AEW Dark- 1/19/2021 Review (Women Matches)

 By Mark Rodriguez

Let's take a look at this week's AEW Women's matches, though it looks like this time we only got 3 matches to cover. There's also a bit of news regarding Priscilla Kelly and Elayna Black being signed with NXT that I will bring up at the end of this.

Match 1- Marti Daniels VS Shanna

Both woman grapple and in a test of strength, Marti shoves Shanna across the ring. Marti tries to take Shanna down with a Big Boot, but the Dragon Slayer rolls out of the way and does a dropkick to send her down. Shanna bounces off the ropes and hits Marti with a back-elbow and goes for a crucifix pin, but her opponent kicks out. With Marti down, Shanna runs over and does an elbow drop and a legdrop on her. Shanna tries to get her in a hold but Marti gets out of it. The Tall Glass of Whoopass sends Shanna bouncing against the ropes and this time she does manage to hit her with the Big Boot. 

Shanna is down but Marti is too busy making fun of the (small) crowd booing her. She grabs Shanna and flings across the ring like she's nothing. Mari kicks her around some and then grabs her by the hair taunting her. This gives Shanna an extra burst of anger to fire back with some forearms and a spinkick to the face. Shanna hits her with several running elbows until she finally knocks her down. Marti gets back up and tries to grab her and Shanna hits her with a Stunner. With Marti hanging on the ropes, Shanna does the Genki Dama pose (should I tag her matches under Dragonball Z?) and hits her with a running dropkick to the face.

Shanna grabs Marti in a Dragon Suplex but wasn't able to get her shoulders down to pin her correctly. Marti tries to get away. Shanna grabs her and does the Dragon Suplex again and this time gets the win.

Match 2- Big Swole VS Alex Gracia

Both women start to grapple, no one really gaining any advantage over the other. As they let go, Swole knocks Ales down with a shoulder tackle. Swole runs back and forth, ducking under Alex's attempted swing and knocks her down with another shoulder tackle. Alex finally manages to nail a few elbows to Swole's face, leaving her hanging on the ropes. Alex takes this chance to run an deliver a 619 across the face. 

With Swole down, Alex now targets one of her arms, slamming it across the mat, standing on it and doing a legdrop on it. Alex gets her in a wristlock but Swole delivers a few shots to the ribs to get out of it. Swole runs towards Alex but misses and hits the turnbuckle. Alex takes this chance to do a running elbow into her. Swole starts delivering rights and lefts and Alex tries to withstand them, trying to her grab her in a hold. Swole avoids it and hits her with a Punt Kick to the face that knocks her down.

Swole nurses her arm and runs back into the fight, knocking down Alex twice before going in with more forearms. Alex ducks under her high kick, jumps to avoid her low kick but still gets clocked by Swole's headbutt. Swole then does a spinning lariat and knocks Alex out, giving Swole the win.

Match 3- Ivelisse & Diamanté vs. Tesha Price & Katalina Perez

Diamante and Tesha start the match, exchanging shots and arm drags. Tesha tags Katalina and they both grab Diamante to suplex her. Katalina goes for a pin, when that fails she hits Diamante with some elbow drops. Diamante manages to grab Katalina's legs and propel her face-first into the turnbuckle, allowing her tie to tag in Ivelisse. Ivelisse kicks Katalina across the back and DDT slams her, going for a pin. Ivelisse grabs Katalina in a vertical suplex and doesn't let go, getting her into a front guillotine hold. Kataline tries to fight against the hold and reverses it into a pin, but Ivelisse kicks out.

Ivelisse tags Diamante in and they both take shots at Katalina. Diamante grabs her in a choke hold. As Katalina breaks out, both women exchange shots until Kataline kicks Diamante down and follows up with a running shoulder tackle. Both women are down and they manage to roll over to tag in their partners. Tesha wastes no time in knocking Ivelisse over with running clotheslines. 

Tesha does a running elbow to knock Diamante away and then does a Cartwheel Kick to Ivelisse while she's on the ropes. Tesha slams Ivelisse face-first into the mat with a Bulldog and goes for a pin. Ivelisse kicks out at two and then shoves Tesha backwards near Diamante. Tesha however, back-elbows Diamante's face and then bounces back to knock Ivelisse down with a shotgun dropkick. Tesha tags Katalina and kicks Ivelisse in the face. Katalina follows with a swinging neckbreaker and went for a pin but Diamante breaks it up. Diamante grabs Tesha and throws her out of the ring. She follows after her and continues the fight. Meanwhile Ivelisse delivers a kick to Katalina's face and scores the pin to win the match.

My Opinions-

The Marti/Shanna match was aight, but that could be my Dragonball bias. Shanna still has ways to go. I'm not sure what she was doing when she walked over, hesitated and then did the elbow drop, maybe missed timing? And it was clear she was supposed to nail the Dragon Suplex perfectly the first time. Still, she's a lot of fun and I hope to see her in an AEW PPV eventually. Marti has a good look to her, (she reminds me a bit of Rhea Ripley) but it seems she's just the punching bag for these matches. I'd like to see her be dominant and take someone down. We don't get to see much of what she can do in terms of moves. 

The Swole/Alex match was pretty good and fast paced. I kinda figured Swole would win this, but Alex did manage to deliver a lot of offense and for a moment there I thought she was going to win instead. Pretty good showing for both women. While it was mentioned that Swole was training under Dean Malenko to learn how to use the Texas Cloverleaf, she didn't get to use it in this match. We'll have to wait and see if she adds that move to her arsenal in future matches.

Ivelisse and Diamante are always fun to watch, but wow Tesha was really on fire when she was tagged in neat the end. If Katalina wasn't so worn down, it really looked like they could have won. Not taking away from Ivelisse and Diamante, but we've seen them both take care of business several times, I'm thinking Tesha put on a good enough showing near the end to continue to propel her forward in future matches.

On other things, it seems Shanna's current winning streak had earned her the right to face off against Dr. Britt Baker on AEW Dynamite, which is should be pretty awesome. Let's hope she can knock down Britt a peg or two.

As for other news referring to Priscilla Kelly and Elayna Black, both have been scooped up by NXT and will enter the first Female Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. The tournament matches will be featured during NXT and 205 Live.

Priscilla Kelly will be now known as Gigi Dolin, even though she was already in the Mae Young Classic before as PK. 

Elayna Black will be renamed Cora Jade and is sporting new gold gear. It seems she and Joey Janela were having kayfabe beef over Twitter (which a lot of us couldn't tell if it was real or not) which would have led to a match at an indie event called Fight Forever by Game Changer Wrestling. That match has been cancelled, but it would have been her last indie match.

Elayna Black and PK will make their in-ring debut as Cora Jade and Gigi Dolin on 205 Live as a tag team facing Indi Hartwell and Candice LeRae. NXT also signed Lacey Ryan who will be now perform as Zoey Stark. She'll team up with Marina Shafir and will take on the team of Shotzi Blackheart and Ember Moon. I'll be covering these matches as well as an upcoming AEW Women's Tournament in upcoming articles.