The SmarK Rant for the Mae Young Classic S02E08 (Season Finale)

The SmarK Rant for the Mae Young Classic – S02E08

All righty, let’s wrap this one up and free up my Wednesday nights for something else. Tonight is the season finale, as we reach the end of our Cinderella stories and trailblazers, leading to the actual finals of the tournament on Sunday’s Foxy Boxing: Chickfight Revolution 2018 PPV.

Taped from Full Sail

Your hosts are Michael Cole, Renee Young, and Beth Phoenix.

Semi-final #1: Toni Storm v. Meiko Satomura

I think this raises part of the problem with taping this thing so far in advance, in that Meiko got over HUGE over the course of the tournament and really deserves to be in the finals. They exchange wristlocks to start and Meiko takes her to the mat with a headlock. Toni escapes from that, so Meiko hits her with a kick and throws forearms. Storm counters with a big boot for two and she takes over. Storm throws some headbutts and gets two from that. Meiko takes her down and wraps up the leg with a crazy leglock, but Toni makes the ropes. Meiko goes back to the leg with some nasty kicks and follows with a running forearm in the corner, then hits a leg lariat and fires away with more forearms. Toni counters with a backslide for two and quickly goes to an STF, but Meiko finally fights out, so Toni hits a fisherman’s suplex for two and Meiko bails. Toni follows with a dive and after watching last week’s show, I’ve had about enough of people diving onto that ramp. Back in, Storm with a shining wizard for two. Meiko makes the comeback and throws knees into a DDT, then follows with a handspring kick that kind of misses. Death Valley Driver gets two. This angers Satomura and she fires up for another knee, but Toni hits her with a german suplex and hits Storm Zero for two. Another try is countered with a Pele kick and Meiko kicks her down for two. Scorpion Kick gets two. One more DVD, but Toni counters into Storm Zero for the pin at 13:05 to advance to the finals. I understand what they see in Storm and why they’d pick her, but Meiko Satomura really should have won this whole thing. She just KILLED Toni Storm out there and then did the job? Fuck off. Maybe she’ll get to wreck some people in the girl geek battle royal on the undercard of the PPV. Hell of a match, though. ****

Semi-Final #2: Rhea Ripley v. Io Shirai

This was in fact supposed to be Tegan Knox in the semis before the horrific injury with rumor being that she was going all the way, so hopefully they can make it work. Rhea overpowers Shirai to start and faceplants her for two, then grabs a hold on the mat. Rhea stomps away on her and gets two, and goes to an abdominal stretch on the mat. Over to a bodyscissors and then hits the DROPKICK OF DOOM for two. Delayed suplex gets two. Back to the bodyscissors, but Io comes back with a rana for two and Ripley bails to escape. Shirai hits her with a dive onto the ramp. Could they seriously not just stop them from doing that damn dive for ONE NIGHT? Back in, Shirai comes back with palm strikes and a 619, which sets up a missile dropkick for two. Shirai goes up again, but Ripley trips her up and brings her down with a superplex for two. She tries a Snake Eyes, but Shirai escapes and fires up with the running knees in the corner, and finally hits the damn moonsault after four matches to win it at 12:55. The crowd was pretty forgiving of this one, but it was mostly dull leading up to a good finish. I’ve actually found Shirai to be kind of a disappointment given all the hype and I’m not really digging the Storm v. Shirai finals. *** Kairi Sane presents Io with flowers for the win and they have an emotional hug.

So that’s this year’s Mae Young Classic, which is mostly worth checking out on the Network for some good wrestling, but mute the commentary. There’s not really much of a story for the final match and I don’t really like that they went out and hugged each other at the end of the show. I dunno, the show was fine, but there’s no real draw for the PPV for me. But we’ll check it out this Sunday!