Tag: Sara Del Rey

Sara Del Rey vs. Cassandro (9/27/08)

This match is from the second round of the 2008 Ted Petty Invitational Tournament, which is IWA Mid-South’s annual weekend blowout of indie wrestling dream matches designed to determine who the best wrestler on the indies is. For a long time, the TPI tournaments, held in honor of “Flyboy” Rocco Rock of ECW fame, had the reputation of being the best, weirdest, most innovative shows of the year, with the 2004 tournament in particular held by many as the best in the history of independent wrestling. Though I was once involved on the independents, my knowledge of IWA-MS and the scene in general before 2011 is sketchy at best. I’d seen some Ring of Honor shows and things like CM Punk vs. Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. (also from an IWA-MS show), and while I respected the skill and craft of the wrestlers themselves, something about the presentation—the announcing, the incredibly hostile crowds, the shock of seeing 60 or 100 people in a crowd after a lifetime of packed arenas—always scared me away. I still think that is the biggest barrier of entry for the world beyond WWE and “sports-entertainment,” or for the fan of a promotion like CHIKARA who wants to check out their favorite wrestlers more than once or twice a month. But this match is an example of what a fan might be rewarded with if they can get past all that. A match between Cassandro and Sara Del Rey is only possible in independent professional wrestling, and, for a long time, was the exclusive province of a company like IWA Mid-South, which was experimental enough to look upon a meeting between a female wrestler and a Mexican exótico as a dream match.

Del Rey, as I’ve written before, is my favorite wrestler. According to the announcers she’s just starting to pattern her mannerisms and methodical approach to wrestling after the thick, domineering women of Japanese wrestling, but she will one day be hired as the head female trainer at the WWE Performance Center without having ever wrestled a match for Vince McMahon. Cassandro is one of my favorite wrestlers of whom I’ve seen very little from, the undisputed king of the exóticos. Exóticos as performers are something else, a sub-genre of Mexican lucha libre where men wrestle in drag. Some, like Cassandro, are openly gay. Others, like Máximo, are straight, and homosexuality is their drag. The best exóticos are hugely popular, world-traveled, and frequently wrestle for important championships in Mexico’s largest promotions. Cassandro is probably the most well-known exótico in the United States, as he was the subject of an exceptional profile in The New Yorker, has appeared on Colt Cabana’s The Art of Wrestling podcast, and often wrestles on American lucha libre shows. The crowd here is very respectful towards both competitors and remain engaged with the contest throughout. Intergender wrestling is hotly contested territory for fans of indie wrestling, but Del Rey and Cassandro are both masters of the niche, and the usual man vs. woman tropes never come into play. This is just a wrestling match: Two wrestlers wrestle; the best one wins.

To that end, Del Rey is having none of Cassandro’s fun and games; as soon as the exótico turns towards her, she slaps the gum out of his mouth. Cassandro isn’t taking any of that, though, and he responds with a slap of his own. Having disrespected each other, the two tie up and jockey for position, neither wrestler giving an inch as they hit the ropes and turnbuckles, where they separate. Cassandro’s years of experience come into play as he outwrestles Del Rey, sending her to the canvas with a hip toss. From there, he flows into a beautiful-looking key lock variation that Del Rey tries to bridge out from, only to have Cassandro sweep one of her legs. Del Rey rolls out and takes control, dragging her opponent over by both of his arms. Back to their feat, Cassandro offers a test of strength but takes Del Rey into a full-arm drag and twist, instead. He twists again and goes into another hammerlock. Del Rey hook her arm around Cassandro’s head, and he tries to use this position to suplex her, but she has the leverage and scores a headlock takeover. Having settled down from the opening exchange of slaps, what’s clear is that both wrestlers are very evenly matched. Cassandro kicks out of an odd pin attempt, then bridges up. Del Rey tries to bring him up by the arms, maybe to put him in a double chickenwing (the vaunted hold that Rickey Steamboat developed to defeat Ric Flair), but Cassandro manages to bring her over. It’s a nice spot, something you don’t see in every bit of chain wrestling.

From there, Cassandro works on his opponent’s arm, but there’s hatred in his eyes, and he starts pulling Del Rey’s hair. I hate comparing things to WWE, but there’s a lot of hair pulling in WWE’s women’s division, and this isn’t that. Cassandro is yanking Del Rey’s hair, and this pisses the woman known as Death Rey off. She battles up to her feet and takes Cassandro over with an arm drag. Now she gets a key lock, but Cassandro rolls her over and gets a two count. Del Rey tries to reassert her advantage but can’t; Cassandro takes control of her arms and leads her back to a standing position. Del Rey attempts to wrestle out, but Cassandro keeps and arm hooked and leverages her back to the canvas with an arm drag. They reset and go for a test of strength again. This time, Cassandro kicks Del Rey in the gut and puts her in the Gory Special, that most excellent of lucha libre submissions. He transitions it into a pinning predicament for Del Rey, who has to keep kicking out while Cassandro tries to keep her shoulders to the mat. After a succession of near falls, Del Rey pulls herself up and onto Cassandro’s shoulders and rolls into a sunset flip!

Cassandro kicks out and Del Rey takes control with a headlock. Cassandro sweeps Del Rey’s leg, though, and takes her down to the canvas. Del Rey isn’t compromised for long, though, as she takes Cassandro down with a drop toe hold. Before she can sink in a chinlock or a rear naked choke, Cassandro grabs the ropes. Del Rey brings him up to his feet and snapmares him over to a seated position, where she gets a sleeper hold. Cassandro gets to his feet, though, and the two start wrestling again. Del Rey takes Cassandro to the mat, where they go through the see-saw routine, and Del Rey scores a near fall. Cassandro tries to reassert himself, but Del Rey cuts him off with a knee to the gut and another armdrag. They both get to their feet and stand off. Del Rey’s the first to move, but Cassandro blocks her punch, interlaces his fingers with hers, then takes her out with an arm drag from the top rope. Del Rey gets up and gets kicked in the stomach, and Cassandro moves away from her to climb up the turnbuckles. This is the first tactical mistake of the match, and Del Rey takes advantage, kicking Cassandro from behind, which sends him spilling to the hardwood floor below. Del Rey follows up with a senton off the apron onto a dazed Cassandro. She rolls him back into the ring and drops a knee on his head, but Cassandro is soon back to his feet, hammering away at Del Rey. He gets a headlock in, but Del Rey shoots him into the ropes and drops down, which is when this happens…

Sara Del Rey is frustrated now, and now she charges in with a kick to the chest. She whips Cassandro across the ring to the other turnbuckles, but Cassandro evades Del Rey by jumping onto the ring apron, hitting her with a shoulder block to the stomach, then leaping from the top ropes, where he grabs her by the head and sends her out of the ring. Del Rey takes a breather in the front row while the fans get out of the way. Cassandro’s not about to give Del Rey a time out though, and just as soon as she’s sitting down, he’s through the ropes with a tope suicida that takes his opponent and the front row!

Del Rey recovers and rolls into the ring, where Cassandro kicks her in the face. He takes Del Rey up with a butterfly and drops her with a facebuster. He gets a two count and checks with the referee to make sure it wasn’t a three. It wasn’t, so he takes Del Rey back down to the mat with a trip, deathlocks her legs, and wraps her in an interesting pinning combination for another two count. Del Rey ducks a clothesline and picks Cassandro up for an atomic drop but just throws him on his ass. She follows quickly with a body scissors, which she rolls over into a pinning combination for a near fall of her own. Cassandro rolls out, but Del Rey takes him over to the other side for another two. He rolls back to a seated base, and Del Rey pulls his hair, getting revenge from earlier. She pulls him up to his feet by the hair and then throws him across the ring! Cassandro fights back by headbutting Del Rey in the stomach, which sends her staggering back to the turnbuckles. She moves out of a charging Cassandro’s way and he ends up shouldering the ring post. Del Rey follows in with a cross armbreaker, and Cassandro has no choice but to submit!

This is a really good match. Not quite as good as the announce team’s constant refrain that we’re seeing is awesome with several os, but beyond the occasional transition that’s not as snug as possible, there’s so much to like here. Neither wrestler is working as a heel here, but Cassandro works the entire match like he’s pissed off about Del Rey’s opening slap. He is always in Del Rey’s hair, always pleased with himself. And the match-long focus on the arms of both competitors pays off in the end with the finishing sequence, Cassandro hurting his own shoulder with the missed attack in the corner, and Del Rey pouncing on it with the cross armbreaker. For ten minutes, Del Rey and Cassandro wrestled as equals in a match where a minor mistake would end it. That’s what happened in the end, and what could have been a novelty match was instead a very good, very smart contest that’s just as engaging the fourth or fifth time as it was the first.

This match was found for free on Highspots.com and uploaded to YouTube to make it embeddable on this website for critical purposes. Support IWA-MS by subscribing to their YouTube channel or buying a show from SmartMark Video.

January 1, 2015
Free Wrestling: Sara Del Rey vs. Claudio Castagnoli (Cesaro) (7/31/11)

I don’t know how, but I was sitting in the front row of what was formerly known as the ECW Arena for this match, which is still the best I’ve ever seen live. My experience at live events covers a lot of ground, too, from WCW and WWF shows as a child to working Absolute Intense Wrestling cards as an announcer to WrestleMania this year. This match still stands out to me even watching it today for the first time in a year. I remember everything about that day, the last of a three day trip from Detroit to Cleveland to Reading to Philadelphia. Four days of driving and three nights of wrestling, Sara Del Rey on each card. We were in Philadelphia early enough to go to the Mûtter Museum and the Edgar Allen Poe house. To be frustrated by the lines at both Pat’s and Geno’s and settle instead for a mediocre pizza place down the block. To stand in line at the arena on Swanson and Ritter, waiting, chatting about the match that got me and two friends to drive all that way, occupying the cheapest, sketchiest motels any of us had slept in, driving on no sleep and three or four energy drinks. Sara Del Rey and Claudio Castagnoli wrestled three years ago, but it feels like three persons ago, as if the chubby dude in the Colt Cabana shirt slapping five with Dasher Hatfield and yelling dumb shit at all of the heels never existed. When I see myself sitting there, or hear the things that I yelled, I cringe.

The concept of intergender wrestling was not new to me in 2011. Men and women occasionally mixed it up in WWE—Chyna was an Intercontinental Champion before she ever wrestled a woman, for example, and there was a 2003 “Battle of the Sexes” tag team match that pit Christian and Chris Jericho against Trish Stratus and Lita. But Chyna’s run and that tag team match were built around the premise that it was odd that women might compete with men, break out from their section of the roster and shoot for something greater than a gendered championship. That shouldn’t be a big problem on the independent wrestling scene, but even in 2014 it seems to be a sticking point for some. There are size differences and muscles and societal norms and, really, it’s about realism in professional wrestling. This match, and Del Rey’s entire 2011 and 2012 (before she was hired by World Wrestling Entertainment to train women at their Performance Center), were part of breaking this perception. Every intergender wrestling match that has followed in the United States can be traced back to this one.

From the start, the story this match tells is brilliant. And that’s without the actual story this match is telling. Put in context, Claudio Castagnoli is the leader of the BDK, a villainous stable of wrestlers who made it their business to conquer CHIKARA and were quite successful in doing so. Castagnoli and his partner Ares were successful tag team champions, and they used Sara Del Rey and her partner, Daizee Haze, as a shield, positioning them against other teams that were on the verge of challenging Castagnoli and Ares. Del Rey and Haze were quite successful, accruing enough points in CHIKARA’s contendership system to challenge their leaders, but they never did. When CHIKARA instituted a Grand Championship, they decided to crown the first singles champion with a 12-person Round Robin tournament. Each wrestler on the CHIKARA roster was allowed to vote somebody into the Round Robin, and Del Rey made it thanks to the votes of Madison Eagles and Daizee Haze, who disobeyed BDK dictum by voting for Del Rey over Castagnoli. This wasn’t the final match of the tournament, but it was the most heated: Sara and her partner had grown tired of being held down by the BDK, who promised them opportunities in a promotion that hadn’t given women too many, and this match was an opportunity for her to make a statement against the man most responsible for holding her down. The match has since been presented without any of that context, and it doesn’t need it. Claudio Castagnoli, though not quite in the shape he’s in now as WWE’s Cesaro, was the most imposing man on the independents, 260-pounds of muscle, a man of old-school strongman strength. Del Rey wasn’t small by any means—against most American women wrestlers, she was more akin to the likes of Bull Nakano—but Castagnoli outweighs her easily and has every conceivable advantage. He knows it, too, and isn’t shy. He shoves Del Rey to the canvas and slaps her when she refuses to take the easy way out, and Del Rey responds with kicks that’d cause a lesser human being to crumble.

Castagnoli needs the outside interference of Tursas to gain the advantage, but once he has it he never really lets go. As hard as Del Rey’s kicks are, the Swiss superman’s European uppercuts are just as visceral, catching his opponent on the chin and sending her down to the canvas. The way he hoists Del Rey up from the mat in a gutwrench position and walks around the ring before suplexing her might not seem impressive given the monsters he’s lifted and slammed since becoming a member of the WWE roster, but as close as I was to it, and for how hot it was in the arena, his strength seemed impossible. His strength is certainly why he continues to treat Del Rey as an afterthought, taunting her as he doles out punishment. The match teases and teases an improbable Del Rey win via a surprise pinfall as she tries to bring Castagnoli down with a sunset flip (only to be crushed with a leg drop) or a schoolboy (only for Castagnoli to kick out and complete his attempted suplex), but he’s too strong and too fresh for Del Rey to ever really make a comeback on. A Castagnoli victory seems like a sure thing at every turn. When Del Rey’s bridges out of a fourth Castagnoli elbow drop, it’s like witnessing a tiny miracle just before the apocalypse: Nice, but meaningless.

All of this, of course, makes Del Rey’s eventual comeback feel that much more special. She’s beaten, exhausted, and dehydrated. Her opponent has been hitting her with his best strikes for the better part of eight minutes. It’s 100-degrees in the ECW Arena and this is her third match of the weekend. But she dodges a Castagnoli shoulderblock in the corner, takes Tursas out with a cannonball senton, and dives onto her rival with a crossbody block. When Claudio kicks out, she takes his outstretched arm and applies a cross-armbreaker submission maneuver and wrenches back like her future in wrestling depends on the outcome of this match. Because it does. But Castagnoli struggles and gets his foot on the ropes, and the match continues, which allows Castagnoli a knockout blow with a bicycle kick and, when Del Rey manages to get her foot on the ropes, this absolute nightmare of a move, the UFO:

Del Rey’s comeback from this is unreal—the audio doesn’t quite capture it, but the sold out crowd, mostly silenced by the heat, comes unglued when she kicks out and manages to go on the offensive again, hitting Castagnoli with her signature capo kicks in the corner and reapplying the armbar. It’s the second time, and Castagnoli has been selling his arm, but his freakish strength allows him to lift Sara up from the canvas and onto his shoulder before he sends her smashing back down to the mat… only for her to reapply the armbar! This is one of the coolest sequences I’ve seen in wrestling, a perfect crescendo relying on power, emotion, and positioning, and the explosion when Del Rey once again gets the arm bar is the most genuinely impassioned reaction I’ve seen in on an independent wrestling show. Had Castagnoli tapped out, the match would have been perfect, but he’s a final boss on his last legs, and the big bastard, now desperate, has some fight in him yet. There is nothing pretty about the lariats he clubs Del Rey with, nothing held back from his Ricola Bomb finish. They’re raw and brutal, and the powerbomb should end it, but having been embarrassed by the fight in Del Rey he lifts her shoulders up and positions her for an uppercut. That doesn’t satisfy him either, but this time Del Rey is present enough to cradle Castagnoli, roll his shoulders to the mat, and score the win.

You can see me pop out of my seat, lean over the guardrail and scream in adulation. You can hear the crowd. After this video’s runtime, Claudio gets his revenge, bicycle kicking Del Rey and chokeslamming Haze, but he is soon on his way to WWE developmental. Del Rey had another year on the circuit—she was signed by the WWE as a trainer in July and reported to their training facility in September. That year, though, she was unquestionably the best wrestler in CHIKARA, working a number of matches that were among the best of the year. But none were better than this one, and few matches, in fact, mean as much to me in terms of my development as a fan or as a person. I forget, exactly, what I’m leaning over to tell my friend Caleb as the bell rings, but the conversation we’re having and will continue over the next few weeks will grow and expand as we finish our respective degrees. We talk about maybe doing wrestling school together, but when he and his girlfriend break up he goes to wrestling school by himself because he needs a distraction. I give Absolute Intense Wrestling some money in a Kickstarter and they let me call a match as a try out—Sara Del Rey vs. Mickie Knuckles—and I do well enough that they call me back, and for a year and a half I get to live out my weird kid dream of being a professional wrestling announcer. Caleb finishes wrestling school, but he only wrestles a few times before he moves to Philadelphia to attend the writing program at Temple; I never get to see him in the ring. When I graduate with my MFA in creative writing I take the prize money I won from a fellowship and go to wrestling school myself. I don’t last a night before I get a concussion, before I get so mad at myself for bumping too soft that I decide to really throw myself down to the mat and, in doing so, land head first, but the essay that I write gets me into a PhD program in Georgia, where I am now, and out of an office gig in Detroit. It’s weird, how connected these things are. When I watch this match now, when I watch myself react to it, it’s like I’m watching a ghost.

November 13, 2014
Sara Del Rey: The Wrestling Queen

Any time I tell somebody or some other person tells somebody that I run (well, ran) a movie blog, inevitably the person gets around to asking a question that I assume everybody in my particular line of nerdery dreads. The same goes for small talk with new people in sports, literature, music…on and on and on, all anybody is interested in is knowing what constitutes my favorite thing. On the surface, these are easy enough questions and I can say “The Big Lebowski” or “The Detroit Lions” at the drop of a hat, but I hate being asked because not only do I feel my taste or merit as a critic being judged by the asker, but because I fear the hidden, unspoken question: Why?

“Why” is a much harder question to quantify than “What,” as I don’t always know the reasons why I like a particular thing. I can say that I fell in love with the Lions because they’re my hometown team and, as a child, I saw Barry Sanders run in ways few human beings can wrap their minds around, but I didn’t experience Barry Sanders when the Lions were perennial playoff hopefuls and, for the majority of my life, they’ve have been playing such awful football that any sane man would have given up the ship years ago. Why not follow another team? I don’t know.

I used to be happy on the rare occasions when somebody asked me who my favorite wrestler was, because that was an answer I could give freely, with full explanation. I was watching a very special episode of WCW Monday Nitro on January 4, 1999 when Tony Schiavone, the voice of WCW, told me not to change that dial to Raw (which I never did to begin with) because he had it on good authority that Mick Foley, formerly known as Cactus Jack, was going to win the WWF Title from the Rock.

Even though I once served detention for doing the Degeneration-X crotch chop at recess and talked with my classmates about Steve Austin and the Undertaker and Kane and all that junk, I was a WCW man, right up until this point. See, I didn’t know anything about wrestling, even though I’d been watching since I was four, and the list of my favorite wrestlers remained unchanged from when I first saw an old Coliseum Video tape that I somehow got my hands on: Hulk Hogan, “Macho Man” Randy Savage and Bret Hart. So skilled was the WWF marketing machine that I followed these guys to WCW. My childhood love of Hulk Hogan had faded, but I still dug Macho Man and Bret Hart, who were having good feuds with the likes of Diamond Dallas Page, Chris Benoit, Raven and Goldberg, who I also grew to love. There was the ultra-cool combo of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, the incredible acrobatics of Rey Mysterio Jr. and the humor of a young Chris Jericho to keep me interested between 20-minute long odes to the Hulkster. Though I had all WWF action figures (they were better) and knew nobody who liked WCW, these were my icons. But I knew about the WWF and had read about Mick Foley and his barbarous Hell in the Cell match against the Undertaker and had bought a VHS tape called “The Best of Cactus Jack in ECW,” which was not only my introduction to a third “kind” of wrestling, but a new kind of wrestler in general.

Foley wasn’t in the best shape, he didn’t have the best look or the best gear, but he did everything he could to entertain/enrage an audience, and he was extremely good at his job. As an out-of-shape 11-year-old who couldn’t do a ton of athletic things because I suffered from cluster headaches (which were incapacitating) and swollen adenoids (which made it hard to breathe), I appreciated Mick Foley as a kind of avatar. He, too, was an out-of-shape dude who couldn’t do a ton of athletic things, and he was going to win the WWF Title.

This is what I saw when I flipped the channel:

And this is what happened on WCW Monday Nitro:

I think, had I been watching the rest of Nitro, that I would have stopped watching wrestling forever. As it stood, however, I became a big time WWF fan and Mick Foley became my favorite wrestler, which was too bad because 1999 was his last year as an active, full time competitor. Foley’s books and DVDs kept me going, but I was pretty much done with wrestling in 2002, when I went to a Raw is War and saw Kane and Triple H in a casket match because Triple H insinuated that Kane had slept with a dead woman. It was a combination of boredom and stupidity that did me in, and I was pretty sure that I was over wrestling.

But then YouTube was invented, I looked up “wrestling” and came upon clips of this woman:

Not that Manami Toyota ever took over for Mick Foley, but the minute I became aware of women’s wrestling, a kind of women’s wrestling that went beyond beyond the scope of the WWE’s diva division (which regularly featured matches where the two women fought in giant bowls of gravy or eggnog or what have you), the door flew open for somebody new.

Someone New

I’ve written a little bit about how Daniel Bryan (formerly known as Bryan Danielson) got me into indie wrestling (here). While the wrestler above—Sara Del Rey—wasn’t at that show, I started watching more and more indie wrestling, a scene where she’s a fixture, and was immediately drawn to her. I think indie wrestling works a strange magic on serious wrestling fans, and that, to me, is no more apparent than how Sara Del Rey became my favorite wrestler.

This is how indie wrestling works: When a guy like CM Punk comes out on TV and declares himself the best wrestler in the world, people who watch a ton of wrestling wag their fingers (or blow their tops) and start naming a bunch of dudes who are supposedly way better. Today’s wrestler of choice is probably Davey Richards. In 2009, when Chris Jericho was claiming to be “the best in the world at what he does,” the wrestler of choice would have been Bryan Danielson. This goes back as long as there’ve been nerds debating the finer points of pro-wrestling, with many asserting Ricky Steamboat as the best wrestler in the world at a time when maybe Ric Flair or Randy Savage were on top of the world, and you don’t even want to open the door to Mexican or Japanese wrestlers. The more wrestling one watches, the more likely the viewer is to settle upon some mostly obscure guy as their pick for Best in the World, which may be one of the most annoying chants I’ve ever heard at a wrestling show.

As far as my tastes in independent pro-wrestling go, I tend to prefer the stuff being done by women’s promotions like SHIMMER Women Athletes. It’s got a lot to do with YouTube exposing me to Japanese women’s wrestling before anything else, and also because groups like SHIMMER (and other promotions who use women from SHIMMER) are doing something completely different than what I can see on WWE television: treating women like they’re on the same level as men. Though women’s wrestling on TV is much better now than it was when bra and panties matches were in style, most of the women being pushed by WWE aren’t really my cup of tea. No matter how hard she works, I don’t think I’ll ever completely buy a Kelly Kelly victory, even over a woman of similar size and skill. I don’t have that problem with Del Rey, who looks genetically developed to crush the WWE Divas division into a fine powder.

Del Rey won me over late this past July, when I saw her perform three nights in a row. The first night, in Cleveland, she wrestled Sassy Stephie for Absolute Intense Wrestling at a show called Girl’s Night Out 4 which, as you might guess, featured mostly women’s matches. The show itself was great (if you’re a wrestling fan, you can throw some shekels their way at aiwrestling.com), but there were people in the crowd who, to be honest, made me ashamed to not only be there, but to like wrestling/be a man at all. I don’t think you can talk about the moral degradation of society until you sit next to a nine-year-old boy screaming “Gimmie a blowjob!” at every woman who happened by him, and there were other mutants in the audience who, when not feeding that kid lines, shouted out their own doozies, “kick her in the clit!” and the decidedly un-rhythmic “we want a stripper pole!” being favorites.

I don’t mean to trash AIW—they’re an up-and-coming, well-respected promotion who bring some of independent wrestling’s best to Ohio on a regular basis, and I’ll probably go to more of their shows in the future. But when people standing outside waiting for the door are debating if one of the wrestlers at the last show should have broken more fluorescent light tubes over his opponent’s face, however, you realize that an evening full of women’s wrestling is kind of a tough sell. Del Rey, who was wrestling a last-minute replacement for a wrestler named Super Oprah, was able to get the crowd to watch her match with a minimum of stupid, snide comments, despite the fact that she was pretty much squashing Sassy Stephie, her opponent for the evening.

It was at Girl’s Night Out 4 that the privileges of indy wrestling became apparent, as Del Rey came out during the intermission to sell DVDs and 8x10s. My friend Caleb and I introduced ourselves to her and talked about the crowd at AIW and our travel plans and how we were looking forward to seeing her match against Claudio Castagnoli at the old ECW Arena. I’m sure every schmuck who’s been to a live performance where audience/crowd interaction is key has felt like this, but when Del Rey wrestled Sassy Stephie, asked us to keep chanting her “Queen of Wrestling” moniker, called out for move requests and actually did the stuff we asked for, it felt less like she was playing to the crowd-at-large, and more like she was wrestling for us.

The match that Sunday, against Claudio Castagnoli (recently signed by the WWE), was the reason Caleb, his girlfriend and I packed up and hit the road. Friday in Cleveland and Saturday in Reading (a chaotic six-woman tag team match featuring a trio of wrestlers from Japan) were a great appetizer, and the whole weekend had been filled with a diverse array of spectacular wrestling. British legends Johnny Saint and Johnny Kidd, for example, wrestled two technical masterclasses that weekend–once against each other, once teaming with CHIKARA-founder Mike Quackenbush and Chicago’s own Colt Cabana, respectively—but Del Rey vs. Castagnoli was the featured attraction: One of the best men on the independent scene going against the best woman in a match that not only would determine both wrestler’s future chances at a title shot (this is always important), but was also an issue of respect. The deeper intricacies of the Del Rey/Castagnoli feud are unnecessary, as are the details of the match, which was pretty much worth the road trip.

I don’t know how easy it is to tell from the above image, but the difference between Castagnoli and Del Rey is vast. Claudio’s a huge man—260 pounds of Swiss mountain muscle—and while Del Rey’s not exactly tiny, Claudio had at least 100 pounds on her. The Asylum Arena, long a cradle for American independent wrestling, was sweltering that afternoon, an easy 100 degrees, and the CHIKARA faithful, usually a loud, raucous bunch, were quieted by the conditions in the building. Not during this match, where nearly 500 people yelled themselves hoarse chanting “QUEEN OF WRESTLING” as Del Rey tried her best to overcome Claudio. When she did, surprising Claudio with a cradle pinfall, the place exploded; the reaction was not unlike the best WWE crowds going nuts at a WrestleMania where everything goes right and everybody is sent home happy.

This comparison, of course, is unfair. Indie fans, when backed into the corner, will inexorably talk about matches like CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe being better than, say, CM Punk vs. John Cena. Not to say that their opinion is wrong—it probably isn’t—but the demands of a match performed in front of 300 people are much different than those of a match performed in front of 17,000, plus an additional 200,000 domestic pay-per-view buyers (even more if we’re talking a WrestleMania or Summerslam kinda night). But still, sending 500 sweat-soaked, tired, possibly jaded pro-wresting fans happy is an impressive feat, and Del Ray and Castagnoli really went all out for a great match, trading European-style uppercuts and kicks, lariats and somersault splashes, perspiration flying into the lights with each shot, Rocky-style, for 13 minutes.

Again, the privilege of being an indie fan: After the match and after the after-match shenanigans, Del Rey stood at a table with a few DVDs to sell. Nobody in line was buying them, instead choosing to ask questions like “Did you get that thing I bought for you off your Amazon wish list?” and giving her homemade wallets and other small tokens of affection, which, I suppose, is the privilege of being an indie wrestler. Caleb and I stood in that line, made our way to the front, and started blabbing about how great the match was, how great our trip was and, the weird thing was, she remembered us from Cleveland and stood around and talked to us for a bit:

“That was only thirteen minutes?” I asked. “It felt like half an hour!”

“I hope that’s not a bad thing,” Del Rey responded.

It wasn’t, but I don’t even think the match or her sticking around after the fact is what sealed the deal. There are plenty of wrestlers having plenty of good matches who are plenty nice to the fans. Mick Foley, for example, had a career’s worth of great matches and is almost legendarily nice to his fans. I think, rather, that I like Del Rey for the same reasons I like a guy like Foley or a team like the Detroit Lions—she’s a decided underdog, and it feels good to cheer for the underdog. But even here, there’s a difference.

Sara Del Rey isn’t an underdog in the same way the Lions are, as she’s not getting paid millions of dollars to do what she loves, and she’s not an underdog like Mick Foley, who could have never won a major world title but still would have had an excellent, globe-spanning career. She’s an underdog because, in terms of body type, she’s not the kind of woman the WWE usually hires. Yes, there are women working for the company right now who are larger than your average Hawaiian Tropics model, but that, too, may be working against Del Rey, as you’re either “the norm” or you’re too similar to someone else outside their definition.

That, again, is one of indie wrestling’s strange peccadilloes. I think most of the people who watch it aren’t just invested in the performance aspect of wrestling, or in the characters, which come and go. We’re invested in the people behind the fake names, the men and women wearing the spandex. I don’t know if it’s because we’re closer to the action or if it’s because indie wrestlers actually talk to fans or because there’s a strange sense of power in being a fan—my buying or not buying Rickey Shane Page’s $20 shirt is the difference between him eating at Subway or him eating Ramen—but I like sitting down front row at the TaylorTown Trade Center, looking into the ring and seeing a bunch of people who not only want to be in the WWE, but who deserve to be there.

Del Rey is one of those indie wrestlers. She not only looks ready, not only is ready, but she really wants to go. So she wrestles across the country and gains critical acclaim and builds her fan base hoping that somebody with the WWE will take notice and give her the shot that she deserves. She answers questions about “divas” and body type and her chances of getting in all the time, in a way is told that she’s not going to make it, but she keeps working and keeps getting better. Professional wrestling is how Sara Del Rey makes her living. There appears to be no back-up plan. She either wrestles and gets into the WWE or she wrestles and doesn’t, and it’s hard to be a wrestling fan and not respect this mindset.

It’s a huge part of the reason I like her, and it’s probably why I’ll miss seeing her in high school gymnasiums and half-empty flea markets when she does get signed. But this, ultimately, is why I buy a $10 ticket or a t-shirt or ask her to sign a poster. This is my reality television, and I want to see people who put a lifetime worth of work into something I also love get rewarded for doing so. I want Sara Del Rey to do like Mick Foley did in 1999 and silence the sort of people who look cynically upon hard work and dedication and say “You can’t do it” or “You don’t look right.” I’m a sucker for stories like this, stories which, oddly, professional wrestling seems to have the market cornered on.

September 30, 2011