Featured image by Hub Pacheco
Joshi de Leon shows up for another intergender match. After a great match bullying Jaye Sera into one of her best singles bouts yet, we get Jake de Leon here challenging Crystal for the MYPW WrestleCon Championship.
Unfortunately, there’s a few things working against this match from the go. It’s a title match with very little build behind it outside of the fact that the two wrestlers are synonymous with PWR as a promotion. It’s coming at the end of a long show on a week night which means the crowd is a little tired by this point. Then, of course, both workers are babyfaces which means heat is a little harder to come by just by default.
The babyface dynamic means that the opening moments do play off very much like a house show match. A lot of playing to the crowd and a comedy spot around Jake de Leon trying to match Crystal’s splits. Sorry, Jake, but Emi Sakura pulled that one off better than you.
Things do finally heat up though when Jake’s able to go into a heat segment on Crystal. This portion gets to capitalize on both workers’ strengths: Jake’s meanness when laying in offense and Crystal’s flexibility. Lots of great spots here working over Crystal’s back like stretching her around the ringpost and even the Romero Special which Jake gets a disgusting angle on. Crystal bumps for some really sick offense here too like a double underhook backbreaker and even a pretty strong powerbomb.
Absolutely loved the idea of Crystal’s comeback being built around evasion as Jake de Leon essentially bumped around the ring as she got out of his way. That was a clever way to build momentum going into the finishing stretch where things didn’t remain as clean and neat as I might have liked. Still, there’s good stuff there like Crystal’s kick out at one (which doesn’t lead straight into a no-selling frenzy, thank god) that steadily builds into her bridging out on a pin to show some defiance. A lot of good ideas here but things didn’t always gel too well as a whole but overall a really good match.
