Shimmer adds a huge name to next round of shows

While the next round of Shimmer Women Athletes tapings doesn't happen until November, the tickets are already on sale. With more international fans than many independent bookings, the company often sells out quickly on front row seats. But this time around, they're doing with a big name coming to join the festivities.

Back at the dawn of the 2000s, independent women's wrestling was not nearly as well respected as it was today. WWE still had semi-trained wrestlers regularly working their women's division and the indies had only a handful of talents that actually could wrestle a ten minute match. Into that fray walked a young woman named Alexis Laree. Starting in the Washington, D.C. area, she quickly expanded to work most of the west coast as news of a major women's talent started to spread.

Image credit: Shimmer Wrestling website.

In many ways she helped innovate women wrestling on the indie scene and in her wake more young stars started to appear. She worked the earliest TNA tapings, before finally signing a WWE contract where after over a year in development, she would debut as Mickie James.

Since that time Mickie's career has been legendary, as she's become the most decorated women's wrestling champion of the modern era. With 5 WWE Women's titles, a Divas title and 3 TNA Knockout titles under her belt along with a bevy of independent titles, she's easily one of the most rewarded female wrestlers ever.

And now she'll be at three of the five shows of the Shimmer weekend.

This comes in the wake of rumors of a possible return to WWE for Mickie James as a recent article on WWE.com named her "one of the hottest free agents" in wrestling.

Shimmer remains on my bucket list of shows to see live. I'm not a fan of their sales structure with DVDs of full shows and matches sold separately through the mediocre ClickWrestle service (with only one streaming show a year being made available past the first 20 events.) But they put on some epic events with some amazing talents. They were the first promotion to bring Asuka and Paige to the US after all.

Mickie and Shimmer seem like a match made in heaven. Expect great things come November 11th and 12th.