DVD Review: “Women Of Honor” (ROH)

Women Of Honor (Ring of Honor DVD)

In my opinion, 2012 was one of the best and most productive years ever for the unique artform that is women’s professional wrestling, particularly in the American market, where the ladies have had to struggle for acceptance and respect from fans, the media and indeed the industry itself. But they have succeeded, and then some. At this moment, the active roster of women’s wrestlers in this country is probably the strongest it has ever been, and at the forefront of that movement is Shimmer Women Athletes.

Shimmer has been running its own live events since 2005, as exhaustively-documented on the more than 50 volumes of DVDs released since then. They’ve recently partnered with the Florida-based Shine promotion, whose Internet pay-per-views feature a number of Shimmer mainstays. The new and steadily-evolving “iPPV” market has already been a serious boon to independent promotions over the past couple of years, allowing them to project their products to fans worldwide with minimal overhead, increasing exposure for the companies and boosting revenue for bookers and workers alike. But a significant factor in Shimmer’s success has come through their partnership with Ring Of Honor, which is currently the third-biggest wrestling promotion in America, but stands in good position to eclipse the chronically underperforming TNA/Impact Wrestling in the next couple of years.

During its decade in operation, ROH has put forth some of the very best matches of the 21^st century; their former world champions include currently WWE/TNA stars Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, Samoa Joe, Seth Rollins and Austin Aries, while current champion Kevin Steen has been on fire all year. “Women Of Honor” showcases the best of the collaboration between Shimmer and Ring Of Honor. It also functions as a nice introduction to the women’s wrestling scene in America and its leading talents.

It’s worth noting that, while the stars women’s wrestling strive to be regarded on the same level as the men, of course, in my opinion certain differences between the genders result overall in products that are fairly similar, but very much unique and distinct from each other, while being equally compelling on their own accord. Not everyone cares for the joshi game; many wrestling fans can barely sit through five minutes of Divas action on Monday Night Raw, let alone 20-30 minutes. The apostates can’t even appreciate one of the old Manami Toyota-Aja Kong classics, which basically defined the art-form at its peak; they would have no use for the material discussed herein, and that is entirely their loss.

The ROH DVDs have none of the sweet documentary-style content associated with WWE releases; they are simply compilations of matches, so there’s no backstory of promos to provide context, but the fan-base would already be up to speed on all that. (Curiously, WWE has never done a serious anthology of its own rich women’s wrestling history, which extends from the Fabulous Moolah down to AJ Lee. One would presume that such a thing would be easy to make, and a solid seller; it seems inevitable.) What this disc does offer is more top-notch joshi action than you’re likely to see anywhere, outside of Shimmer itself.

The double-disc set includes 33 matches, featuring 25 different women; there are also three mixed-tag matches. Allison Danger appears eight times. Sara Del Rey appears 15 times. Another standout here is Lacey, who also appears in 15 matches as a singles competitor, and also in a tag-match with Del Rey against Daizee Haze and Awesome Kong. Lacey, who retired to earn a Master’s degree in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, and who’s now working on her PhD in China, was a major figure in the evolution of both Shimmer and Ring of Honor. Her dealings with Jimmy Jacobs made for one of ROH’s all-time enduring storylines, while in Shimmer she teamed with Rain to form the infamous Minnesota Homewrecking Crew, which was the dominant heel tag-team of Shimmer’s early years, the equivalent of today’s Canadian Ninjas (Nicole Matthews and Portia Perez). Lacey, Haze and Del Rey were the early triumvirate around which the ROH women’s division was built, and this DVD set captures those formative years nicely. Any Lacey fans out there will want this; looking back, thinking mainly of promos and angles she was involved in, one forgets how good Lacey was in the ring.

Certainly the most important thing of all about “Women Of Honor” is that it is probably the closest thing wrestling fans will ever have to an anthology devoted to the work of Daizee Haze, who wrestles in 23 of the 33 matches collected here, including all three mixed-tag matches (all against Lacey, by the way). Besides just wrestling, she was also a trainer for ROH and Shimmer, and she main-evented the latter company’s first four shows; she (along with Del Rey) also helped bring the joshi scene into Chikara.

Haze (who is also notable for being one of the few pro-wrestlers whose real name is not public knowledge) abruptly stepped away from the ring in August 2011, and it’s been almost impossible to find out anything about what happened to her. As such, the best year yet for women’s wrestling in America has taken place with one of its chief architects on the sidelines. One hopes she returns, but whether she does or not, her presence makes this DVD essential. There are also matches featuring the likes of Allison Danger (Steve Corino’s sister), Sarah Stock (aka Dark Angel, aka Sarita in TNA), Alexis Laree (aka Mickie James), Serena Deeb, Sumie Sakai, Jetta, Eden Black, Tracy Brooks, Mercedes Martinez, Nikki Roxx, Persephonie, Jennifer Blake, Ashley Lane, Tomoko Nakagai, Hiroyo Matsumoto, Ayumi Kurihara and former Shimmer champions MisChif, Madison Eagles and Cheerleader Melissa. The whole thing’s a lot of fun to watch, having seen how far all these ladies have already come Now that the industry has taken notice of their abilities, it will be even more fun to see what happens next.

sheltonhull@gmail.com

DVD Review: Sara Del Rey

Best of Independent Wrestling Series Presents: Sara Del Rey (Smart Mark Video)

Is Sara Del Rey the best women’s wrestler in America? That the question even needs to be asked speaks to the depth of the women’s wrestling scene today. While the Japanese promotions have utilized their female talent as serious athletes pretty consistently for the past 30 years, the United States has been inconsistent, at best, in the modern era. That’s a sharp departure from territory days, when audiences could see legends like Mildred Burke, June Byers, Fabulous Moolah and the sublime Vivian Vachon plied their trade with no quarter given or taken.

With some notable exceptions (Moolah’s last run, GLOW, the AWA, portions of mid-‘90s WCW), women’s wrestling was put on the backburner in the ‘80s and ‘90s. While there were plenty of awesome wrestlers in that era—Sherri Martel. Medusa Miceli, Jackie Moore (aka Miss Texas)—women were used mostly to great effect as valets/managers and, in WWE, to get crossover appeal via Playboy spreads. Even with the arrival of ladies like Trish Stratus and Lita, the physical viability of the women’s roster was actively downplayed, with excessive gimmick matches and embarrassing storylines that stunk of misogyny and alienated audiences.

By most accounts, Fit Finlay was responsible for helping to transform the WWE’s women’s division into what is now one of the most important components of their overall product. The men’s magazine spreads still happen sometimes, but you’re more likely to see the Divas doing charity work, anti-bullying or pro-literacy campaigns, or maybe putting out yoga DVDs or sitting-in on martial-arts instructional tapes. Over the past decade, the match quality has spiked upward as the women have been allowed to wrestle more, wrestle longer and with more credibility. The current Divas division is probably their best ever—certainly in terms of sheer numbers; a Diva-for-Diva comparison between the 2012 roster and their counterparts from a decade ago would be interesting, some other time.

WWE’s success helped inspire the competition, as the emergence of TNA/Impact has offered another opportunity to evolve the structure of women’s wrestling, and their Knockouts division has regularly had some of the highest-rated segments of their programming. Their roster contains a nice mix of established stars from WWE and girls who came there straight from the many independent promotions out there. They are the only company to ever put a women’s steel cage match on TV, as far as I know. The Knockouts suffer from the same issues as everyone else who has to work with that material, but they manage to do well nonetheless.

The increased visibility of women’s wrestling on national TV via WWE and TNA, and the platform it creates for wider success, has acted as a rising tide lifting all boats—that is, the indies. WWE has an infrastructure for training new female wrestlers, but like TNA they mostly recruit women with some experience on the indie circuit; there is no real female equivalent of men’s amateur wrestling system, besides maybe Judo. So, for them, the independent circuit is truly essential, not just for learning their craft, but for perfecting it.

As good as the very best ladies in WWE and TNA are, their colleagues on the indies are as good, or better. And—with all due respect to Daizee Haze, Nicole Matthews, Madison Eagles, Melissa Anderson, MsChif, LuFisto, Portia Perez—Sara Del Rey is at the top of that list. She’s never worked for WWE but, at 31, it seems inevitable that she will. She’s already been able to claim key roles in the evolution of arguably the top three independent promotions in the country: Ring of Honor, Chikara and Shimmer.

Del Rey and Melissa Anderson are standing in the back of the picture, on either side of the chandelier.

For the record: Sara Del Rey is of no relation to singer Lana Del Rey. She was born Sara Amato, she was trained in California by a fella named Bryan Danielson, who at this writing is WWE’s World Heavyweight Champion. (He was also named PETA’s 2011 Athlete Of the Year, but that’s another subject.) In some ways, she can be considered a feminist icon of this era, with her insistence on training and wrestling right alongside the guys; given that they included folks like CM Punk, Chris Hero, Claudio Castagnoli and Samoa Joe, is commendable. She’s known for her arsenal of kicks and her finishing maneuver, the “Royal Butterfly”, best described as a double-underhook neck-crank into a suplex; it’s one of the signature moves of the women’s scene, right up there with the “Glam Slam”.

The greatness of “Queen of Wrestling” is celebrated in a recent triple-DVD release by Smart Mark Video. While not as fancy as the amazing releases being done by WWE, it’s no-nonsense, straightforward style fits perfectly with its subject. Disc one consists mostly of an interview conducted in late-2011; it runs nearly an hour, and features her talking about how she got into the business, telling stories—the usual shoot-interview fare. The rest of the package is filled-out by 21 matches recorded over the past six years of her career. She appears here for nine different promotions with 22 different opponents, including three men (Castagnoli, Icarus and Chikara founder Mike Quackenbush).

One thing that comes through crystal-clear from the DVD is Del Rey’s versatility. She can play power-games with smaller women like Daizee Haze and Portia Perez, but she can be the versatile underdog when facing opponents like Amazing Kong (who’s had a rough year as the WWE’s Kharma). As for the inter-gender matches, the best compliment one can give them is that they don’t come off as gimmicks. There are two matches with Castagnoli in the collection, and one almost forgets that Del Rey is a woman; it seems more like a match between two guys, albeit with a significant size advantage. Their second match here was one of his last for Chikara before going to FCW, and one of the promotion’s greatest moments; the post-match angle was also the last time anyone’s heard anything from Daizee Haze, who’s really one of the best performers in all of pro-wrestling in the last few years.

Eight of the last nine matches on the DVD are from her run with the BDK in Chikara, starting with one of my favorite matches ever: Del Rey and Daizee Haze against Amazing Kong and Raisha Saeed. (Melissa Anderson appears in four matches, more than anyone else; Haze and Castagnoli appear three times.) She tags with Castagnoli against Quackenbush and Manami Toyota, widely-viewed as the best women’s wrestler of all-time, and later faces off against current Shimmer champion Madison Eagles. Also included is her match with Quackenbush in the semi-finals of the 12Large Summit tournament that ultimately crowned Eddie Kingston as Chikara’s inaugural Grand Champion. I’d also like to point out that Tim Donst’s commentary in the Del Rey vs. Icarus match is a highlight of the whole package.

WWE and TNA have so far been remiss in featuring their women’s rosters on DVD, in part because neither company has really given any of their women time to put together enough material to do such a thing. Of course, both companies have enough to each do at least one nice historical overview of the divisions. Ratings and web-hits would suggest the market is ripe, but we’ll see; a rumored Trish-Lita “Rivalries” package would be an interesting start. More so than any DVD package released so far, this collection finely skims the cream of women’s wrestling in America, and makes a pretty compelling case that Sara Del Rey is, as the cliché goes, “every bit as good as she says she is.” For those looking to get themselves up to speed with the best crop of women’s wrestlers in American history, this release is a great place to start.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; March 12, 2012