2018 Mae Young Classic

[tugs]

Watch the match against Pentagon, man. Whole nother level.

[improper]

Watch the match against Pentagon, man. Whole nother level.

The gauntlet match from Lucha Underground?

Wasn't Kairi one of the Lotus girls too?

[Spens1]

Uhh... are we sure Io Shairi isn't the best wrestler on the planet? Yes, this is my first time seeing her. She is perfect!

Xia Brookside is good too. Shes going to be a big deal for sure.

Io is the best woman by far, hell she's top 10 in general to be honest (no overhype, she's legit that good). I'd imagine she's taking this, then again they had Toni Storm win the first one didn't they?

[improper]

Io is the best woman by far, hell she's top 10 in general to be honest (no overhype, she's legit that good). I'd imagine she's taking this, then again they had Toni Storm win the first one didn't they?

Kairi beat Shayna to win the first one.

[Spens1]

Io is the best woman by far, hell she's top 10 in general to be honest (no overhype, she's legit that good). I'd imagine she's taking this, then again they had Toni Storm win the first one didn't they?

Kairi beat Shayna to win the first one.

oh yeah my bad, for some reason i thought Toni won the first one.

Anyway if they had Kairi win the first one i'd imagine Io's winning this one and probably taking that title off of Io (poor Kairi cannot escape Io).

[Stanford]

Toni made it to the final four.

[improper]

Toni made it to the final four.

I haven't read the spoilers, but I assumed going in that it'd be Toni and Io in the Finals. I'm thinking Io wins simply because she'll probably be on main NXT and Toni will likely be on NXT UK. Well, that and because she's the biggest non-Ronda female signing since Asuka.

[LLJ]

Toni made it to the final four.

I haven't read the spoilers, but I assumed going in that it'd be Toni and Io in the Finals. I'm thinking Io wins simply because she'll probably be on main NXT and Toni will likely be on NXT UK. Well, that and because she's the biggest non-Ronda female signing since Asuka.

I actually heard

Spoiler:

a rumor that Io wasn't supposed to make it to the finals and that it was originally going to be Nox vs Toni. But Nox was injured so they had Io go over

Also, I don't know if they want a Joshi winning MYC 2 years in a row. If based on pure workrate and level of experience, nearly every Joshi they sign should technically win everything, and that's just not something I can see they want to do.

One of the reasons they delayed Kairi's title win for so long was they didn't want one so soon after Asuka's. I can see them doing the same with Io.

[Stanford]

Yeah, I don't think they need to have the clear star of the tournament win every time. It's supposed to be a real sporting event, after all. Anything can happen. Io will get a huge push regardless.

[Stanford]

Storm-matsumoto was good. They did a great job putting over matsumoto as a challenger. I was afraid Storm just just run through everyone. Watch this one.

Kacy Catanzaro is really innovative. Shes only been wrestling for a year and executes some really complicated offense pretty well. Match was also a lot of fun! Gets a recommendation from me.

[Stanford]

Wow! That final match. Satomura is a **** God.

There is nothing cooler in wrestling than this tournament.

Thought commentary was a lot better this week.

You guys should be watching this awesome thing so I'm not so lonely. If you watch Raw and complain about it, but don't watch this every week, you'e not allowed to be a wrestling fan anymore.

[LLJ]

Wow! That final match. Satomura is a **** God.

There is nothing cooler in wrestling than this tournament.

Thought commentary was a lot better this week.

You guys should be watching this awesome thing so I'm not so lonely. If you watch Raw and complain about it, but don't watch this every week, you'e not allowed to be a wrestling fan anymore.

I'm watching it.

It's great wrestling in WWE terms. Meiko is doing great, but having seen Hiroyo and Io a lot in the past 2 years, it is a bit disappointing how their matches are in this tournament. The WWE is only giving Meiko the platform to perform classics. As they should, really, given her status as a legend and this being likely only a one-time thing for her.

[Stanford]

Hello! I'm back to post my thoughts on the MYC.

Mia Yim is a **** legend. I'm surprised that Mauro said her name wrong and they kept it in.

Io <3 love her take on the suicide dive. Everything she does is different. Decent match, not her best moonsault ever, I would imagine. Zeuxis is cool on offense but she cant sell at all. She flinches before every strike.

Crowd is clap-happy tonight.

[Stanford]

More thoughts. Might try to finish them this time

How **** cool would it have been to get Manami Toyota in this tournament? Not out of the question. She's retired, but that's wrestling retired. Breeze wrestled Liger a couple years ago.

Meiko-Lane was good.
Seemed short, but I get it. Lacey looks both green and good. I suspect thats because Meiko is such a pro.
Meiko is incredible at maintaining a game face through a segment.

Slow start to the Io match and then BANG. We're off.
They have Io working heel here and she's quite good at it. I think that's ultimately her best role based on what I've seen.
That 619 looked like it hurt.
Speaking of Manami Toyota, Io has her screaming down.
Not a great match! Very little chemistry between the two. Pretty disappointing.
For as good as she's been, Io is 0/3 on that moonsault. She's a **** wrestler though, my god.

Oh god, they're doing the ACL recap on Nox. This is depressing as ****.
Good lord, this is like watching a Benoit match. It's hard not to think about what happens next.
THIS IS NOT FUN. Why the **** did they let her continue. Ughhh.
I've never seen anything so heartbreaking in wrestling before. I didn't know anything about Tegan going into this tournament besides last year's injury. I knew it was coming and it was more upsetting than I could have imagined. Seeing her list of injuries now, it's unbelievable that she demanded the match continue. If you don't know, this is what happened:

"I was diagnosed with numerous injuries to the left leg which included: dislocated knee cap (luckily it reset itself instantly), torn MCL & LCL, I completely tore my ACL and both meniscus (one had a "lightning bolt shaped tear" still a wizard when injured), bone contusions and I had a second fracture on my left tibia

She wrestled for another two minutes after that. Holy ****.

That's enough wrestling for me today.

[LLJ]

Meiko has been the real star of the MYC. I'd say it's too bad she's not signed, but then I don't really want her in the WWE at this point either. Let her brush with the WWE be this tournament only, where she comes off super great and doesn't get diluted.

Io will be fine, but the ring size is throwing off her spacing for a lot of her moves, not just the moonsault. Her springboards off the ropes don't look as slick as in Stardom, partly because they're about a foot higher.

I also think Io has declined a bit, too, because of injuries and the need to be more conservative to preserve her body. I'd said elsewhere that 2016-2017 was her peak. Her Stardom title reign right before she left for the WWE was fairly average, and arguably other women in the promotion began to outshine her too. She has a very athletic heavy style so she'll need to adjust it to maintain her reputation. Manami Toyota aged quite poorly after her athleticism started to go. A lot of people will never admit this, but Toyota was pretty mediocre from '02-2017. It will be worth watching how Io adjusts her hard charging style. She's only 28, but she's probably got more mileage on her body than Asuka who's 37 but feels younger because she mostly wrestled a more ground based style in Japan with more emphasis on mat work and technical wrestling which is easier on the body.

HHH was apparently very high on Nox. I'd heard rumors that they planned for her to go further too.

[Stanford]

Very emotional end to the Meiko-Toni match. I'm proud of the crowd for paying respect to Meiko like they did. You could tell it really affected her. Can we just keep her around, please? I dont want women's wrestling without Meiko Satomura!

Hell of a promo from Storm as well.

Io-Rhea was good too. Io's promo was hilarious. I will win, I will number one. She is very yelly. It's a very 80s style of promo. I like it.

Anyways, this tournament was great. Truly the best thing this company has to offer. The fact that both wrestlers reacted like they won the tournament really shows the gravity that Triple H and his team are able to create. How many main roster tournaments have we seen where no one gives a **** about the winner? They seem to happen every year. Here, we have peak emotion coming from the semi finals.

Really looking forward to the finals on Sunday, although I will miss Meiko.

[bestnamezRtaken]

I haven't been wanting to read this thread because I haven't been able to watch the episodes yet. Though my wife and I started it a few days ago, I think we're on episode 4. But I've already had the tourny spoiled for me simply because I was doing the KIA, but that's not going to stop me from watching and enjoying the matches.

I'm a big fan of Kacy Catanzaro as I was watching ANW when she was making history in that sport year after year. She's awesome. I was excited to see her in the tournament and really enjoyed her first match. I'll try to comment more later Stanford, so you aren't alone anymore.