Who's Overrated? Who's Underrated?
Karen Shallett and Charlie Wembley will tell you
FAWN is loaded. Let's get that straight up front. It's roster is chock full of women who would headline almost any other women's federation. Yeah, FAWN has its loveable losers, but, for the most part, the roster is an embarrassment of riches.
Okay.
So the galaxy of supernovas Maurie Devonshire, then Bethany Christian, has assembled is stacked. Within that galaxy however, there are, in relative terms, the haves and have-nots. Those who are overachievers and those who are underachievers. Those who are overrated and those who are underrated. Since pissing people off and stroking them are two sure ways to sell magazines, we'll do both...all conveniently packaged into one convenient article.
We'll go with sweet before sour and talk about the underrated gladiatrices.
We
think the most underrated woman in FAWN, and maybe in all of wrestling is
Kylie Sanders. Even the compliments the
punditry pays her are demeaning. The Little Engine that Could.
FAWN's Favorite Victim. The Girl with the Biggest Heart in Sports.
Veiled insults, all. She's had some rough patches here in FAWN, but she's
on track now. She's beaten Ivy Armstrong...a huge feat by any measure.
Then, after having Bethany Christian rob her of a magnificently valiant win
against The Finishing School, she thumbed her nose at the establishment by
besting Armstrong AND her arch nemesis LaKeisha Bates to retain the Television
Title. She's not a loveable loser any more. She's a talented,
ambitious fighter who's gotten steadily better during her FAWN career...
catching up to, and surpassing many of FAWN's best.
Another
woman who can't get the respect she deserves is our Woman of the Year,
Portia Ophelia Van Buren IV. You laugh?
Overrated? How? She's arguably the greatest FAWN World Champion
ever, and she draws more heat that any woman on the roster. The notion
that she's overrated is absurd, right?
Let's take a test. Who do you think would win between Ivy Armstrong and Portia? Lansdale and Portia? Anciline de Cyr and Portia?
See? No matter who she's facing, most people will think she matches up too poorly with her to compete. And she goes out and outsmarts and humiliates whoever's in there with her.
Her victims? Chrissy Daniel. Irena Malenakova. Shea London. Jeanette Lansdale. Ivy Armstrong.
This woman should be feared by EVERYONE in FAWN. Instead, everyone thinks she's a stepping stone. More fools, they.
Shea London.
Another woman we manage to underrate
all the time. This one, though, is easier to pin down. She endured a
slump that could be traced back to a gruesome knee injury she sustained in one
those epic London/Daniel matches. Hobbled by that injury, Shea was easy
prey for the likes of Portia Van Buren, Chrissy Daniel, and Sissy Landers.
A trip to the minors heaped insult on injury, and we suddenly found it all too
easy to write her off.
The beautiful blonde reminded us at "Lions" that she's STILL great. Welcome back, Shea. To the rest of the FAWN roster...catch her if you can.
One of the
most egregious underestimations by wrestling's collective is the one inflicted
upon Ivy Armstrong. The slight borders on
criminal. The red head stepped defiantly out of her mother's long shadow
and won FAWN's Television Title...and no one freaking noticed. Ivy has all
the tools. She's strong, fast, skilled, tough, and utterly ruthless.
Don't forget that she's daring and beautiful. She is the total package,
and it is only a matter of time before she wins the World Championship.
Maybe people will
notice her then.
Rounding out the "underrated" category is Shannen Dennehy. She's stunningly gorgeous, devastatingly powerful, and embarrassingly underutilized by the FAWN match makers. This sultry powerhouse should be battling Ivy Armstrong and Holly Hotbody for a shot at Jeanette Lansdale. It's easier to understand why Andy Reid showed up for the Super Bowl without a two-minute drill than it is to figure out why Shannen Dennehy is being wasted.
Well, that completes that part of the article. Now, we'll go fishing for some angry emails. Without further adieu, our most overrated wrestlers.
While these woman aren't listed
in order from most to least overrated, LaKeisha Bates
has to be near the top of the list. She's a physical specimen with
unsurpassed athletic ability and a mean streak a mile wide. But she just
can't seem to seal the deal. She couldn't put Holly Hotbody away to retain
her World Championship. And she had two chapters of her drubbing of
Jeanette Lansdale that featured not one, but two Rumpshakers and an unconscious,
thoroughly broken Lansdale sandwiched neatly around a ridiculous lapse in
concentration that allowed the dominated blonde pin the ebony warrior.
You can point to a lot of wins and the fact that LaKeisha was the last member of FAWN's original roster to taste defeat and that she's the woman who finally dethroned Portia Van Buren. But the fact that she's been surpassed by Kylie Sanders seems to be a big indicator that her status in the organization is unwarranted.
This may sound screwy, but we have
Jeanette Lansdale on this list, as well,
World Championship or no World Championship. We know... we know.
She's beaten Bates, Daniel, Armstrong, Van Buren, de Cyr, and Hotbody.
She's also been less than dominating in most of those matches. She beat
Armstrong by disqualification. She stole wins from Daniel, Van Buren, and
Bates after being utterly controlled by all of them. When she loses, she
loses badly. And we're not even including her crushing defeat by Bethany
Christian. Even when she wins, she often looks like she lost.
One of her advantages has always been the fact that she's so well-rounded. She's always been very strong, very fast, and very skilled, but never the strongest, fastest, or most skilled. Lately however, her opponents have been effective at exploiting the chinks in her armor.
Remember
Cathy Dennehy? She has a reputation for being
a hell cat, but her record indicates that her opponents take their licking and
keep on ticking... enough to count the minutes to a probable victory.
Yeah, she's tough. Yeah, she's mean. But she lacks the prodigious
physical gifts of her younger sister. And while her opponents don't relish
the beating they'll have to absorb when they face Cathy, they're willing to do
so because the win they can notch will boost them in the rankings. Lately,
Cathy has been exclusively a tag wrestler, where her experience buttresses
Shannen's remarkable skills. In the singles realm, however, Cathy's bite
IS worse than her bark, but it's not often fatal.
We just paid up our insurance and
hired a platoon of body guards in preparation
for the announcement of our next overrated FAWN angel... or shall we say devil.
Chrissy Daniel. The Killer Imp has cemented a
reputation as one of FAWN's deadliest. The claim doesn't hold up well
under closer scrutiny, however. She really hasn't been the same since she
throttled Lansdale in her lone win as FAWN World Champion. She makes an
occasional return to glory periodically against her archenemy Shea London.
To be fair, that rivalry remains the hottest in FAWN. But we suspect her
best days are behind her. Lansdale solved her. London outlasted her.
Hotbody outsmarted her. And Portia flat out killed her. We know
Chrissy is great...but she's not that great. Chrissy, please don't
hurt us.
Our last
"featured" wrestler is Miriam Gaiman. That
aura of erotic invincibility was shattered by Xia de Sade at "Lions".
We're not sure you can ever get that back once it's taken away. And we
don't think that Miriam would have been so thoroughly bested by de Sade unless
she was badly overrated to begin with. In a few months, if Xia continues
to run roughshod over everyone she faces, we may soften our assessment.
But for now, we're wondering what the big to-do was about Gaiman.