Previously on the Mae Young Classic: They did one for the first time! Kairi Sane defeated Shayna Baszler to win it! Ronda Rousey was in the audience!
You can watch the Mae Young Classic on the WWE Network, and get a breakdown of the tournament via my preview article. To keep up with our website, you can follow With Spandex on Twitter and Facebook. Also, we have a podcast! Also, you can follow me on Twitter here, where I mostly just talk about wrestling some more.
And now, my review of season 2, episode 1 of the Mae Young Classic, from September 5, 2018.
Wait, No, First There’s Housekeeping
As you probably noticed from the headline, I’m going to try departing from the Best/Worst format for this column, and do something I’m calling a Ranked Review. Each MYC episode consists of four, straight-up wrestling matches and almost nothing else for about an hour, and I’m going to talk about each match in worst-to-best order. As always, I welcome your thoughts on the format and rankings, as well as the rest of the review and the episode is talks about, in the comments section.
Before we get to the JUDGMENT, I want to reiterate my attitude going into the MYC, which I already talked about in my preview article. I don’t write about women in wrestling all that much since New Japan is my main beat on Uproxx, but boy do I love women and do I love seeing women kick ass in one of my favorite ways one can do that, which is professional wrestling.
After such a long time of women being the lowest priority people in WWE, I love the presentation of an all-women’s tournament as a “crop of elite talent” with different wrestling styles and experience levels and from a variety of backgrounds pursuing the goal of winning this thing. And since last year’s finalists have gone on to such heights in NXT, and the final of this year’s tournament will be on the much higher profile Evolution, the stakes for the second MYC are realistically higher than the first. In sum, when I start watching a new installment of the Mae Young Classic, I go in feeling positive.
4. Lacey Lane def. Vanessa Kraven
Looking at the first-round brackets, I think WWE understandably stacked this first episode with some of the stronger matchups. Lane vs. Kraven ended up the lowlight of the night for me, but it was still entertaining. The shear Mortal Kombat-ness of it all was fun, with the huge size discrepancy and Lacey’s college basketball champ turned “lucha strong style” warrior look and in-ring style.
Even though Kraven’s presentation of herself in the promo video made me cringe, I still found myself thinking WWE sign her because during the match, she made me realize how much we need a monster woman in this promotion. Those chops, that Canadian backbreaker, and her use of the ring apron looked brutal!
And although Lane didn’t score much offense in this match and I didn’t think what she got in looked all that great besides the crucifix bomb that won her the match, our hometown competitor definitely got over as an underdog babyface to watch. If you want to see more of her doing things besides getting murked by a giant and showing Fighting Spirit about it before her next MYC match, you should definitely check out these highlights of her vs. AAA legend Faby Apache.
3. Tegan Nox def. Zatara
Tegan Nox vs. Zatara also featured an underdog babyface being victorious against a bruiser heel, but with less significant differences in size and experience levels, as well as our hero fighting up from struggles we’ve seen her encounter in WWE. They make a big deal of Nox being a dark horse in this tournament, and she is so far the only one with a video in addition to the MYC backstage interview about her goals.
The push makes sense. Nox has an easy, broad appeal with her unforced positive attitude, story of perseverance than can be backed up with real life footage, and athleticism, with the bonus of being conventionally attractive. She’s also pretty darn good in the ring, in an old school way that includes getting the Shining Wizard over as a cool finisher in the 2010s.
Chilean luchadora Zatara, less known by the Full Sail crowd (and me), looks good too while putting Nox over. She targets The Surgically Repaired Knee Of Tegan Nox with dropkicks and leg locks and against the ropes, and I know I just referenced Seth Rollins, but this specific dynamic actually did more to put over Nox as a babyface for me because it was the main theme of most Hiroshi Tanahashi matches during this year’s G1. (Also, Nox does a high crossbody not unlike the High Fly Flow.) (The G1 consumed my life until recently.)
This relatively short match opened the show, and I think I could have watched it escalate further for easily five to ten more minutes. Both women showed the ability to do a lot more than this, but did very well with the timeslot they were given. It left me wanting more in a way that made me revved up to see the next wrestling match ASAP.
2. Rhea Ripley def. MJ Jenkins
Before we talk about this match, we have to talk about how much Rhea Ripley has glowed up by grunging down since last year’s Mae Young Classic. In her intro video, she says last year she made “a complete and utter fool of myself,” but then she went to the GYM and LIFTED WEIGHTS with some HEAVY GUITAR MUSIC IN THE BACKGROUND and did PULLUPS with a CHAIN AROUND HER NECK and a got an alternative lifestyle haircut and an outfit with spikes and mesh on it!
She’s basically gone full Knife Pervert, and I am extremely here for breathing with the Switchbabe (credit: Bill Hanstock.) Seriously, Ripley is SO Jay White. They have the same basic storyline if you switch the Performance Center for the dojo, and her double devil horns hand pose with that smirk is tryhard in the exact same way.
Ripley looks good in the ring here too, despite a kind of shaky vertical suplex. She starts the match very physically, and the pumphandle powerbomb she wins with looks good as a finisher.
The “afrolicious” MJ Jenkins is a sharp contrast to Ripley, and though she’s mostly here for the Aussie edgelord (a gender neutral term) to beat up, she looks like someone who could be a big star in a few years. The crowd doesn’t really know her at the beginning of the match and is way hotter for Ripley, but that turns to dueling name chants pretty quickly. Her comeback moment of SCREAMING and landing those uppercuts and yelling “I BELONG HERE” and then SHIMMYING ANGRILY was fantastic. That level of intensity is something I think we could stand to see in WWE much more often – this is the biggest wrestling promotion in the world, and it should be a big freaking deal to be here and win things here, and it should be shown in a positive way like this, not just by occasionally trash talking “bingo halls” or whatever.
1. Meiko Satomura def. Killer Kelly
If you watched this show, you knew Satomura vs. Kelly was going to be number one.
This match is mostly about Meiko and rightly so, but it was far from a squash, and the dynamic set up in the intro video that continued throughout the bout flattered both women. Satomura is presented as a master of her craft, and hilariously explains her loss 22 years ago in WCW by saying, “I didn’t have any finisher, so I lost instantly.” That’ll do it!
The traditional Japanese music choice in that video made me a tad concerned about how Satomura would be packaged. Yes, she wears that robe to the ring and seems to care about representing Japan well when she works internationally, but we still can’t really trust WWE not to get weird about people from countries that aren’t America. But that guitar entrance music, that crowd pop, a much more alive than usual Michael Cole talking about Billy Robinson and the Crush Gals and saying “It’s Meiko time!,” and Beth Phoenix talking about joshi strong style dispelled all of my fears.
In contrast to Satomura’s more natural, veteran badassery, Killer Kelly is a young, hotheaded, MMA grasshopper. She clearly respects Satomura, but is also out to kill, kill, kill and prove herself against this vet. They do some quality technical wrestling, and Kelly seems to dominate early, but looks frustrated that she isn’t winning yet. Then Satomura starts to have success with a creative submission, those strong freakin’ style kicks, and that extremely cool cartwheel to double legs. Kelly isn’t easily put away though, and clearly thinks she has the match after that fisherman suplex with a bridge.
But Satomura, SCREAMING, takes it home with the Death Valley Driver and advances to the next round, thank goodness. I know she isn’t signing (with Sendai Girls and being the first female KO-D Openweight Champion in DDT right now, why would she?), but I think even this guest stint by Satomura, plus the way it’s been handled so far, is a very good sign for WWE. This very good match was a strong closer to an overall really fun first installment of the second Mae Young Classic.
What did you think of these matches? Who were you most impressed or disappointed by? Sound off in the comments, and I’ll see you back here next week to talk about the second episode.
