Mercedes Martinez Needed a Minute. Sara Del Rey Needed Three Seconds.
Mercedes Martinez Needed a Minute. Sara Del Rey Needed Three Seconds.
Mercedes Martinez and Sara Del Rey set the standard for SHIMMER early with matches like this no time limit classic from SHIMMER Volume 5.
When Joseph and I decided to cover SHIMMER this month, I did not anticipate being intimidated by the project, but I am kind of intimidated by the project. I got into the promotion a little late, 2009 or so, when YouTube and Megaupload rekindled my enthusiasm for wrestling by sending me to little pocket universes like Hustle and Tajiri’s Smash. I tried ROH and poked at the same IWA-MS match every other neophyte to indie wrestling did — CM Punk vs. Eddy Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. — but, in reading back some of my writing on the great sport of professional wrestling, I wasn’t really ready for the rough edges of those scenes.
SHIMMER was different. It and CHIKARA are what got me into indie wrestling, and within three years I was doing color commentary and concussing myself in a wrestling ring, events that led me to write a book of poetry about wrestling and write my first decent essay on the subject, which got me into grad school, at which point the road that leads to whatever my life is now laid itself out. I don’t like saying things like “wrestling saved me,” but it is something I have poured a lot of time and energy into over the years, and I don’t think that happens without finding something to be ecstatic about within it.
SHIMMER was that something. It’s extremely special to me, which is part of what intimidates me. The other part is that it has been at least seven or eight years since I’ve seen the early volumes, and there’s always a little bit of terror in the prospect that something you loved so long ago might not hold up.
This is Sara Del Rey and Mercedes Martinez, though. Of course it holds up.
A little context: this is a match with no time limit. The reason for this is that SHIMMER utilized a 20-minute time limit, and at SHIMMER Volume 1, Mercedes Martinez hit her fisherman’s buster as the clock expired. Give her another minute – hell, give her three more seconds – and she wraps it up.
This is a classic wrestling storyline, which usually plays itself out over a championship with strict time limits – the WCW Television Championship, let’s say. The champion is tested and reaches their breaking point, but retains on a time limit draw. This happens once or twice after the initial encounter, the challenger coming closer and closer every time, until it’s decided that the rivalry has exhausted the bounds of the rules, so let’s just find out who the better wrestler is, no limits.
It’s not a great angle, frankly, though it looks like one on paper. Look to modern WWE booking or the recent Elite vs. Death Triangle Best of Seven for the big reason why: compressed repetition of wrestling matches is extremely difficult to pull off without running out of ideas or exhausting the audience. Wrestling is a great sport, but it is not a sport in the same sense that baseball, basketball, and hockey are — they do not have the gift of being predetermined, but they do promise a completely different game every time, the narrative shaped by play.
Del Rey and Martinez get to cut through all of that. SHIMMER’s taping schedule wouldn’t allow it, for one, and there’s the nice, baked-in storyline that Martinez had her rival beat. Just a little more time.
There is, to me, a beauty that this match barely runs a minute over the length of their official encounter, and that Del Rey picks up the win when she is at her most vulnerable. Del Rey throwing her bodyweight back and trapping Martinez in a pinning predicament might scan as disappointing, lacking the flair of a definitive ending — if this happened on a mainstream television show, someone would shout about how Del Rey “stole one” – but when it comes to clean finishes in professional wrestling, the only definitive ending is the bell. A win is a win, and besides, Martinez should have let go of the hold after Del Rey’s first attempt at the pin.
That’s a small detail, so small that it could pass without notice. This match is full of those. Martinez may have been denied a victory at SHIMMER Volume 1, but their Volume 5 encounter is especially careful to maintain that these two women are equals. They do this loudly with the first couple of exchanges – a collar and elbow tie-up that goes to a draw, a knuckle lock that ends in the two trading forearms, and shrugging off each other’s suplexes.
What this suggests is a war of protracted length, but every time either woman senses an opening, they exploit it, going tit-for-tat all the way, like when Del Rey capitalizes on a bridge out by hitting two running big boots, only for Martinez to catch her on the third. This opens things up for the two to start throwing bombs – I’m not sure that Martinez meant to hit a reverse brainbuster, but it was pretty goddamn gross. Del Rey keeps up, throwing a high impact German suplex, a move she’d recently beaten Daizee Haze with, but only gets a two count because Martinez only had one shoulder on the canvas.
I don’t know if that beat was intentional, but I just watched the Vader/Sting match where the tide shifts against Vader because he rebounded on his top rope splash and gave Sting just enough time to kick out, and the two count here has a similar function, nudging the momentum into Martinez’s favor as Del Rey spends too much time looking for the butterfly lock.
Everything suggests that Martinez is going to make good on Volume 1 until she’s beaten. It’s simple, effective storytelling that revolves around a general rule of combat sports, which is that great fighters never stop looking for a win. Mercedes Martinez is a great wrestler. On this night, she was better than Sara Del Rey. But Sara Del Rey is a great wrestler, too. All a great wrestler needs is three seconds.