All In: Let Jordynne Grace Win The Over-Budget Battle Royale, You Cowards
By CK Stewart
Jordynne Grace may not be the most famous name in All In: Zero Hour’s battle royale, but she’s one of the most exciting by a country mile.
All In’s Over-Budget Battle Royale has been a wild ride from the start. Initially announced as a part of the show’s first-hour All In: Zero Hour live WGN broadcast, the fifteen-person melee had the ante up considerably when ROH Wrestling champion Jay Lethal offered the winner a title shot later in the show (as reported by Pro Wrestling Sheet).
Regardless of the outcome, the royale is shaping up to be a great event, featuring the likes of Rocky Romero and Colt Cabana. But if the All In wants to make this a sleeper match of the year, there’s only one clear choice to win: indie wrestling superstar Jordynne Grace.
Grace has made a name for herself as a quick, powerful athlete who can face down any wrestler in the ring, man or woman, and come out on top with her fast wits and almost unbeatable strength. This year alone she’s come out on top against the likes of Rachael Ellering in the NOVA Pro Commonwealth Cup’s first-ever women’s tournament (which Grace would go on to win), defeated “Filthy” Tom Lawlor to win the Black Label Pro Championship, and even gone toe-to-toe with wrestling’s number one bad boy, Joey Janela.
She’s even booked to go one-on-one against one of her fellow battle royale participants later this year — Brian Cage, at Beyond Wrestling’s “Somebody’s Farewell, Probably …” in September. What better way to heat up that match than to have Jordynne best the Swolverine this Saturday night?
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The Over-Budget Battle Royale is filled to the brim with top-tier talent, from up-and-coming indie star Marko Stunt to (my personal favorite) the zombie princess Jimmy Jacobs and even the one, Billy Gunn. Jordynne Grace is, so far, the only woman competing, and one of only five women booked so far for the entire show.
There’s no women’s title on the line anywhere on the card — so just let Jordynne Grace go after Jay Lethal’s instead. If All In wants to truly be an upstart, in your face show of force in the wrestling business, proof that you don’t have to toe the big corporate party line to put bodies in the seats and put on a great show, then it should do something genuinely unexpected and give Jordynne Grace a shot at the Ring of Honor title.
“But Jordynne Grace isn’t a heavyweight!” Who cares? Jordynne Grace can squat 225 pounds, more than several previous ROH Wrestling champions actually weigh. If you can squat a heavyweight, you should be able to fight a heavyweight. “Intergender wrestling is too unrealistic!” Lucha Underground is unrealistic. It’s wrestling! Who cares. But for those who want to get into the nitty-gritty, armchair-booking kayfabe of the whole situation, here are the cold hard facts:
Realistically speaking — a shoot, if you would — the odds that Jay Lethal is going to drop the ROH Wrestling World Championship to a non-ROH Wrestling regular at a non-ROH Wrestling event, even as one with as high a profile as All In has managed to create for itself, are slim.
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So, realistically speaking, does it matter who faces him? And if it doesn’t, then why can’t it be Jordynne Grace? If someone’s going to lose, we might as well get the most exciting possible match out of it.
Unrealistically speaking — a work, let’s say — the odds are stacked against the champion regardless. No one in the battle royale is going to go from defeating fourteen other people, all with wildly different styles, and walk into the championship match with the one-up on a fresh and rested Jay Lethal who spent a leisurely half hour or so scouting the competition.
There’s a reason the WWE’s Royal Rumble always ends with, well, the rumble, and not the winner’s title match: watching someone stumble out of a rumble and into a loss doesn’t really get the blood pumping or the merch money flowing.
Sure, you could watch Brian Cage throw Jay Lethal around for a while and pretend to be shocked when he kicks out of the Lethal Injection, or get a kick out of watching Marko Stunt (a legitimately talented wrestler with years worth of more interesting title shots down the road for him) do some wild tricks only to not be shocked when he doesn’t kick out of the Lethal Injection.
Or you could watch one of the five women on this card kick the asses of fourteen men who have had or will have dozens and dozens of world championship shots between them at the world’s biggest companies, and then go toe-to-toe with the absolute best ROH Wrestling has to offer. Grace can match Lethal’s speed, his strength, and his quick thinking in the ring.
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That’s the kind of exciting, unexpected match-up that All In promised us, and those two matches would easily make this show worth every single penny of its ticket and PPV price.
Let Jordynne Grace win the Over-Budget Battle Royale, you cowards.