the decade in her time around the top of the card as a singles act here. Everything about her that was endearing and charming about their first draw, such as Nicole being in over her head and hanging on through wits alone, is turned around and repurposed to make her as loathsome as possible, and it absolutely works.

After a series of genuinely gnarly throws onto Matthews’ neck, Eagles hits the Hellbound to win, only to have Nicole’s foot on the ropes. They make a big show out of it with Eagles even wearing the title again before Portia Perez brings other referees down to point it out. The match is restarted, as it ought to be. A lesser mind might have her put the foot on the rope after or even have Portia come down and do it for her, but there’s something even more frustrating about it being an entirely legitimate reason to take it back away from Eagles.

In her frustration, Eagles turns her back on Matthews, who goes right to the neck again and hits the Vancouver Maneuver to just barely hang on one more time.

It’s no longer about being better. It’s about being smarter, and with Eagles is still mad as hell, it’s finally a fight that Nicole can win.

A wonderful stopgap in the middle of one of the best stories in wrestling over the last several years.

***

Madison Eagles vs. Yumi Ohka, SHIMMER Volume 72 (4/11/2015)

Not quite a great match, but it’s REALLY good.

Yumi Ohka isn’t especially good nor especially bad, but against Madison Eagles, it doesn’t matter. It’s this sort of classic mid high level SHIMMER match in that it’s never quite great, but at all times is super watchable and really good. Eagles is clearly driving a lot of it with these neat counters, cool submissions, and great counter ideas, but Ohka is a good passenger. Can operate a map, has snacks, follows instructions, all of that.

Nothing here that’s going to change minds, but one more reminder that resume or not, Eagles is one of the most gifted wrestlers of the last decade.