Cewsh Reviews – Shimmer Volume 64 Recap Spectacular

Just Looking At The Picture I Can Hear The Entire Building Yelling “O! O! O!”

2. Melanie Cruise beat Kay Lee Ray & Nikki Storm in a 3-way. Cruise pinned Ray following a Tombstone Piledriver.

Melanie Cruise Tombstoning Kay Lee Ray Through The Earth’s Mantle. As You Do.

Mrs. Cewsh: Hilarious. A true stand out on what turned out to be the weakest of the four shows. There is something to be said about Nikki’s antics not putting over the face, but I came away with a better sense of who KLR was, so something worked for her.

Cewsh: This was downright magical. The entire match centers around Melanie Cruise destroying Kay Lee Ray while Nikki Storm shouts encouragement and stays out of the way. Storm’s antics here were laugh out loud funny, and Melanie Cruise was in her element, tossing around the smaller Ray, and letting her sell like crazy.

I’m locking this in as the best match of this Volume. It’s so tempting to give that distinction to more serious matches, but I can’t help it. Nikki Storm has stolen all of our hearts.

Cewsh: Obviously we’re big fans of Angie Skye, and Heidi Lovelace is very talented, but i’m not sure these two were the right kind of opponent for one another. Heidi needs someone bigger to fly against and Angie needs someone to brawl with a little bit. So the end result was a good, but unspectacular match between two women who have better matches to their credit on this weekend.

Cewsh: Remember those two heel turns I told you about? Well this is the first one. Leva Bates and Veda Scott team up for the second time to get kicked in the crotch repeatedly by Saraya and her protege, and things do not go well for Leva. The crowd is certainly behind her and her Deadpool antics, though even her most diehard fans can’t have enjoyed seeing her explode a chimichanga all over the ring, but after taking a huge beating, Leva tries to tag in Veda Scott, only for Veda to refuse and walk away, saying she doesn’t want to associate with losers.

From there, Leva Bates just gets destroyed, as Saraya makes a blatant example of her while demanding a tag team title shot. Allison Danger runs out to try to make the save, but the refs hold her back for her own good, and Saraya and Rhia stand tall at the end of Leva Bates’ terrible, no good, very bad day.

I have to say that I think it would have been a bigger deal for Veda to turn heel on her regular tag partner, Shazza McKenzie, since we’re invested in their friendship and it would have felt truly shocking. But Shazza couldn’t be here this weekend, and as we will soon see, a heel Veda is worth whatever price it takes to get there.

Mrs. Cewsh: I LOVE heel Veda. It’s amazing how in her brief time in the business she’s mastered two totally different characters: the loveable, plucky babyface and the evil legal beagle. I also really like the team of Saraya and Rhia. Saraya gets the heat and Rhia’s got a really interesting moveset. Unfortunately, my biggest problem with this match is Leva. She’s playing Deadpool this time around and it didn’t work for me. She’s such an expressive, sympathetic face and covering her with a full mask cut down on that. And I had a real problem with the “chimichanga” spot. It was gross and pointless and made a mess that someone else had to clean up. I think she’s beyond needing to rely on spots like that or the Rogue-absorbs-their-”powers”-move.

Mrs. Cewsh: I have no recollection of this match happening. And I liked both women.

Cewsh: Marti Belle was good, at least! I remember that!

Mrs. Cewsh: Weird. So weird. Unbelievably weird.

First, LuFisto was the number one contender. She lost due to Mercedes’ interference. They had a tag grudge match, which LuKana won. Instead of getting another title shot, she drops all the way down the card to Neveah, (no offense to her.) THEN she gets on the mic and says that since she got a big win on the last volume and a big win here, (uh, NEVAEH is not a big win,) (no offense,) she deserves another title shot. Then Danger and Melissa both cut pretty mediocre promos and say that Lufi has to work her way back up the card. Which…is what a Nevaeh match is.

Then Melissa is assigned a title shot with Yumi Okha, who got a midcard win over Athena on the last volume. (And hadn’t had a match before that since 52, so it’s not like she earned it in New Orleans and had to get in line.)

So this promo should have come before the match to make any sense, and even then I don’t understand how they picked the number one contender. Weird.

Cewsh: I have to be completely honest with you guys. This entire LuFisto storyline would have worked about a billion times better if the promos had been better. They really let the storyline down.

The gist is that Melissa is refusing to defend the title against LuFisto, since she’s had too many shots. So now LuFisto is going to have to work her way back up from the bottom to earn her shot, which is exactly what Melissa did on her epic road to the rematch with Madison Eagles that finally won her the title. But the key is that LuFisto’s frustration with being forced to do this is going to leave her open to the power of evil suggestion from Saraya later on, and send her down the path to heel town, until she realizes what she’s doing, throws off the influence of the evil Saraya, and destroys her. That’s the storyline. But telling that story requires getting a lot of information across to the audience, and it just didn’t come together.

If Shimmer has one consistent issue it’s with promos by everyone in the company not named Portia Perez, Madison Eagles or Nicole Matthews. And the promo at the end of this match featured four people talking over each other, missing on key points, and it really failed to capture the focus of this, which should have been LuFisto’s frustration and Melissa being a huge jerk. Adding in passing that Yumi Ohka would be getting a title shot did little to assuage the fans who were disappointed that they wouldn’t see the Lufi/Melissa title match they wanted as well, and all in all, this sucked the life out of the crowd big time.

Later on, they’ll manage to make something out of this story, and lead it to a terrific conclusion, but this start was dead in the water.

Mrs. Cewsh: I love a midcard comedic 4-way and this was a great way to protect Eagles after her injury on 63. Evie bumped like a champ, Rush got the pin, but the story is the Worst Best Friends and their drama. I want Matthews and Eagles to keep this up for a long time.

Cewsh: First, this match was hugely fun. Second, has anyone actually pinned Madison Eagles in the past 20 tapings or so? Seriously, she’s turning into Andre the Giant here.

Mrs. Cewsh: ???????

I’m missing something. It was entertaining enough, but the crowd acted like this was Austin/Rock IV. I know Kevin Harvey wanted to see it, (miss you already Kevin!) and maybe that’s all the explanation we need?

Cewsh: That’s certainly all the explanation we GOT. Thunderkitty is an act that I enjoy, but I am continually amazed by just how incredibly over she is with this audience. She is routinely one of the 4 or 5 most over people on this show, and that’s despite the fact that she’s never actually had a particularly great match for this company. I think she CAN, and I look forward to seeing her grow in the years to come, but i’m really afraid that the reactions will get her pushed higher on the card than she’s ready for.

Cewsh: The two woman race for MVP of Shimmer weekend has to be between Hikaru Shida and Mia Yim at this point. You can point to me and say that I have a joshi bias all you want, but the fact is that Shida has torn the house down every single time she’s stepped into a Shimmer ring thus far, and it doesn’t even seem to matter who she faces. Kimber Lee, trained at CZW’s school, has maybe her best singles match in Shimmer in this one, as these two go full speed and really show off what special talents they both are. They couldn’t possibly come from more different places, but when they got in the ring it was a thing to see.

Mrs. Cewsh: I wasn’t sure how Kimber would work with the joshis, but send that girl to Japan. Great match.

Mrs. Cewsh: Something of a surprise win, considering Mercedes position as the champ’s right hand, but I can’t say enough about Mia and what she’s grown to be.

Cewsh: It’s a shame that LuFisto’s storyline is going to get all the attention from this weekend, because we also saw the official rise of Mia Yim to serious contender status. This was a big, big win for her, and earned her a title shot on Volume 65. And remember that she will be wrestling every match you read about from this point on with a bad knee. Just incredible.

Mrs. Cewsh: Match of the night. Fast, exciting, high flying. Inventive double team moves. Tons of near falls. (Maybe a few too many? SORRY!) Good luck topping that.

Cewsh: This was everything I wanted it to be and more. Ray and Leon are an act unlike anything else in American women’s wrestling, and they went for here in a big way. This almost lived up to their match with Hamada and Kurihara, which has become the stuff of Shimmer legend.

Cewsh: It was clear from the outset that this match was going to be an uphill battle with the fans. Yumi Ohka is popular, but not on the same level with the real top babyfaces in Shimmer, and the fans didn’t seem overly excited to see her at the end of 8 hours of wrestling. That gave Melissa’s fans an opening to cheer for her big time, and so this match really had very little heat on it through the first 10 minutes or so. But as the match wound down, the fans got back into what was going on, and even got fooled on a couple of big near falls towards the end, which is a testament to both performers in getting the crowd back after it had so obviously checked out.

But the important part here comes at the very end, where Ohka is making a dramatic comeback, only to see LuFisto run down to the ring and grab Melissa, holding her so that Ohka can hit her signature Yakuza Kick. Ohka not only refused the help, but Yakuza kicked Lufi in the face for interfering, and then walked right into an Air Raid Crash from Melissa to end the match. The show ended with Ohka and Lufi having to be separated as they tried to brawl, and setting up for a majorly heated match on Volume 65.

Mrs. Cewsh: This was hurt by the great match before it, the fact that it was already almost 11 my time, and the looming specter of LuFisto. It was very, very obvious that she’d be making a run in, and I found myself checking my phone wondering where she was so we could go. Hopefully this is better on DVD, but live, I just wanted it to be shorter.

Cewsh: Every weekend, there’s always going to be one taping that doesn’t quiiiiiiite measure up to the other three. That is indisputably this one, even though there were at least 3 very good matches on the show. The general feeling of fans after Night 1 ended was one of disappointment and confusion, and the LuFisto storyline in particular earned some strong criticisms from even the most diehard Shimmer fans. BUT, that’s the fun of Shimmer. We don’t have to wait a month to see the next show, we have two more on the very next day. And if this night left people feeling disappointed, Night 2 left them feeling euphoric and giddy. Strap in for the next two volumes to come, ya’ll. Because this shit is about to get serious.

Now enjoy some more pictures from Shimmer Volume 64!