So what are your thoughts on her career?

I think while it was/is overall pretty solid it hasn't been as good as it possibly could have been. If you look back at her career I don't think you could find very many if nay matches above the level of pretty good/solid , she definitely doesn't have a great match in her career thus far. Worse still some of her matches with better opponents have been pretty disappointing she had a match with Taylor Wilde for example that was really bland.  Same thing with ehr feuds and storylines , she doesn't really have a truly standout feud either.

Now a lot of this si tied into the booking she has received, TBP didn't become a main focus of the KO division untill after the division started to received much less air time/ match time than they did during the Gai vs Kong days . It also didn't help her career that she didn't egt to work with some of the better talents that much during her time there. For example she never faced Hamada in TNA, only had 2 singles matches with Taylor , only one match with Melissa on that Indian offshoot show, and just a couple with Sarita when Sarita was a heel 

But some if it has to do with her never really fully hitting her potential. She always looked like to me like someone who was holding back . Victoria even once mentioned in an interview that she wished Angelina would stop limiting herself to being just a stereotypical mean girl style wrestler, and allowed herself to be the very good all around wrestler that she could be. A lot of times you would see glimpses of a more creative wrestler in Angelina but a lot of the time she was just pretty basic. If you compare her ROH run to Madison's Impact run I think you'd see a someone who hasn't adapted to the more physical advanced stye of today's women wrestling as well as Madison has, although a lot of that as to do with the lack of talent surrounding her in ROH.  

  

Generally TBP don't get given anywhere near the credit they deserve for how good they were in TNA. They provided so many classic moments that are largely overlooked because they were "eye candy" and were more about their characters than the in-ring - a little similar to how the Bellas are viewed. Angelina's legacy probably does suffer because she never had a really great match, though you've already covered some of the reasons why that never happened.

I do think that Angelina has missed an opportunity to reinvent herself in ROH - although I appreciate that she may not be given the creative freedom to do so. The Allure was a flop from the very beginning, and even worse now she's stuck with just Mandy now that Velvet's off the scene, when that actually would have been a good opportunity for a character pivot to time with the new ROH championship. Maybe if she hadn't backstabbed Madison...

I remember her TNA stuff mainly for the stuff she did outside the matches. As an inring performer she didn't really stand out in a good way or a bad way.

Mar 2, 2020 2:17:31 GMT X-zero said:

I remember her TNA stuff mainly for the stuff she did outside the matches. As an inring performer she didn't really stand out in a good way or a bad way.

She had one or two good xplosion matches with Sarita. Her signles ppv matches with Gail were generally good if unspectacular  a lot of her tag matches from 2007-2008 in TNA were pretty fun  ( TBP and Kong vs Taylor, ODB, and Gail from I think Hardcore Justic 2008 was a particularly entertaining match). She also came up with the break bitch backbreaker which was a really cool move.

Sometimes I wonder if her lack of a WWE run hurt her standing with fans. I know Gail didn't have much of one as she's still highly regarded, even if recently she's seen as a selfish worker, but with Angelina I never see her mentioned among a lot of the greats.

I sought out Angelina's ROH matches from this past weekend for this thread to provide a more up to date opinion. vs Session Moth Martina was a pretty average/standard match but the one with Nicole Savoy was pretty decent. It was nice to see her work a more technical style for a change, particularly in the first half. More of that and less of the tired heel material with Mandy interfering every two minutes would definitely be a good idea.

ps. Savoy has a crazy low profile for someone who was Shimmer Champion forever and appears to be a very solid and technically sound wrestler. She doesn't even have a Wikipedia page!