Whoever the girl in red/blue is...
I claim her as mine.
Jessica James, AKA Lady Poison;
I need a gif of Homer nom'ing some crisps/chips.
Been singing her praises on the pages of WrassleGAF for a loooooong time, Kyoufu. She's awesome. One of my favorite performers in wrestling right now, with one of the coolest ongoing narratives in the business.
She's also the new ACW American Joshi Champion.
She's really tiny, and she clearly has some kind of martial arts background, so she works that into her style a lot. She has some great strikes, especially her kicks, and works a pretty neat submission game into the game too. The main thing about her as a worker that sets her apart from the other women who can work on her high level in the ring is she's so good being in-character and she's really good at bringing a compelling narrative to her matches, even if you don't notice it right away.
Initially, finding out that the likes of her, Rachel Summerlyn, and Athena (who I had known from Shimmer DVDs) were on the roster at ACW was the thing that got me to start going to their shows in the first place, so I owe those girls that, since I've become a big fan of the company. Oddly, since I've been following ACW in Austin, a friend of mine that used to go to indy shows in Dallas with me figured out that we'd actually been fans of Jessica James long before that, when she was working for a televised indy out of Arlington, TX called PCW.
Here's what she looked like there, many years ago...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CkUhZ4Lgh8
It never occurred to me that the goofy character of Jessica James--the fun, long-haired brunette from Shimmer who had one of my favorite matches there ever vs. Sara Del Rey--was the same girl as the slick-talking mean girl from PCW. The girl in PCW IIRC seemed so different, I just never put it together. Didn't help that I kinda stopped following everything outside of ROH and WWE for a while because I was mainly watching MMA, and kinda lost touch with the rest of the indies until I finally started watching other stuff again.
Like Boots said, there have been two awesome characters she is known for:
The first is the kinda ditzy, super-happy, very easily-fooled, kinda scared-of-everybody-bigger-than-her but still scrappy Jessica James character that you could see in places like Shimmer. With Rachel Summerlyn, Jessica formed "Rachel and Jessica's Egg-cellent Tag Team," (abb. RAJETT) one of ACW's most popular babyface teams. It was awesome, with Rachel's powerful offense and Jessica's quick-striking style working like Power-man and Iron Fist from the comics.
The second persona is Lady Poison, her alter-ego that is all the things "sweet" Jessica is not. Lady Poison is almost pure, almost zombie-like evil. She can stop wrestlers in their tracks just by staring a hole in their souls with her eyes. And she has a devastating come-from-anywere finisher that has claimed many victims, the Poison Kiss, which is kinda like The Great Muta's Green Mist, but she kisses her victim, injecting it right into their mouths, leaving them writhing in pain and coughing up green ooze. Totally awesome, and it completely works for her, because it works on any size opponent. And really, who doesn't like to see a girl kiss a girl from time-to-time?
What really sells the character though is that they are so different. This is a really radical transformation. They don't even
walk the same. It's pretty awesome to see as a fan.
In ACW storyline world, Lady Poison had been around before RAJETT, but with Jessica back to normal, Lady Poison stayed hidden for the most part, and didn't appear again much later, when Summerlyn started getting more and more big singles titles matches, and Jessica started feeling like she was just Rachel's sidekick. Then you started to see little signs of change in Jessica. When Lady Poison returned full-force however, this time she was aiming her rage clearly at Rachel. She attacked Rachel after her victory v. Jazz in the Queen of Queens tournament, giving her the Poison Kiss, and making her easy pickings for Jessicka Havock (who also eliminated Poison, using her gas mask to protect her from the kiss.)
Strangely, the "normal" Jessica had no idea she and Lady Poison were one in the same. She'd presumably "wake up" backstage with green stuff all over her, wondering what happened.
Rachel tried to move on, finding an unlikely tag partner in the now-babyface Portia Perez, forming "Team Havin' Fun," but the interference of both women's pasts doomed their chances, with Lady Poison on the warpath for Rachel, and Portia being stalked by Robert Evans (Archibald Peck/R.D. Evans) in another one of ACW's wonderful, long-term angles.
Here's a few shots of Lady Poison from the dramatic confrontation match in July against Rachel Summerlyn:
In that match, which I highly recommend if you like drama in your wrestling, available here for download:
http://smartmarkvideo.com/anarchy-c...-insanity-100th-event-austin-tx-download.html
...Jessica finally figured out that she was Lady Poison. Now, she's different, with shades of both characters still present. She isn't the old, bouncing around goofy puppy dog Jessica anymore, but she's not Lady Poison either. Occasionally, in the middle of a match Lady Poison does seem to pop up, which scares the hell out of her opponents:
But with the two sides of her together, she may be more formidable than ever before. In the match last week where she took the title, we saw some of Jessica's old "Bugs Bunny" style hopping around and sticking and moving and avoiding a very infuriated Athena, but we also saw the Lady Poison side a bit too, with the unstoppable aggression, and even a kiss... (although it didn't seem to be a full-on Poison Kiss) to Barbi Hayden.
The cool thing about the end of that match though was when Rachel Summerlyn came out, right at the end, dressed as a bit of an evil Harley Quinn. In a reversal of roles, she gave Jessica a kiss, but this kiss seemed to energize Jessica to help her win.
So the intrigue obviously continues in a storyline that these two talented women have managed to keep interesting for literally YEARS now. (3 years, IIRC!)
