Sara Del Ray vs. Amazing Kong Could Have Been Great

Sometimes wrestling offers up something that is more amazing on paper than it ever gets to be in the ring. This match is one of those moments.

SHIMMER

This match is about potential, for better and for worse.

Sara Del Rey is the SHIMMER Champion, making her third defense. Amazing Kong is her undefeated challenger. In a general sense, it is understood just how important these two women are to the history of women’s professional wrestling in the United States, but, for context, a month before this Kong began feuding with Gail Kim in TNA, putting together a program that is considered by many to be one of (if not the) greatest women’s wrestling programs in televised wrestling history in this country. Del Rey is in the middle of setting the tone for the SHIMMER Championship, and this is their first meeting on American soil.

Neither woman should lose this match, so neither of them do, at least not in a way that hurts. 

Early in this match, Dave Prazak notes that Kong couldn’t be in the SHIMMER Championship tournament due to obligations in Japan, speculating that, had she been in Berwin, Illinois, she could have gone to the finals, or even won the title. He’s not wrong. Amazing Kong cut a dangerous figure in her time in wrestling. It wasn’t just her size, but the way she carried herself. There are few things scarier than a person who knows they can take your best shot – it’s part of what makes wrestlers like Brock Lesnar and Vader and Aja Kong so effective, and it’s a big part of Amazing Kong’s mystique, especially in how she was presented on television, wrestling much smaller women in the Knockout Division.

In SHIMMER, she has her mystique – she is undefeated, after all – but the indies are a different animal than TNA (or WWE, which … woof, Vince McMahon really sucked at booking giants for someone who prided himself on booking giants), and Sara Del Ray is a different animal compared to most women who wrestle. They are about on equal footing here, and that never really changes. There are bombs here and there, small shifts in momentum, but this is “the unstoppable force meets the immovable object” cast as Del Ray’s superior mat acumen against Kong’s strikes. But for the fact that Del Ray can’t lift Kong for her trademark suplexes early on in the match, there is no real power differential. You don’t want to stand and fight Kong. You don’t want to get out-leveraged by Del Ray.

It’s a game of inches. Unfortunately, that means that the epic pitch you probably want from an encounter like this just isn’t there. It’s a good match, but that’s it. It’s the set-up for a story that never gets told: this is their only SHIMMER singles match, one of six they ever had anywhere.

Last week, when I said I was a little nervous to revisit this era of my wrestling fandom, my somewhat subdued reaction to this match is the reason why. In my head, Sara Del Ray vs. Amazing Kong is this big, massive happening, something that reverberates through wrestling history, or at least my perception of wrestling history. And to some extent, it is. It’s a true marquee match, something all of five promotions managed to pull off. But I’ve lived through a lot of wrestling since then, have seen even more besides, and can’t help but feel a little sad that there is no payoff to this. The DVD ends with Kong holding an ice pack to her head saying that Sara didn’t pin or submit her and, at least so far as SHIMMER is concerned, that is true throughout all time and space.

In the moment, it’s difficult to fault the booking – someone needs to win, neither woman can lose, so you get a dubious TKO finish where the last blow is Kong’s. Fine. But whether it was TNA’s reticence to let talent work indie shows or injuries or whatever, Kong vs. Del Ray is one of those instances where wrestling as a whole suffers a bit because it is, by nature, a game of delayed gratification. If something works, you want to string it out for as long as possible, anchoring months of television, house shows, and PPV with as many slight variations on that theme are possible. You build legends out of this: Flair vs. Steamboat, Austin vs. The Rock, Okada vs. Tanahashi. Sometimes the legend ends at WrestleMania, and sometimes it ends on a random episode of WCW Saturday Night.

In the case of Sara Del Ray and Amazing Kong, it never really happened, and it’s a shame. It’s so obvious that it should have, but their legacies were built largely in parallel, Del Ray picking Kong up for the Royal Butterfly as big in my imagination as that clip of Jeff Jarrett hitting Hulk Hogan over the head with a guitar in Japan was to an early-TNA Jeff Jarrett – there are some moments in wrestling that are achingly full of possibility that is destined to go unfulfilled. Here’s one.