Sara Del Rey vs. Cheerleader Melissa, SHIMMER Volume 9 (4/7/2007)

The Match so far, between SHIMMER’s two most valuable players through the first year and a half.

It’s just about as good as it should be.

The first half is all matwork, and it’s an absolute delight. I obviously wish that they did a little more with it or that they never even played around with any concrete focus. That being said, Del Rey’s brief work on the arm ruled, and Melissa’s work on the legs was also a lot of fun. It’s okay too because the focus changes off of some of the most brutal stuff in the match, when Melissa once again gets the advantage when she brings a match out onto the floor. Del Rey gets repeatedly slammed on the wood and thrown into steel. Not as brutal as what Melissa did to Daizee Haze, but brutal enough to serve as a believable re-set.

Del Rey’s selling of the back and more specifically the left hip is really really good, and exists for the rest of the match. Sara has trouble with lifts and her usual power moves, but she’s able to muscle Cheerleader Melissa up for the one that counts. It takes her longer between her lift into the Royal Butterfly Lock and then into the suplex out of it, but she hits it all the same, and that works for Del Rey one more time.

Delightful little thing, and among the best SHIMMER stuff to date.

***

Sara Del Rey vs. Mercedes Martinez, SHIMMER Volume 8 (10/23/2006)

This is much more like it.

It’s still a little bit messy and disorganized, but it gets there in a really interesting way. The disorganization and desperate sort of grasping nature of the thing that really elevates it.

The match would, of course, be better if Del Rey’s brief arm work or Martinez’s brief knee work in the first half went anywhere, but as it was, both ideas were sold appropriately and the failure of either strategy to gain purchase wound up making it feel like that much harder of a fight. There’s a really cool fight for pace and control to this, as Del Rey keeps dragging it to the mat and Mercedes wants to strike and throw suplexes more. Martinez begins to win out, but never in a way that feels like Del Rey can’t erase it in a second. She’s not a great striker just yet, but she is good enough with other stand-up offense that it’s still a contest, even when Del Rey is taken out of her element for the first time in SHIMMER.

Ultiamtely though, the more aggressive attack from Martinez than usual does matter. Absolutely love stuff like that. Don’t just leave it up to me to notice a difference in somemone’s game plan, but reward them for it to too so as to draw further attention to it. FOUR (4) straight Saito Suplexes gives Martinez the win on the third try and allows her to be the first one in SHIMMER to beat Del Rey.

A great match given additional weight by their two that came before it. The whole series is a real testament to the power of investing your time and trying to do something more than simple dream matches.

***

Sara Del Rey vs. Nattie Neidhart, SHIMMER Volume 7 (10/22/2006)

Another one for the “this happened actually!” file.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a case where the WWE wore someone out and made then bad and/or lazy, and it’s not a case where someone learned how effort is never rewarded, so there’s no percentage in trying. Nattie Neidhart aka Natalya aka the master of the Shartshooter is, was, and always has been/will be an incredibly marginal talent who, despite all of the posturing and presentation of her as one of the good ones or Technically Sound, would have never made it anywhere if not for a certain last name.

Sara Del Rey is very good in this, to her credit. Everything that she does looks very good. Nattie briefly works on the leg, lacking the focus or commitment or general skill to sustain it for any length of time, but Sara still bothers to sell it in little ways until the end of the match. Del Rey also has a very nice little soft own by doing one of the better Sharpshooters that I’ve ever seen, certainly better than Neidhart’s. But she’s not quite great or forceful enough yet to drag Nattie kicking and screaming into a great match.

The goal is to do for Nattie what Martinez did for LuFisto earlier in the show, both putting over a newcomer in defeat and also allowing Del Rey and Martinez to mirror each other yet again. I certainly won’t be saying Martinez is better than Del Rey at this point, but SDR had a much bigger ask. Del Rey does her best, but she joins the list of good wrestlers who haven’t produced against very secretly, wrestling’s most enduring failchild.

It’s a very long list.

 

The Minnesota Home Wrecking Crew (Lacey & Rain) vs. Sara Del Rey/Mercedes Martinez, SHIMMER Volume 6 (5/21/2006)

Another fun but not great entry.

A big part of this is some really bad audio production, with extra loud commentary and real low levels for the stuff in the ring. I’m sure this isn’t new, but it stood out a lot here. You have a match with two actual good strikers in Del Rey and Martinez and it’s all muted. Should it affect my enjoyment of a match? No. But it always does.

It probably wouldn’t have been great anyways, because as much as I like Lacey and Rain, they are quite limited. I like them because they seem to know it and when they focus on basic heel work, they’re terrific. They focus on Del Rey’s back and manage to walk the line perfectly between mean and nasty work and being disreputable scoundrels. Nobody should hold either up as some generationally great wrestler, but they’re more fun to watch than ninety percent of the women on these early shows and on 2000s indies in general because of how much more aware of their limitations they seem to be than their peers.

Del Rey and Martinez are, of course, tremendous in this. Del Rey’s selling isn’t her strong suit, but she does just as well here in a match that asks her to primarily work from underneath. Martinez only really handles the hot tag, but it’s a really nice hot tag run. Tight, efficient, all quality.

The villains/Our Heroes are overmatched, but the dream team lacks any sort of chemistry whatsoever. Martinez is ganged up on, Del Rey is kept out, and Lacey gets a somewhat surprising victory over big star Martinez with the Implant DDT.

Not a great match, but an easy watch with something to say.

Sara Del Rey vs. Mercedes Martinez, SHIMMER Volume 5 (5/21/2006)

Following the twenty minute draw on V1, this was a no time limit rematch.

Unfortunately, this failed to capture the same kind of magic or same sort of feeling or atmosphere that helped them six months prior. That isn’t to say this is a bad match and it isn’t even to say that this isn’t a very good match. It’s not a great match though. They sort of drift in a back and forth kind of way for much of the match, without the “first time ever dream match” thing going for them anymore, and without that sort of tentative nature. Simply put, it’s a match that relied a lot on feeling special, and isn’t as special the second time.

The second half is much better than the first though, as they get going when Del Rey begins to start bombing out Mercedes. A cool idea with Martinez having the Royal Butterfly scouted, but without the tools to make the absolute most of that. She still wasn’t able to go into her own big offense, and made the mistake of going back to the mat with Sara at the end. She countered the Butterfly again into a Ground Octopus, but abruptly, Del Rey was able to stack her up with her shoulders down on the mat for a sudden three count.

I really liked the idea behind how the last half of this went, but the execution left a little to be desired. This wasn’t a match good enough not to be affected by such a sudden finish.

These early shows are all fairly weak though, so despite being a little disappointing, this is still a top three or four SHIMMER match so far.

 

Sara Del Rey vs. Rain, SHIMMER Volume 4 (2/12/2006)

Not a great match, but another really impressive Del Rey performance early on. She goes after the arm immediately and zeroes in on the hand (!!!) and wrist specifically and focuses entirely on that for the first five plus minutes. It’s cruel and vicious work, but done to a heel as good as Rain, so it works. Del Rey’s work is as good as any 2010s grapplefuck hero, really sensational and mean spirited violent kind of limb work that deserves a lot of praise. Rain immediately presents herself as an awful and annoying person, the kind of a wrestler who you’d want to see have their hand and arm destroyed. She’s not much for the micro level details and it’s why this isn’t great, but like her partner, she’s a very good heel and that means at least a little bit.

Of course, this isn’t great because she totally ignores all of that when it’s time for Rain to take over. Nary a second of holding the arm a little different or shaking it out or anything. Like it never even happened. Her work on Del Rey’s back is good, but then again, it’s Del Rey making it work by actually selling her back and making the work feel important. Rain is pesky, but not good enough to do more than cause SDR these minor aches and pains. It hurts her to bridge after a German Suplex when she comes back, but not so hurt that she can’t get her up into the Royal Butterfly and then the Royal Butterfly Suplex for the win.

Rain isn’t much more than character work, but this was a nice little SDR showcase, and a great example of what I mean when I say that she was very rarely against wrestlers on her own level.

Sara Del Rey vs. Mercedes Martinez, SHIMMER Volume 1 (11/6/2005)

On this inaugural show, a West Coast (SDR) vs. East Coast (Mercedes) dream match takes place.

It’s definitely the best match on the show.

There’s definitely still a lot of work to be done, largely on a sort of minor sloppiness that pervaded the match, but it pretty much all works out. They aren’t so great just yet, but there’s a lot to them already. Del Rey especially already has that sort of roughness about her that always made her so much more interesting than most, and even if I’ve never actually loved Martinez, she’s a terrific SDR opponent. The first-time dream match sense of the thing helps a lot in terms of making this feel like a significant sort of struggle, with a certain amount of the minute miscommunications coming all the way back around and giving this a rougher feeling. There’s a certain grit and fight to this overall, a certain edge to both women as individual wrestlers, so it makes perfect sense that this first meeting wound up breaking down here and there. They use the time they have particularly well, especially by the standards of so much else on this card. Things get more aggressive before breaking down entirely, but it’s a gradual process that never feels like they’re going from item to item. A switch doesn’t suddenly flip where they get mean, it’s a thing that creeps its way into the fight.

Another thing I really liked about this was the way they responded to the time cues. With five minutes left, nobody began taking bigger risks or changing too often, but they started to try for pinfalls after everything that happened. Mercedes attempted more cradles when she had openings and the increase in speed threw Del Ray off and her lack of control let Mercedes do things she hadn’t been able to before. It’s a small touch, but it’s always the small touches that make a difference in a match like this. Mercedes is able to finally hit her Fisherman’s Buster, but the bell rings at the count of two, with time running out on them. Mercedes probably had it won and got there once she was able to knock Del Rey off balance, but because of Sara’s more prickly nature throughout, she bought herself just enough time for none of that to matter.

Outside of somehow fighting to an 18:59 time limit draw, and aside from cagematch giving the game away on that, it feels completely legitimate and earned. Time limit draws in general can sometimes feel like a put on, even if they use all the time in the best ways. This had neither problem, and if someone had to see one match from this debut show, it would absolutely be this one.

***

Sara Del Rey vs. Meiko Satomura, CHIKARA Aniversario: The Ogg & I (5/20/2012)

It’s nice that this got to happen near the end of SDR’s career, after it wasn’t able to happen in 2011.

It would be nicer if they put a little more into this than they did. Still, if two women are going to riff it out on the mat for sixty percent of the match and then throw some live rounds out, I would struggle to think of many pairings in the 2010s that I’d rather see it from. The matwork is all tight, everything feels like a real struggle, and they kick the hell out of each other. Del Rey needs consecutive Royal Butterflies for the win.

Not a match that’s going to disappoint anyone who wants to see it, I don’t think, but like with most of Del Rey’s career, it’s hard to shake the sense that this could have been even better.

***

Sara Del Rey vs. Kana, CHIKARA Clunk In Love (10/8/2011)

It’s their second of two matches in the span of a week, following Kana’s victory seven days prior on SHIMMER Volume 42. It’s no sequel. Given the SHIMMER release schedule, it would never work as one. This is just a slightly better version of that match. The bottom rope is missing after breaking earlier in the night, and that adds a certain grit to the proceedings, at least as much is possible with Gavin Loudtalker on the call, and they do a little more.

What works still really works. They’re aggressive as hell, everything flows very smoothly, and it’s all as realistic as possible. It never fails to come off like a real contest. What didn’t work last time still doesn’t work. There’s a lot of holds that don’t really have any purpose, even when they talk about Del Rey’s bad knee from the night before. It’s filler. It’s good filler, but it’s filler. Nothing is focused on enough so that it should be sold more than fleetingly, which they do well enough, but it is what it is. It will likely bother some of you much less than it bothered me, which is to say it won’t bother you at all. Good for you, watch the match I guess.

Ultimately, the big difference is a slightly bigger finish. The point of the SHIMMER match was to establish Kana as a killer on Del Rey’s level. Here, Kana is a guest brought in to enhance Del Rey in the aftermath of coming up short in the 12 Large Summit. An equally effective job is done here of getting the point across. Kana is kept strong enough to survive the Royal Butterfly Suplex and many gross shots before that, but SDR digs deep and uses a leaping Piledriver for the win. They go 1-1 across Kana’s trip.

If you have to watch one of their matches, this is the better one and it’s on Youtube. Make it this one.

***

 

 

Mike Quackenbush vs. Sara Del Rey, CHIKARA Small But Mighty (10/7/2011)

This was a Block A match in the 12 Large Summit, and effectively a block final.

The final 12 Large match I’m going to cover on here is a perfect match to show why this tournament was so cool. Beyond just being a first time match, it’s an incredibly fun styles clash that no other promotion probably would have ever thought to book. It’s two fully three dimensional characters being thrown at each other with something on the line, where the match once again feels less like two wrestlers plugged into a match and instead of like a match specifically that only these two could have had in this exact way. I would love to one day be able to sum up that sort of idea without it feeling clunky. Today is still not the day that that happens.

Very specifically though, this is a match that works because it feels exactly correct. Mike Quackenbush is a better technician than anyone left on the independent scene, but Del Rey is a Bryan student and experienced enough to make it really hard on him. She also knows Quackenbush well enough now after over a year and a half of BDK vs. CHIKARA tags that it’s very hard for Quack to wrestle the kind of match he usually does. Specifically to that point, Sara does not take Mike’s fancy shit initially and beats the crap out of him, forcing Quackenbush to get uncommonly rude (on screen) to take over. Quackenbush specifically kicks out Del Rey’s right knee and spends the match working on it. Del Rey fights him every step of the way, as stubborn as always, and it only makes Quack meaner and more aggressive in response. It’s perfect work from Quackenbush. He ties her up, kicks or blocks the knee out when it becomes too tough, and always gets just a little bit nastier. It’s a little weird to think of him as any kind of hero now, but he’s specifically very good here as walking that very thing tightrope. He’s never a bad guy in this match, but he does things in just the specifically correct sort of ways to ensure that you are getting behind Del Rey, while never losing what his character is. Perfect flagbearer/face of the company/measuring stick kind of work.

For her part, Sara Del Rey is wonderful. They’re both in a similar kind of spot as these more hard nosed veteran wrestlers and for as good as Quack is with all of the little touches to tell you that he’s still good, but that this is about Sara as a sympathetic figure, Del Rey is maybe even better about actually just being that sympathetic figure. For whatever reason, I have trouble sometimes cheering for a purely wholesome put-upon babyface, but because this match begins with Sara beating the hell out of Quack and because she’s always able to turn it around through superior striking, I’m able to much more easily buy into her as a sympathetic character when her knee is being attacked. Someone just getting owned does way less for me than someone being hindered like this, against someone they’ve shown they could handle otherwise. Being close enough to grab something only for someone to move it just out of reach is way more frustrating than something being wholly out of reach.

On a mechanical level, Del Rey is not perfect in this, but she is just great enough to keep the match afloat while Quackenbush tears up the leg. A little sell here and there, a big attention grabbing One Legged Bridge for all of you out there who like that sort of thing. The damage is always just enough to stop her from making the most of everything she can do to Quackenbush, and she can do pretty much anything to Quackenbush. For his part, everything he does goes back to the leg, without fail. Once Del Rey has missed her best shot because of the pain the Royal Butterfly Suplex put her bad leg in, Quack attacks with a little more ferocity than before. Del Rey survives the Lightning Lock, so Quackenbush adapts it into a Stretch Muffler too. After shaking up and down on the distorted and punished limb, Quackenbush finally makes Del Rey tap out.

Mike Quackenbush wins Block A and makes it to the finals of the 12 Large Summit. He does so through know-how and a more calculated application of science than he’s shown in some time. Most importantly, he does so while the Block B winner, Eddie Kingston, watches from commentary, resting up his own chronic knee injury. Quackenbush did this to someone with a perfectly healthy leg who made zero mistakes in the match. Imagine what happens against someone more prone to losing their cool and who already has a bad knee. A bad knee that’s existed for years, and that’s been the easiest way to break down Eddie Kingston in match after match after match since it started to bother him. It’s perfect. Not as fantastical or intricately plotted out as CHIKARA’s other greatest stories, but as well executed and interesting as any of them.

Watch this if you think you can.

It’s nothing all that complicated, a straight line from point A to point B. One competitor is stronger and younger, until something happens. Actions then have consequences. Incredibly tight and meaningful mechanical work. Cool stuff based around that, before finishing at the right time and with the best and biggest piece of offense in the match. It’s a formula, executed in such a way that makes it feel completely unformulaic. This was always going to be about science up against force, but they approach it from a totally different angle than I would have expected, and it’s even more interesting in reality than on paper as a result.

***1/2