This past weekend, we had four independent women’s wrestling shows that streamed. Three of them were live and one that taped the previous weekend. These were very different shows, with different levels of talent, but they all had very energetic and lively crowds, and they all showed that the future for women’s wrestling is looking good. I will rundown some of the highlights on these shows.

NWA Kross Fire presented EMPOWERRR on Friday, 8/28, in Sevierville, TN and was broadcast live on the NWA YouTube channel. Kross Fire is run by the Paige sisters, Kylie and Kenzie Paige. We saw the continuation of the dominance of TVMA throughout this show. Tiffany Nieves, the NWA Women’s Champion, put out an open challenge at the beginning of the show, and it ended up being a tag match with Tiffany and her giant, Gretta defeating Alice Crowley and Lizzy Cassidy. After the match Big Al challenged Tiffany to a no disqualification match for the title, which Nieves accepted. After that match we saw the debut of Mackenzie Morgan, who has been amazing on the indies, she had a really good match, but couldn’t take the TV title away from Gisele Shaw.

The tag team champions, The Country Gentlemen, were set to take on the owners of the company, Pretty Empowered to see who was the top tag team in NWA regardless of gender, but The Country Gentalman’s manager, KC Cazana kept getting involved, which brought out the Paige sister’s dad, Tommy Henry and it became a 6 person tag. This fired up Pretty Empowered, but The Country Gentlemen were able to pull out the win. The main event was a great match between two of NWA’s best, in Alice Crowley and Tiffany Nieves. Al was accompanied to the ring by Paige Collett, who tried to get involved in the match, but she was quickly halted by Gretta, who gave her a chokeslam, then gave Al a chokeslam and placed Tiffany on top of Al to get the pinfall and retain the NWA Women’s Championship.

Across the ocean in London, England, EVE held “EVE x the World 2”. This event coincided with AEW’s “All In”, so there was a lot of surprises during this show. To start the show, the EVE Champion, Session Moth Martina came out and issued an open challenge, which she has done since she won the title. This one did not work out as well as the previous matches, as Kris Statlander answered the challenge and was able to defeat Martina and become the new champion. Abi came out next and she is trying to become Amira Blair’s assistant. She found Amira a tag team partner, and it is Kingsley! They are to face The First Class Dolls, Aysha and Frankie B, but before the match can start Will Ospreay called for “EVE’s Got Talent”. The Dolls do a dance routine, Amira started to play the nose, but Kingsley stopped this and sang the Backslide Girlz song. Amira and Kingsley won the talent and wrestling portions, but that still was not good enough for Amira, as she took out Abi and Kingsley after the match. This was probably my favorite match of the night based on entertainment value, but based on pure violence you can not top the triple threat match between Lucy Deathmatch, Emersyn Jayne and Skye Blue.

This match was to crown the first Spirit of EVE Champion, which will be their hardcore title. This match was insane with all kinds of weapons used, including darts, skewers, and tacks all over the mat. Lucy got the win, as she hit a frogsplash on Skye Blue, who was on a table and covered in blood. The main event was a striking battle, between Miyu Yamashita and Kay Lee Ray that went over 25 minutes. Both combatants gave it their all, but Miyu was able to successfully defend her title. Along with these matches, we also saw Marina Shafir, who was accompanied to the ring by Jon Moxley defeating Chantal Jordan, who put up one hell of a fight. Maya World teamed up with Hollie Barlow and Hyperactive to defeat Alexxis Falcon, French Art and Rhio. French Art looked incredibly impressive in this match, especially being in a match with people that have so much more big match experience. Nightshade and Nyla Rose brought the AAAW Tag Team Championship with them from Japan and defended it against NyteSkye. After Nyla and Nightshade retained,  they said that they would be bringing some friends from Marvelous back with them in January.

Glory Pro held their “Women’s World Crown” on 8/23, which premiered on YouTube on 8/28. In this tournament the Glory Pro Women’s Championship, which is currently held by Allie Katch, was defended throughout the tournament. We had some really fun matchups in the first round. Rachel Armstrong showed off some really innovative offense, but Vert Vixen was just too strong and moved on. Steph De Lander and Gianna Capri are two wrestlers that are always entertaining. De Lander said she would win in two minutes, it took her a little bit longer then that, but De Lander did move on. Allie successfully defended her title against Nixi XS. Sloane Jacobs and Blair Onyx also had a very entertaining match. Blair is joined by Source, who some cannot see, and has some of the most creative offense that you will see, while Sloane has been heavily influenced by Nikkita Lyons on Evolve. Sloane gets the win using Blair’s own submission move.

In the second round, Vert Vixen defeats Steph De Lander and Allie beats Sloan. In my favorite match of this show, The Colab (Laynie Luck and Shazza McKenzie) defend the United Glory Tag Team Titles against Lillith Khan and Veronica West. Khan is absolutely huge and the team of her and the hyper, but much smaller, West just gives me the visual of Scrappy and Scooby Doo. The match had everything from comedy to great wrestling. The Colab get the win after a miscommunication between Khan and West, followed by a split legged stunner from Shazza and a Unicorn Cutter from Laynie. The finals of the tournament saw Vert working over Allie’s leg immediately. Allie had to battle through this the whole match. They fight to the outside and when Vert goes to come back in, Allie hits her with a piledriver for the win, to win the tournament and retain her title.

On Saturday, 8/29 we head to Iowa for Honor Among Wrestling’s “Uninvited VI”. They crowned the first ever Women’s Tag Team Champions when Regan Lydale and Celest pulled off what I would consider an upset victory against The Hale Sisters. I am a big fan of Regan as she is very strong and agile, and just saw Celest for the first time this weekend and I am very impressed by her. Celest has very high energy and was very much in sync with Regan on multiple double team maneuvers. One of the matches that I was most looking forward to on this show was Veronica West against Ashlyn Alexander. West has a great mix of humor, personality and athleticism, while Ashlyn can do just about anything, but typically choose to just beat people up. Veronica picks out the win in this match. Up next was a very interesting match-up, as Leyla Hirsch defends the MAW Women’s Championship against Izzy Moreno. Izzy has not been wrestling too long, so I am not sure if she has come across anyone like Leyla, as there are not many on Leyla’s level, especially in the submission game. Izzy fought the best she could, as no one has the heart that she does, but Izzy was eventually forced to tap and Layla retained the championship. In the main event we saw Indi Hartwell take on Brittnie Brooks. You can tell early on that we are getting an evil version of Brittnie, so Indi has to watch out. This was a really good match that showed off the athleticism of both wrestlers. Every time that Brittnie is in the ring with someone the caliber as Indi, she proves that she deserves to be on the next level. However Indi is able to pull off the victory to send the crowd home happy.

I enjoyed all of these shows and I think they proved that there can be a little of everything in women’s wrestling. My favorite matches were a comedy match and a blood fest at EVE, some hard hitting and submission based matches from HAW and an incredible tag match that had a little bit of everything at Glory Pro.