Well this was an awesome surprise. I haven't seen Serena Deeb in over ten years, probably since the Straight Edge Society days. I didn't even know she was in AEW - or wrestling at all - until someone suggested I watch some Serena Deeb matches. She's only 35 yet works like a 15 year veteran and I guess that's because she is. I don't remember if she was any good in WWE or not, but let me tell you she looked badass as a motherfucker here and this is easily the best AEW women's match I've watched so far. The bulk of it was built around Deeb going after Shida's leg, and while Shida never sold it like she's Macho Man Randy Savage or whatever she was at least passable. Deeb was like a Rottweiler. She was taking this poor girl's leg home with her no matter what and I loved how she had a hundred nasty ways of inflicting damage. The ring post figure-four was of course the highlight, as a ring post figure-four will tend to be, but this had extra bonus points for how Deeb used the steps to rest on while she applied it. And then there was the EXTRA extra bonus point from wearing pink and black ring attire, which Tony suggests might be a deliberate nod to the Hitman. Her roll-through half crab was super slick and worked as a legit nearfall, she hit one dragon screw thing that was more of a pull than a screw and looked like it could've detached Shida's kneecap, another dragon screw variation that I would describe as a swinging neckbreaker to the leg, a mean toehold where she tried to rotate Shida's foot a whole 180 degrees like she was opening a big jar of pickles, it was all great stuff. She was also smart about getting into position for Shida's more elaborate signature moves. I'd never seen a Shida match before and she's probably decent enough, but she seemed to be trying a few things that required a very specific setup, and Deeb set herself up for and/or reversed those things in interesting ways. I bit on about six different potential finishes down the stretch and I loved Deeb going to the eye poke and inside cradle, which I thought for certain was ending it. Judging by how many moves the commentators were name-dropping during the post-match beatdown I guess they both left a bunch of stuff on the table for future encounters (including the nasty submission that Deeb used to empty the referee's locker room), so that's pretty cool. Maybe I'll just watch ALL of the Serena Deeb?
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