Everyone is talking about the women’s revolution in WWE. And there’s one happening right here in PROGRESS Wrestling aswell.
Ever since WrestleMania, there has been a real emphasis on a women’s revolution in the world of wrestling. THAT Triple threat match washed away any nasty aftertaste of the ‘Divas Revolution’, and showed that given the time and platform, females can have the match of the night. Around that time, we also saw the redemption of Sexy Star, Evelisse holding trios gold and the introduction of Kobra Moon and Mariposa as equals to their male counterparts in Lucha Underground, and Princess Kimber Lee becoming the first female to win a major American promotion’s heavyweight title, capturing CHIKARA’s Grand Championship. However, it seems to have hit neutral following that apex in Dallas, Texas.
WWE have gone into coasting mode, opting for the reliable if unremarkable Natalya to challenge Charlotte over two pay-per-views, with no Sasha Banks in sight and Becky Lynch in a marginal feud with NXT call-up Dana Brooke. TNA have seemingly gone backwards, once the standard bearer in women’s wrestling, they now have a lot of characters and not a lot of action. Maria gets shown about 50 times an episode, but we’re lucky if the women get any more than five minutes. Even in the UK, ICW run hot and cold on the Women’s Title they prided themselves on bringing in at Fear and Loathing last year. Following the feel-good win for Viper in the SECC, they gave her a 49 day reign, before shifting to Carmel Jacobs, and giving her Nikki Storm and Sammii Jayne on a loop (great matches though) and then having the latter two have a fantastic ‘Loser Leaves Town’ match at BarraMania.
Kay Lee Ray only wrestles the guys at the moment, Nikki Storm has gone on her NXT chapter, so we’re left with Sammii Jayne, Carmel Jacobs and a returning Viper. It’s gone a bit stale. For a real women’s revolution, you need to go to London. You need to go to North London. As fitting as the name suggests, you need to go to PROGRESS.
One of the most notable independent companies in the UK, PROGRESS made their name on being the home of hard-hitting, adult orientated wrestling. They then opened their own school and brought through some phenomenal talent like Pastor William Eaver and Chuck Mambo and followed that by nurturing and bringing up a group of women that have made PROGRESS and it’s developmental show ENDVR their house and if you don’t know about them already, prepare yourself for an education.
First, we have PollyAnna. A 27 year old six year pro that wrestles like she has been all over the world for double that time. A phenomenal athlete, she is beloved by the PROGRESS crowd, given a massive ovation in every show she is in. She is rocking this pretty cool Game of Thrones look lately, and it totally works. She has had a series of phenomenal matches with Jinny and Dahlia Black, speaking of which…
Dahlia Black is another amazing female talent plying her trade in PROGRESS. From the outside, you have to commend her for moving her entire life over from New Zealand to London to get involved in the scene and wrestling EVERYWHERE. Literally, I’ve seen her on posters from Camden to Dagenham, she is putting in WORK. One half of the South Pacific Power Couple with TK Cooper, they are one of the most unlikeable duo in PROGRESS and they aren’t particularly that polarising in their personalities. It’s the fact that they engage in such elongated and vigorous acts of PDA on their way and into the ring that you end up really not liking them for some reason. It’s so simple, but so effective. It helps that her boyfriend has twatted every other female on the roster too. She is a great heel in ring, and a fantastic competitor also, she has recently been engaged in a feud with PollyAnna alongside her boyfriend TK and the ‘different’ Jack Sexsmith. Definitely one of the hardest working women in British wrestling.
Then we have the former Elizabeth, now Laura Di Matteo. She came into PROGRESS as Jinny’s beleaguered P.A, helping her win matches, and being generally treated like crap. However over the past year, she started being loved by the PROGRESS crowd, and was growing tired of Jinny’s abuse and poor treatment. She pinned her boss at ‘Practically Progress in Every Way’ and then smacked the hell out of Jinny at the most recent ENDVR show in Islington, London. She denounced her slave name of Elizabeth and become her own woman, Laura Di Matteo. She is a great wrestler, and is in arguably the most heated feud in the company right now. She is my dark horse to be the female face of that company soon.
Let’s get to Jinny. Jinny, and this is no hyperbole, is one of the best heels in the British wrestling scene today. She is despised, hated, loathed by the PROGRESS crowd and pretty much any crowd she is in front of. As I put it on Twitter, she is phenomenal at being a dick. She found a corner of the wrestling marker that amazing has never been touched in the British wrestling scene, a bitchy fashionista who wrestles in the finest designer gear and thinks everyone else is scum. She is a great wrestler, great on the mic and is sublime at getting heat. There’s only one other person that got near the same level of hatred that she is currently getting, and that was the man that trained her in Jimmy Havoc. She is the first female wrestler I’ve seen since Trish Stratus that gets the level of heat she does. People pay to see her get beaten up. I love her to bits, but I cannot wait for Laura Di Matteo to batter her. She is going to be huge, I mean WWE huge. Remember the name, as you will hear all about it by years end.
Alongside them, we have Toni Storm, an Australian wrestler who is a tremendous athlete and wrestles all over the world. She pops into PROGRESS when she is in the country and kills it every chance she gets. The four way match she had with PollyAnna, Jinny and Dahlia Black is a sublime example of this.
With the recent announcement that the next Natural Progression Tournament will crowd the first PROGRESS Womens Champion, I cannot wait to see this pan out. We have five pillars to build the division on, with a training school churning out younger stars to build the future on, and the potential to bring in some other talent (I want Nixon Newell in this tournament so bad it hurts) the future looks incredibly bright for female wrestling in this country. The women have already main evented an ENDVR show, I will bet anyone that by this time next year, a womens title match will main event a PROGRESS show.
You want to see true progress in the world of womens wrestling? You go to PROGRESS.