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As 2014 draws to a close, Diva Dirt writers have each picked a personal highlight to reminisce on the year gone by.
Note: This isn’t a ranking of 2014’s best moments. These are moments that were personal highlights for each writer.
Adrian’s Pick: Mia Yim wins the SHINE Championship in China
When SHINE’s parent company WWNLive announced that they would be going on a tour of China in November, Mia Yim was a shoe-in to be chosen as one of the female representatives of the tour. As one of the most reliable members of the SHINE roster when it comes to delivering quality matches on a consistent basis – not to mention being one half of the first-ever SHINE Tag Team Champions and coming breathtakingly close to doing the same with the SHINE Championship last year – Mia’s stock has risen in spades throughout 2014, becoming one of the highest-profile names on the entire women’s independent circuit.
Three SHINE title matches were booked for the tour, with the first two seeing then-champion Ivelisse defend successfully against Su Yung and Allysin Kay. On the final night of the tour in Beijing it was Mia’s turn to take on the Huntress, and they complemented each other well with flurries of hard strikes, some superb submissions including a bow and arrow by Mia and a Lasso From El Paso by Ivelisse, and plenty of suspense spots, including Mia making it back to the ring from way, way outside in possibly the longest nine-and-a-half-count in history.
Both women did well to cater to the Chinese crowd, many of whom were experiencing live wrestling for the first time, and in the end a devastating package piledriver saw Mia get the pinfall and become the third SHINE Champion, in front of over 10,000 spectators (more than the average Raw crowd, to put that into perspective), several thousand miles from home.
Some people may scratch around for ulterior motives behind the title change, but make no mistake about it: this was far more than a company going abroad and pulling the trigger to create a talking point for the locals. This was a woman who has worked herself to the bone for the past few years finally having her sacrifice rewarded in front of the largest audience of her career. Mia Yim is now the first person to have held both championships in SHINE, and with a title defense already under her belt since her return from China, her dominance of the promotion looks set to continue well into 2015.
What did you think of this moment?
